(Sur)Realism (2012) Photography by Biljana Djukic

The group of work (Sur)Realism comprises of frames which show the relationship of water surfaces and the soil, plants, which surround a lake. Realistic scenes of nature leave an impression of surreal scenes, which is additionally emphasized by presentation through light boxes. I have tried, by photographing, to record the unusualness of the situations during my customary stay near water. I have thought about the circumstances which have made me sit for hours and observe and photograph the visual changes of one whole. The only conclusion is that a certain change happened in my observations, because earlier, even though I spent a lot of time in nature, I was not interested in developing an art whole on the basis of the scenes of nature. Before, the photographs of those details presented a memory, a note or a technical practice in photographing macro photographs. During this photographing the idea was initiated by the change of subtle color values, nuances which I have not been able to achieve on canvas as a painter. Each segment of the observed became the source of an interesting composition, and then, beside, the quality of artistic values which were formed by nature, the strength of spontaneously formed optical illusions was emphasized. In that way, the concept of the group of work is gradually defined, based on strong surrealistic combinations, made by photographing concrete scenes, without additional manipulations or processing of the photographed material in software programs.

This work is finalized by choosing light boxes as a way of presentation, because neon lights add to the lighting of the scenes, artificial light partly simulates the glare of the natural. Light boxes are chosen because I want to oppose the scenes of nature, which are not current media sensation, to the most often use of light boxes at present times – for advertising purpose. At the same time this work emphasizes the question of interest, trends of consumer’s attention, the consumers of many visual contents.

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(Sur)Realism