I will join this very cool print biennial , at its second edition.

Cacak Print Biennial promise to be better and better int erms of quality and success.

“The graphics as a discipline has survived until today thanks to its vitality and power of metamorphosis through time. Following the technology and adapting to new developments it does not even for a moment lose its personal touch and identity of premedieval artistic practice that cultivates since the Middle Ages. Today more than ever there is this dualism. Present authors successfully balance from one extreme to another accepting and experimenting with new technologies, but still with a strong classical foundation of graphic prints.
It maintains graphics on a stable basis nowadays, not allowing it to slip in commerce or in mass production. At a time when the expression of classical art disciplines is questioned, what the most of critics judge as “outdated ways of visual creating”, the survival of graphics proves just the opposite. By classic graphical techniques and their combining with modern technological achievements, artistic ideas can be materialized in a form that meets the requirements of contemporary artistic practice.
It is indisputable that it is very difficult to create a basic precondition for dealing with graphics and that is an equipped graphics workshop. The specificity of the represented works is that they are fully formed in the circumstances and technological achievements in which the authors develop their artistic ideas and non-restriction and not directing their artistic freedom always leads to interesting and original solutions. There were fears that traditional printing techniques will disappear under a flood of digital technology. But something else has happened.
By parallel duration and development of both techniques a kind of classical and contemporary symbiosis is created. One can say that the graphics remains true to its principles finding the right balance between the traditional and modern.
More precisely: when the classical expression does not return to the past but its expression experiences freely, without stopping in the past, then art continues through time. Without that, it is impossible to guess what will happen. Normally contemporary printmaking today is in expansion which, of course, causes resentment as in the time of its occurrence.
Here, in this collection, the young authors show, perhaps the most intensively, just that they are firmly grounded in their poetics and sensibility on classic principle which is certainly admirable in the context of the modern age. The modern age, on the other hand, provides (modern) surroundings; motives, information and materials usually available within easy reach. But young artists still cherish traditional values.
Modern Serbian stage and graphics therefore show stable discourse of an art school which survives for several decades, and which just builds and complements in a real meaning of the word. Authors coming from Serbia show classical poetry with a touch of “new technologies” but with style and taste. Although they are from different generations and different schools they confirm here that the Serbian graphics is unique and classically grounded.
Graphic artists from this region, with their personal dedication and effort, manage to build graphics into a respectable artistic discipline in spite of many unfavorable material factors. In the works of authors who are represented can be seen wealth of poetics and various approaches of understanding graphics and print. From the themes that are inherent to each author, through artistic expression, to the very philosophy of making clichés and prints, we can see the richness of the scene from which they come”.

Dragan Dobrosavljevic
Art director Print Biennial Cacak, Serbia

20 November – 20 December 2014

CACAK NATIONAL MUSEUM

SERBIA