Andrija Večenaj

The situations I went through were probably similar to those of other teachers in student education: inability to have direct contact and communication with students, insufficient demonstrations of art techniques, lack of methodical exercises in schools and kindergartens.

Fortunately, social distancing did not last long enough to permanently harm the teaching process.

The alternative teaching methods that emerged during the pandemic have created hybrid teaching models that seem to me to be better structured but also more motivating. In art production, I found myself surrounded by a scarcity of materials, so I set out to express myself in the materials I had available. These were cardboard packaging, paper pulp, styrofoam, construction plaster and old household brooms. The exhibited works are some of the products of the found materials.

Sorghum, Plaster 29 W x 58 H x 9 cm 2021​​​​​​​ Preplet 01, Kefa 03 and Kefa 04 are objects from the series in which the author questions the aesthetic values of styrofoam packaging for consumer electronics. Made of cheap extruded polystyrene foam, the packaging is reduced in form and construction to the most important ones; protection of the primary industrial product. Its lifespan is short, and its aesthetics are neglected due to its subordinate function and cheap consumables.

In this artwork, the author, pouring plaster into the packaging, creates its matrix – a copy of the mold from which the packaging itself is made. In this way, he turns the trivial form of packaging into a unique one, puts it in the foreground, in the exhibition space and rises above the primary industrial product he protected. In the revived archetypal mass he implants raw, organic, plant material – sorghum stalks.

Now full volumes and spatial lines permeate the space around them. They also grow and melt, melt, harden, penetrate, merge, connect and break.