Elma Hodzic - AlexaKoko

Elma Hodzic

Art historian and curator at the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina

(Vid' mu glave)
Embodying an idea: from line to unidentified identities

There is no line in nature. Reducing the world and its form to a contour is actually an act of translation, the result of an elementary achievement of the mind in an attempt to understand and participate in shaping the apparent reality. What we see as a line is the meeting and boundary of two surfaces: the intersection of colors, shapes, and matter. And why, then, from the first writing of the palm in the cave walls until today, does man act through lines and outline his worlds with different materials? Does abstracting the world through line help us get closer to the secrets of creation? Is the line the result of the desire to simplify or explain the worlds that surround us in layers?

The artist Aleksandra Kokotović, creating with different fine media, observes the world through lines, which, like blood vessels, pass through forms and shapes. However, through the paintings and sculptures of Aleksandra Kokotović, the "blood flow" also imposes itself as the supporting structure of the composition - lines become and remain the dominant skeleton around which layers of color, flickering light and the existence of shadow are formed. The exhibition "See his heads" is made up of sculptures and relief paintings whose size becomes an important layer of exposure: monumental sculptures performed in line as a dominant artistic element question the space. Do the sculptures shape the space or does the space become the body of the sculpture? How do we exist - the artist Aleksandra Kokotović asks us indirectly?

The answers to the question of space, fullness and emptiness are hidden in the long-term observation of a work of art. By shaping metal through contours, Aleksandra Kokotović brings to the viewer a wealth of visual information that enables a wide range of experiences of works of art. The simplicity of the colors contrasts with the monumentality and the abundance of lines that - through the growth of form, skewness and fusion of parts - form the bodies of the sculptures. And how does this feat of abstracting the world communicate with the audience? What do the sculptures tell us?

Observing the bodies of Aleksandra Kokotović's sculptures, I remembered the art of Albert Giacometti. When he began to portray characters in 1921, the artist declared that "everything slipped away from him, and the head of the model in front of me turned into a kind of cloud, blurred and without clear boundaries." This story testifies to the fact that every representational form is doomed to failure, because every form is actually tied to the material and the medium. We are limited by language. We are limited by our environment. We are limited by ideas - the world of ideas cannot be fully translated into matter. Aleksandra Kokotović's sculptures talk about exactly this instability and elusiveness of ideas: lines in repetitive strokes build characters. Underlining, crossing out, emphasizing, disappearing... these are all processes that show how sentient beings are changeable and imperfect. Man belongs by soul to the world of ideas, and by body to the transitory world of matter. This split between matter communicates the questioning of space and the work of art. Art belongs to the world of ideas, and the work of art belongs to the transient world of matter. Aleksandra Kokotović manages to embrace the transience of the world and creates sculptures from matter that will completely decompose over time and merge with nature

If memory is an echo of an idea, then the shadow is an echo of matter. Where there is shadow there is light, where there is light there is life. The shadow in Aleksandra Kokotović's sculptures is not an essential and inseparable element of the object whose purpose is to amplify the echo of the original - the shadows act as separate structures created on the premises of the sculpture, but with completely separate life impulses. Shadows exist for themselves. They have their own dynamics. Own elusive space. Elusiveness, incompleteness, and imperfection of identity - this is what Aleksandra Kokotović's sculptures speak about. About the fact that people, like sculptures, do not rest on clearly defined lines and features, but on differences. Every human being has the potential of any other human being.

Human perception is not preceded exclusively by the fragmentation of identity, but by the mutuality of essential and structural features. This exhibition helps us to see similarities, canons, logic and consistency in the making of the world - so that we can ultimately respect and nurture individualization. One notices the protype, which is reflected in almost all of Aleksandra Kokotović's visual representations - but the prototype is enriched every time anew with unique impulses that give the sculpture its specificity and, dare I say, its own life. Symmetry and repetition are used to some extent as a comic tool in Aleksandra Kokotović's artworks, which, again, is hinted at in the title of the exhibition. It is impossible to translate the world of ideas into the world of matter independently of the context in which we create. Here (by this I am referring to the geographical location where the sentence "see his head" is often the only criticism) humor is the main mechanism of survival. We laugh even when we shouldn't. And when we don't know how to proceed. And when we know, but when it is necessary to drive away fear with laughter. We evaluate based on appearance and material. Aleksandra Kokotović, with her sculptures and continuous work, makes another step forward in her artistic questioning. Wittily criticizing the superficiality of contemporary society (exclusively through the title), the artist forces us to get closer to the world of ideas through matter. Because the line really does not exist in nature, but there are ideas and the need to articulate the layering of reality in which we are similar and so infinitely different. And when we know, but when it is necessary to drive away fear with laughter. We evaluate based on appearance and material. Aleksandra Kokotović, with her sculptures and continuous work, makes another step forward in her artistic questioning. Wittily criticizing the superficiality of contemporary society (exclusively through the title), the artist forces us to get closer to the world of ideas through matter. Because the line really does not exist in nature, but there are ideas and the need to articulate the layering of reality in which we are similar and so infinitely different. And when we know, but when it is necessary to drive away fear with laughter. We evaluate based on appearance and material. Aleksandra Kokotović, with her sculptures and continuous work, makes another step forward in her artistic questioning. Wittily criticizing the superficiality of contemporary society (exclusively through the title), the artist forces us to get closer to the world of ideas through matter. Because the line really does not exist in nature, but there are ideas and the need to articulate the layering of reality in which we are similar and so infinitely different. the artist forces us to get closer to the world of ideas through matter. Because the line really does not exist in nature, but there are ideas and the need to articulate the layering of reality in which we are similar and so infinitely different, the artist forces us to get closer to the world of ideas through matter. Because the line really does not exist in nature, but there are ideas and the need to articulate the layering of reality in which we are similar and so infinitely different.