From here, the future comes into view

Ljiljana Karadžić

Željka Jovićević’s work, Frictions #17, investigates the notion of friction as it manifests through the tension arising from the interplay of the material, perceptual, and semantic layers of the artwork. The piece is composed of two segments: a visual component consisting of five large hardboard panels in the form of a capsule, and an accompanying text. On these panels, the artist combines a range of procedures, including charcoal drawing, paper collage, the successive application and removal of layers, processes of abrasion, perforation, and the revealing of the underlying surface. Its dynamism arises from the subtle interplay of surfaces of differing density, transparency, and tactility, whose interactions create delicate disturbances within the visual field. Here, the concept of friction functions as the fundamental operative principle: it produces optical fluctuations, generates visual noise and fissures, disrupts spatial regularity, and opens a tension between the static support and the perceptual mobility of the image, as well as between expected visual codes and their deliberate subversion. At the same time, the textual segment on transparent plexiglass functions as a discursive counterpart to visual stratification: a fragmentary montage of quotations from literary, scientific, and technical sources employs an illuminative mode of citation based on defamiliarization, contrast, and metonymic reconfiguration. In doing so, it intensifies the collision between the “personal” and the “quoted,” producing a semantic friction that resists passive reading and destabilizes cultural hierarchies. The work thus establishes itself as a field of continuous fluctuations, in which material, visual, and semantic layers negotiate the boundaries of perception and communication. In this process, friction becomes both method and metaphor: a force of resistance, interference, and interruption that generates new meanings, opens a space for reflective reading, and refracts contemporary noise into a layered, dense, yet active aesthetic form.

Translated by Dragica Žugić

Excerpt published in catalog:

Ad Iuventas. Exhibition of Young Montenegrin Visual Artists, The Gallery of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Art, Podgorica: CANU, 2025, p. 13.

Waves, Emergences

Željka Jovićević

From French émergence, from emerger, from Latin emergere “rise up.” Meaning “an emerging, process of coming forth”

Etymonline

Rippling small, rippling grey, innumerable waves spread beneath us. I touch nothing. I see nothing. We may sink and settle on the waves. The sea will drum in my ears […] Rolling me over the waves will shoulder me under. Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me

Virginia Woolf

Through the interaction of thick coats of enamel paint, grainy traces of spray, and printed photographic patterns in the Emergences series, I tried to create the impression of a vibrating surface. Such interplay of different planes does not have the sole purpose of making the picture dynamic or creating the illusion of movement; its function is also to activate the materiality of the layers and intensify their inherent properties. By merging photographs of folded fabrics and aluminum foil with sprayed coats, I tried to make optical flickering and overlapping occur. Printed patterns rise above the coats of paint and vice versa: one surface emerges above the other. This optical impression imposed the concept of emergence as a metaphor that includes several meanings: unfolding, protrusion, coming up, surfacing, disclosure, arising, etc. It simultaneously refers to the interaction of pictorial elements and the creative process. The process dynamics, based on painting as a material act in which each layer causes the next, induces the slow emergence and crystallization of the image. All this is similar to how outlines and surfaces gradually appear after the immersion of the photograph in a chemical solution. Rather than depicting a specific motif or content, the picture, both as a physical and optical object, reveals the process of its emergence through rhythmic structure, materiality, and intensity.

Seriality also contributes to the overall impression of vibrancy and movement. Works composed of several individual units form rhythmic rows of similar structural or coloristic variations with minimal differences in each sub-unit. This repetitiveness makes it impossible to view serial works as successive events or narrative flows with their beginning, middle, and end. Since the perception is fragmented and there is no impression of a single pictorial surface, our gaze stops at each sub-unit and faces again the similar and yet different structure. It emphasizes the temporal and experiential dimensions of the work.

The repetitive rhythm has been retained and further developed in a new series of paintings, still in progress, titled Waves – Rhuthmós. Unlike Emergences, the Waves series consists of a fluid, repetitive internal structure that contrasts with the outer edges of the picture. Interspersed sinuous lines circumscribe the sporadically applied patterns and soften the clear-cut geometry of the picture shape. The conceptual background for these works lies in the etymology of the term rhythm, which means flux or flow. According to an author, humans originally discovered the idea of rhythm in the movement of waves, and this discovery is inscribed in the term itself. The terms wave and rhythm are not only associated with flux, stream, repetition, and movement – motions functioning in time and space and having measurable oscillations. The wave (rhythm) also has the power to overwhelm and dissolve us. Through their linear and chromatic movements, these Waves want to draw the viewer into rhythmic intensity and allow him/her to dissolve into their rippling atmosphere.

Translated by Željka Jovićević

Text published in catalog:

Željka Jovićević: Waves, Emergences, Vitomir Srbljanović Gallery, Pljevlja: Art Gallery Vitomir Srbljanović, 2023, unpaginated.