Art Box portal //
The project by visual artist Dragan Vojvodić titled ‘Minimum Effort Maximum Expectation’ (Konstepidemin, Gothenburg, 2023) aims to create a series of works using everyday and accessible materials, as well as the simplest artistic techniques like grouping, adding, or collaging. These works serve as a visual counterpart to the simplified and uniform language found in conversational discourse on social media, the internet, and messaging platforms. Concurrently, the project engages with conceptual artistic practices, utilizes found objects, and highlights the artist’s position in today’s consumerist, neoliberal society.
The ‘Minimum Effort Maximum Expectation’ project explores various dimensions: it presents a potential artistic discourse within contemporary art practice, references modern communication methods and social media, critically questions language and narratives, draws attention to ecological themes through linguistic means, aligns with conceptual art practices, utilizes minimal resources during the artistic residency, and underscores the artist’s position in today’s consumerist society.
The conceptual art practice serves as the foundation for this project, translating contemporary communication based on abbreviations into a visually narrative artistic process that employs minimal means to create visual content. Essentially, all materials surrounding us, those we use daily and have at our fingertips, become materials for shaping that bear witness to the present moment.
Statistics aren’t needed to conclude that the younger generation tends to avoid reading books and often utilizes a limited vocabulary, resorting to abbreviations in the English language.
Abbreviations used to be confined to encyclopedias, lexicons, and dictionaries. They save time and space (important on social media) and streamline writing while visually simplifying text. However, they also generate numerous adverse consequences.
Abbreviations have become a symbol of modern times. The accelerated pace of life, imposed by new technology and lifestyles, has led to a simplification of narratives, semantics, and language. It’s not only words that are shortened; expressions and sentences are condensed too. Essentially, the entire vocabulary becomes material for abbreviation, erasing individuality.
Dragan Vojvodić is an artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. He studied at the Art Academy in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Novi Sad (Serbia) and has represented Serbian art in numerous exhibitions across the region and other countries such as Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Great Britain, USA and Japan.
Vojvodic has participated in various artist-in-residence projects in Finland, Iceland, Norway, Greenland, Sweden, Portugal, and Spain, among others.
Since 2006, his exhibition practice has been closely associated with Scandinavia, with showcases in cities such as Reykjavik, Egilsstadir (Iceland), Turku, Koli, Alajarvi (Finland), Alvik, Bergen (Norway), and Gothenburg (Sweden).
His artistic practice encompasses performance, art action, installation, video, photography, and more.
More about the project: https://issuu.com/ljiljanamaletin/docs/ljiljana_maletin_vojvodic_kako_razumeti_savremenu_
Leave a Reply