CHASING RAINBOWS by artist Milan Antić

I don't like accompanying texts of exhibitions. They are always so boring. But I have never visited an exhibition without reading that accompanying text, if it existed. I always think that in them I will learn something "key" to understanding a particular setting. And it usually does.

Writing lyrics doesn't make me happy just as much. Milan is my husband, who may not know all this. And I'm an art historian and writing texts is my job. So, logically, he thought that I would write an "adequate" text about his works. Because I still know them best / live with them. And, ok, that's really true, but I don't want to introduce historical-artistic references, analysis, philosophical theories into them... So that part of the text was written by Nataša, because the two of us, normally at work, often write texts together. And I'll skip that part. And you can too. Or we can't.

The deconstructivism of Milan's works is reflected in the dismemberment of any excessive loyalty to previous, already established opinions and ideas. By teaching himself to see aspects of truth that may more often remain hidden on the opposite side, if not found, he opens up the possibility of re-creation. With this procedure, the author frees himself the space for new conclusions and the ground for the development of new ideas.

From ancient gods and young men from Swiss boarding schools with ideal facial features, it is a long and unexpected path to unidentified forms that resemble tissue under a microscope magnified to the level of molecules, in all its tones. It is not simplified, although the deconstruction of a work of art can reduce it to a point and set it up again. The drama of the situation is in the problematic transformation of a little popular. It is a disturbing observation or assumption that almost all of our well-founded strong opinions, clear attitudes, certainties and determinations in their persistence are wrong and unjustified, and unnecessary. They limit, constrict and stifle the elasticity of the mind to confront and challenge its own dogmas. My friend Milan Antić once again questions the traditional hierarchy, established a long time ago, of privileged figuration over the abstract in art. This "axiom" survives in the consciousness and today in the taste of a wider audience. Is it created more intelligently if both sides, both currents, oppose each other, because both are necessary in order for the work of art to materialize? Milan's attack on tradition is not an act of a "rebel without a cause", rather it is a response to what is perceived in the environment, thus addressing certain phenomena as the backbone of contemporary social discourse.

Physicality first of all obsesses everyday life. Antić reduces it and breaks it down to the molecular state, we become a collection of particles, we are reduced to forms that resemble spilled oil in the sea in the colors of the rainbow, ice cream and frappe. In the set of works created in recent years, we are confronted with the metamorphosis of our own body, as a mass which, with numerous elements, individually exposed, becomes tranquility, peace, zen, Sumatranism of the image. The calmness of accepting one's own body as a beautiful connected set, exposed before the eyes of the observer, opposes that unpleasant state present in everyday life. In the paintings of Milan Antic, our own nudity and dismemberment seem pleasant, comfortable, warm, maybe even delicious, if they bite. With this, the author confronts the imperative of the new perfect that we consume every minute on social networks and public space. Spots and spots, flat surfaces, capillaries, veins, lymphatic flows, body and face in eternal deconstruction still bring satisfaction. This new figuration of his is a logical puzzle and it is self-defeating and easy to refute, and there are two sides in an eternal conflict. The results of this gymnastics can only bring a positive solution, because Milan's logical disjunctions, beautiful pictures on the wall that I would like to eat, free us from prejudice and hypocrisy, and corrections should be a matter of the beauty of the being, not the body.

Often at exhibitions I try to read the accompanying text and leave it after two sentences. I wouldn't want to be suggested the meaning of what was exposed. I guess that's why I'm writing this text, I reckon, no one will even read it.

Tia Antić and Nataša Janković