On Thursday, August 27, at 8 pm in the BW Experience space, located at Hercegovačka 14 street, the art initiative Kvart Belgrade Waterfront and Gallery ŠTAB, with the exhibition "Svetlovidi" by Joškin Šiljan, will continue this year's exhibition season.

At Šiljan's new exhibition, the Belgrade audience will have the amazing opportunity to see the paintings, works on paper and objects, created from 2000 until today. The selected works, most of which have not been exhibited so far, show us the strength and vision that move Šiljana out of the imposed framework of naive and marginal art, placing him side by side with some of the greatest artists in the contemporary underground and contemporary art scene. Musical support at the opening will be DJ Funky Mechanic.

The exhibition will be open to visitors until September 20, 2020. The working hours of the gallery are every day from 6 pm to 10 pm.

"One thing that must be clarified from the very beginning is that Yoshkin Shiljan is not a savant. His painting far surpasses the plateau usually reached by a self-taught or naive artist. Siljan's independence from academic education does not mean that he is "primitive"; on the contrary, he is well acquainted with the language of European art brut, modernist and contemporary art, and Eastern art and philosophy. Šiljan's work is the result of two formative influences: the historical circumstances of the 1990s that introduced him to the path of expressive expression., and the philosophical teachings of the Indian philosopher Jido Krishnamurti, Zen Buddhism and Theosophy, which formed his artistic ethos. Through a Zen Buddhist koan - a paradoxical puzzle without a solution aimed at separating the mind from logical reasoning - Šiljan creates his visual language by combining automatic drawing and linguistic phrases, stories and sayings without obvious meaning, creating absurd artistic states filled with concise dis-context...” (From the text written by Alexandra Lazar, an art historian)

Yoshkin Shiljan belongs to the generation of artists who were formed on the domestic art scene in the 1990s. He is a civil engineer by vocation and an artist by birth. He has been actively involved in painting since 1987 and has been officially exhibiting since 1994. He was born in 1953 in Pirot. He lives and works in Grdelica. He is the winner of a large number of awards and recognitions and is one of the most famous and most active authors on our art scene. He has exhibited in all important gallery spaces in Serbia and the region, and his exhibition in world-famous museums and galleries makes him one of the most important internationally recognized contemporary artists from this area.

Artist's Biography

Yoshkin Shiljan belongs to the generation of artists who were formed on the domestic art scene in the 1990s. He is a civil engineer by vocation and an artist by birth. He has been actively involved in painting since 1987 and has been officially exhibiting since 1994. He was born in 1953 in Pirot. He lives and works in Grdelica. He is the winner of a large number of awards and recognitions and is one of the most famous and most active authors on our art scene. He has exhibited in all important gallery spaces in Serbia and the region, and his exhibition in world-famous museums and galleries makes him one of the most important internationally recognized contemporary artists from this area.

He is a participant in a large number of solo and group exhibitions, art colonies and residential programs in the country and abroad. His works are in significant museum and private collections.

He has won several significant awards, including Golden Palette - award for painting at the spring exhibition of ULUS (2006), Grand Prize of the 14th Biennial of Naive and Marginal Art (2009), Main Award for Painting on Paper OSTEN (2016), Golden OSTEN for drawing (2018), etc.