Luka Vukicevic - AlexaKoko

Luka Vukićević

Master in Art History

THE SEAL OF CIVILIZATION

For Aleksandra Kokotović, painting means passion, dedication, but also a kind of refuge. Refuge from the everyday, banal and trivial, which does not mean escapism from the world, because the author does not avoid facing difficult and complex experiences in her work. Persistently focusing on the problems of existence and cognition, she asks questions and offers answers through the means of visual expression, as evidenced by the poetic titles of her works (At the Edge of the World, Inhabiting the Earth, Consciousness). The spiritual challenge to which the artist unreservedly surrenders, inspires and encourages her to move through spatial and temporal coordinates. The tireless traveller, both in life and in art, passes through "real" and "virtual" spaces, leaving the dilemma of which are real and which are fictitious unsolved. The dilemma is not relevant anyway (just like whether it is the older chicken or the egg) since the author suggestively contextualizes the relationship between this world and the other world, physical and metaphysical with juicy, rich and varied colours and lines.

Like the spatial aspect, the temporal aspect in Kokotović's paintings represents its relativity; the painter passes through it and plays with it, enriching the viewer's imagination (History of the Future, Walking through Time, Time Portal). Moving freely through the universe, which as such is infinite, she purposefully locates certain destinations and periods that are relevant and significant to her as well as to the observers: the motifs of the Easter Island sculptures as well as the Mesoamerican cultures of the ancient Mayans and Incas (their Nasca lines above all) and prehistoric art (Bison on the cave wall). The thematic selection is paradigmatic, since those civilizations left an (impermanent) Seal on the origin and development of humanity. They are thus generated as a frame of reference for establishing a dialogue with our current, uniformed and technologically overdeveloped civilization. Dialogue and a comparative approach can open the possibility for a better understanding of how and what to do in order to improve the present and ensure a certain future (Mother Nature before technology). There is a turning point and, in addition to the artistic, aesthetic and craft value, ecological awareness, or care for the existence of our planet, is breaking through in the paintings; how our ancestors (mentioned civilizations) treated nature, that is, how we treat ourselves and what we leave to our descendants (descendants-ancestors). There is hope that by passing through the "time portal" of the author's work, we will become aware and turn to life with nature and not against it. The necessity of our environmental awareness lies in the fact that wars and the uncontrolled growth of technology could deprive us of the meaning of life and existence. There is hope that by passing through the "time portal" of the author's work, we will become aware and turn to life with nature and not against it. The necessity of our environmental awareness lies in the fact that wars and the uncontrolled growth of technology could deprive us of the meaning of life and existence. There is hope that by passing through the "time portal" of the author's work, we will become aware and turn to life with nature and not against it. The necessity of our environmental awareness lies in the fact that wars and the uncontrolled growth of technology could deprive us of the meaning of life and existence.

Aleksandra Kokotović's paintings are works of pronounced and sharpened abstraction, which ranges from geometrized, through associative to absolute, without the context of the real occasion disappearing from the picture. The author's abstraction represents a unique style that the artist came up with independently, in the continuous process of creating and individualizing her works. Authentic, without a direct role model and academic "stiffness", Kokotović approaches the creative act with the dedication and modesty of an ascetic, and with the openness and boldness of an adventurer. The unrestrained color, vibrant and occasionally pointillistically emphatic, indicates artistic freedom. Spots of color, condensed or spilled, construct a lapidary that forms the culmination of the entire impression. Lines, on the other hand, literally furrow the surface of the image, forming form-matter, tracing the direction of spreading visual attention and/or directing the movement of the conceptual essence of the work. A large number of paintings retain the integrity of the white color of the base, and harmonize it with other colors, whereby the light is continuously decomposed, scattered and finally breaks through the invisible veil that separates the painting from the surrounding space. Optimism and cheerfulness are thus embodied and retained. The author achieves all this by consistently sticking to the selected format for each of the techniques: unique for oil on canvas, unique for washed shower. However, with undiminished passion, he also creates with a combined technique, applying materials such as marble powder, sand, jute and asphalt. The lively texture that is achieved, semantically grows into a symbol. Specifically, the numerous canvases are divided into three horizontal scores; the central one flourishes with a variety of colors and the relief of the printed material, while the upper and lower ones follow it, treated in monochrome and without prominent relief. The central one is assigned the main role, to continue the flow between marginal scores that threaten to stop and assimilate it. The dualism between the center and the periphery is clearly manifested, in a pictorial way - spirit-matter, essence-immaterial, being-nothingness. The end result of composing lines, colored spots and light, as well as applied material, is liveliness, i.e. life-like persuasiveness of the visual representation (keeping in mind that artistic truth is as important as real life). Through the recipient's sense of sight, the suggestive vitality reaches the deepest layers of his soul. The author thus succeeds in intriguing the viewer's reflection by leading him to regions that are at first sight unattainable and imaginary, but actually only hitherto unseen fragments of the universe that exist and which the artist finds by bringing them forth from her heart. Those fragments are the worlds that the artist visited and made known to our eyes through emotional and rational means. The achieved opus leads to the conclusion that the author will persistently continue to find new worlds,