Future of Melancholia

With Ilija Bašičević Bosilj, Ljiljana Blaževska, Kosara Bokšan, Vane Bor, Lidija Delić, Milena Dragicevic, Biljana Đurđević, Vukadin Filipović, Olga Jevrić, Bogoljub Jovanović, Marko Obradović, Radomir Reljić, Marko Ristić, Leonid Šejka, Sava Sekulić, Marija Šević, Ivan Tabaković, Saša Tkačenko, Aleksandar Vučo & Dušan Matić, Nina Zeljković, Radojica Živanović Noe, Milica Zorić.

The exhibition Future of Melancholia considers melancholy as a state of mind that matches the complex times in which we are living. This is a phenomenon and a reaction to the challenges of populist developments around the world, in the form of a withdrawal from political and public life and a turn to the private realm. The exhibition particularly looks at how artists explore this heavy-heartedness and introspection that also reflect an inner conflict between tradition and progress. Often, they turn to the surreal and dream-like, which offer opportunities to address the interplay between inner sentiment and the state of the outside world. The resulting works follow a narrative structure that is sometimes very bleak and unfathomable, but can also be humorous and hopeful. This melancholic sentiment is the focus of this exhibition, which presents historical, modernist, and contemporary positions from both Serbia and Austria both in Belgrade and Graz in three chapters shown almost simultaneously: at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (Gallery-Legacy of Milica Zorić & Roduljub Čolaković and Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art) and at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark in Graz.

The exhibition at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark in Graz presents three generations of artists from Serbia, exploring the continuities of the surreal and associative imagery from the 1920s to the present, with historical positions from the surrealist group around Marko Ristić, Vane Bor, Radojica Živanović Noe, and others, who were the founders of surrealism in Serbia and who interacted internationally with other surrealist artists. From the 1950s to 1990s various positions emerged with profoundly individual approaches and poetics presented in the practices of artists such as Ilija Bašičević, Ljiljana Blaževska, Olga Jevrić, Bogoljub Jovanović, Radomir Reljić, Leonid Šejka, Sava Sekulić, and Milica Zorić. Through figuration or abstract forms, a metaphysical view, elements of the surreal, manifestations steeped in allegory, or the exploration of the relationship between spirit and matter, these artists produced unique renderings of immediate reality and the experiences of the world. The exhibition also presents contemporary Serbian artists, who, like their Austrian contemporaries whose works are shown in Belgrade, use allegories of the surreal, allusiveness, and nostalgia that envision fantastic, atmospheric, and sometimes bleak worlds. Like their predecessors, this generation, represented here by Lidija Delić, Biljana Đurđević, Milena Dragicevic, Marko Obradović, Marija Šević, and Saša Tkačenko, can also be described as idiosyncratic – a generation that, in new contexts, connects with other artists across borders in order to enter into a supranational and multilateral dialogue.

At the Gallery-Legacy of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCAB) in Belgrade, contemporary Austrian positions are presented together with works by the pioneer of surrealism Susanne Wenger, whose work was shown at the 60th Venice Biennale last year. This exhibition at the Gallery-Legacy particularly aims at a new appraisal of Wenger, showing two series: Traumgesichte (Dream Visions) (1943-44), works in crayon depicting mainly hybrid human-animal creatures or anthropomorphic animals, and Icons of Sadness (1993-94), which Wenger created after her long and often very spiritual sojourn in Nigeria. In the first and second stories of the villa in style of 1930 modernism, a selection of artworks by outstanding Austrian artists are presented, including Kamilla Bischof, Flora Hauser, Katharina Höglinger, Ernst Yohji Jaeger, Nanna Kaiser, Matthias Noggler, Maruša Sagadin, Anna Schachinger, Klaus Schuster, and Lisa Slawitz. These artists take diverse perspectives on the theme of melancholy and invite us into what seem to be inner worlds. These often neo-surrealist works each stand for themselves, while partly drawing on the legacy of Wenger. The works all develop their own narratives and they all have the courage to go new ways.

In a second exhibition, Philipp Timischl’s solo show Molded in the MoCAB Salon presents a series of new paintings that explore the phenomenon of melancholy that is so tangible amongst a younger generation today, as well as drawing on the idea of “hauntology,” according to which the present-day and its artistic production are characterized by “ghosts”: endless loops of cultural elements from the past, leading to the cancellation of the future within a permanently repetitive present. Timischl’s works thus also witness the insecurities of our time that are reflected in Future of Melancholia.

Future of Melancholia is a cooperation of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark. This would not have been possible without the generous support of the Cultural Department of the State of Styria, the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs (BMEIA), the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia. The project was initiated within the BMEIA program Imagine Dignity—Laboratories Of Hope: Regenerating Democratic Prosperity.

Curator: Sandro Droschl 
Coordinating curator: Miroslav Karić; Curatorial assistance: Caro Feistritzer

Future of Melancholia
Gallery-Legacy of Milica Zorić & Rodoljub Čolaković
Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade
Rodoljuba Čolakovića 2, 11000 Belgrade
March 8–May 4, 2025

Future of Melancholia
Philipp Timischl: Molded
Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade
Pariska 14, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
March 8–May 4, 2025

Press inquiries: Helga Droschl, hd [​at​] halle-fuer-kunst.at / T 0316 740084. Press download.