JUG OF QUESTIONING

Safety is on the water, and the mirror of water
was everything that was sjperb in those distant,
mythical, unhistorical times, During the times
of rebellion, fires and floods, it is well remembered,
the statute of Novi Sad was guarded, on a boat.
And during the days of the last great floods
in the last century, the Danube street
in Novi Sad resembled the canal in Venice.
On those old yellow, faded, unforgettable photographs.

Novi Sad, during the last three centuries
of its existence sometimes forgot how the Danube,
when looked upon from the view point
of Petrovaradin fortress, was wild fury,
waterwith no limits, roadless foggy swamp area,
still waterforever. Water all around,
surrounding Novi Sad. And this magical sea
of the Danube, appears not only
as a summer address, vacation carelessness,
but as a source power.

The still water of the Danube maybe
the only thing together with the hotel room-
that is said to be the closest type of solitude.
In that union, when the distance fades away
and disappears in the wide plains,
there is a room for the great themes
of metaphysicians and poets.

As well as the presence of water, the absence
of it, in the hot August,assumes
the source which nevertheless exists somewhere, languishes, articulates the first
and the only word of thirst.

The water, like nowhere else,
in the Panonian plain resembles a secret.
Melons, that variant miracle of melon
and watermelon, from far east sides,
is also that riddle, that incentive, that privilege.

In the plain, where the verticals are so rare,
with the church towers and high poplars,
one always has tG mention a sweep,
in the middle of the pasture,
which the poet Miroslav Antic
in his writings characterized
as his younger brother.

All the fallowing travelers, armies
and immigrations here can almost
at once believe in miracle:
instead of Saint Francis,
all of our ancestors and many contemporaries
are walking on water and recognize
themselves in its mirrors.

The water is most important even
when it is just the water ot nonexistence.

The Serbian poet Gordana Todorovic
has the anthology poem:
Love call to nonexistent. In it, instead
of with the nonexistent lover, every night
in her dreamless sleep, she drinks up
a jug of ice-cold water, almighty.
Like a call. Like an act. Like an incarnation
of our whole wondering on this cape of land.

Thejug of questioning is one
of the prestigious classical elements.

And for all times it is most certain,
that the safety is on water.

DraskoRedep, Ph.D.


VARIOUS ASPECTS OF WATER

Water, that enormous binding opus.
Starting point and foundation from where everythingflewfurther.

All the authors that applied, approached
the "element water" from many sides.
Through various aspects and thorough approach,
they accomplished a possibility
of a new perspective of that theme
the was already used for so many times.


Each work is primary as a segment,
then as a whole as well, regardless of different
interests of an artist. On these paintings,
there are differences and opposites
which are mitigated in a strange way.
Rational taking all the positive sides
of the new art and something else nowadays
not afraid of idyllic sights.

Just as we thought that this eternal theme
has totally vanished, here is the proofthat
everything we think is final, still leaves behind
much new and unexplored.

Water, this large and apparently simple space
has appeared to the authors as a kingdom
of finest colorful discoveries.

Every person has its own unique expression.
General bluish tone, changing from painting
to painting, from deep blue to light green,
transmits the finest waves of the soul.
Rubbed in colour, toned down sound as if coming
from down under, bellow the painting,
give these works a historical importance.

I cannot but mention the authors that entered
the final selection:

Borislav Suput, with his sculpture "rain falls,
grass grows" showed us two reduced points,
sky and earth connected with two delicate
lines of "water".

Natasa Raletic the world of pure intensive colours.
In the warm moment imagines what
she has been through.

Zarko Drincic shows us that a movement
to unknown depths flows from lights to a mysterious darkness, far from the intrusive noise,

Danilo Vuksanovic leaves nothing to chance,
and nothing is subordinate to strict rules.
He sacrifices reality of objects for the reality
of a painting.

And off course Dejana Nesovic who went
to this adventure from the shore.
The whole painting is a ship, pressed by
an enormous amount of water.
Space is undefined and indefinite,
so that it looks like a fragment of infinity.
Fully released from the pressures
of external objects where the ideas of time,
distance, relation.... are lost.

You see, there are no winners or losers,
there is only a game of art and we are
an unbreakabie part of it.

Olivera Stevanović, Art Historian