THE PHANTASMAGORIC OTHERWORLD BY VUKADIN FILIPOVIĆ

Humorously horrific, colorfully grim, melancholically blatant, phantasmagoric and grotesque, to the point of looking nearly hallucinatory. The surreal paintings of Vukadin Filipović, a young Serbian artist, currently living and working in Vienna, are attractive and disturbing at the same time.

I stopped next to his works at Vienna Contemporary, and instantly dreamt away, wondering in the back of my mind: who are they, these creatures and those people? This cute doggie with terrifyingly empty blue eyes. This fluffy, soft beast with ridiculously long, bloody fangs. These young, exaggeratedly laid-back bohemian men; this elegant, sad woman with empty, red eye sockets. Where are they, and where am I?

So I decided to ask the artist himself.

The JI: Who are the characters in your paintings: the people, the animals, the insects? Are they someone you met in real life? Someone from your dreams?

Vukadin: It would be counterintuitive for me to divide the waking and the dream, since I’ve been reminded on countless occasions that everything that we even dare to think of will become, if not there already, present and material.

But that might just be an oracular byproduct of painting itself. Or I’m just an oracle, but we’re far from social acceptance and validation of the foreseeing eye.

The lamb-esque dogs are mostly based on my dog, Dolly.

I try to not give too much direction to the humanlike actors. There’s always a part of my past self or selves woven into them. There’s also this recurring mythological creature I only dare call Lover, who’s just this ever-changing entity, with liquid features where the face should be.

The JI: How would you describe your art to someone unfamiliar with it?

Vukadin: I never really thought of it. I usually say something like, "Hey, there’s these things I make, you should probably take a look." And they’re either affected or not, both of which I’m fine with.

The JI: What message or feeling do you aim to communicate through your art?

Vukadin: I think it revolves more around communicating desire than feeling. Pictorial language is like any other: in some regard universal, yet holds within a specificity, like a marking that allows us to be recognized by the ones we seek. It’s dependent on intention as everything. I, for one, find there’s nothing more profound than finding someone that mirrors your truth.

The JI: What goes through your head when you paint? Does the process of painting make you happy? Help you relive and recharge your emotions?

Vukadin: It’s everything really; can go from self-loathing to self-loving in a split second. I initially dubbed my writing practice A Meandering Thunderthought, but found it translates well to each fraction of the work. It is basically a technique of letting the subconscious loose to the point where I sometimes can’t even anticipate the outcomes.

On one occasion I even called it a choreography which my hand and gut conspired to behind my mind's back.

The JI: Who do you create your art for? Is there a particular audience for your paintings that you have in mind?

Vukadin: For the aforementioned hypothesis that there might be another.

The JI: If your art were a place, what would it ideally be?

Vukadin: I’d like to think that one day I might have a playground as grandiose as the Ernst Fuchs Villa.