4. Amtsalon Gallery Popup

With Aleksandra Domanović
December 2 to 3, 2022
Kantstraße 79, 10627 Berlin

On view were the work series “Worldometer” (2021) and “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (2020).

“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” filters observations Aleksandra Domanović made on the film with the same title through the political, ideological, and even sexual energies bound within the acts of seeing and perceiving. The film is ostensibly about a female painter commissioned to make a portrait of a women for a potential suitor to consider. We see the women see each other, and we wonder about how they perceive one another. It’s a study on the female gaze, the social contexts that proscribe it, and the sexual tension that steadily grows through it. How these women perceive each other changes the more they see each other. “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” is a manifestation of the power, love, romance, and control in a world without men. (…) Domanović’s new silkscreen works, many featuring the movie’s title, employ an optical phenomenon called simultaneous contrast to extend the relationship between seeing and perceiving. Yellow text, for example, appears to be different hues when juxtaposed against red or blue lines. We are drawn in to test our eyes, to question our vision. How we perceive, these works seem to say, changes the more we see. (Carson Chan)

In “Worldometer”, Domanović plays once again with a visual effect, called persistence of vision. It describes the ability to keep a visual impression after the image has already disappeared. Domanović’s holographic LED fans deploy this principle, while turning it into a sculptural form. The combination of wood turned objects and spinning fans display commercial imagery with a daily update on COVID statistics of the country, where the artworks are exhibited.