Jelena Đurić, was born on Septembre 7th 1978 in Niš.
Graduated from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad and
finished Master degree in the class of professor Milan Blanuša.
Participated in many exhibitions in Serbia and abroad.
Received several Art awards.
Many of her artworks are in the private collections,
in the collection of the Gallery Matica srpska, Philip Morris Foundation…
Lives and works in Novi Sad.
Member of ULUV and ULUS.


INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS

2021 Kvart Belgrade Waterfront, Gallery “Štab”, Belgrade
2021 Gallery “Beograd”, Belgrade
2020 “U dijalogu sa Mikom Antićem”, Days of Antić, Cultural center, Novi Sad
2017 Gallery Cultural Center ” Mali likovni salon “, Novi Sad
2016 Gallery ” Fabrika “, KCNS, Novi Sad
2016 Gallery ” Progres “, Beograd
2015 Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cultural Center Pancevo
2014 Gallery ” BEOGRAD ” , Belgrade
2013 Gallery of ULUV, Novi Sad
2012 Gallery   ” Vaedro Arte ”, Madrid
2009 City Gallery ” The bridges of the Balkans ”, Kragujevac
2008 National Gallery , Belgrade
2006 Gallery of ULUV ( Fine Artists Association of Vojvodina ), Novi Sad
Gallery of The National Bank of Srbia, Belgrade
2005 Gallery ” Art Klinika ”, Novi Sad
2002 Gallery ” Pavilion ”, Nis
2002 Gallery of ” The endowment of Ilija M. Kolarac ” Gallery SKC, Belgrade

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2023 Facultad de Bellas Artes, Madrid
2023 Festival “Labina” , City Library, Labin, Croatia
2022 ”Great woman of Serbian culture”, gallery “Štab”, The house of Jevrem Grujić, Belgrade, Serbia
2022   ” Reading blue ”, Student Cultural Center “Fabrika”, Novi Sad, Serbia
2021 Gallery DLUL, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2020 Global Art Festival, Bruxelles, London, UK
2019 Art Symposium “EU Art Network”,  ”Ich bin nicht, was ich bin…”, Culture station “Svilara”, Novi Sad,  Serbia
2019 Art Symposium “EU Art Network”, “Ich bin nicht, was ich bin…”, Oslip, Austria
2019 International Art Fair, Budapest, Hungary
2019 Gallery Big, “Rock-Paper-Scissors”, Dortmund, Germany
2018 Museum of Contemporary Art, Novi Sad, “Drawn (over)
Contemporary drawing from LeRoy Neiman till today”
2018 Gallery Hollabrunn Austria, “Shere-Stein-Paper”
2017 International Art Festival ” Ode to Life “, Montenegro, Podgorica
2016 Gallery MATICA SRPSKA, Novi Sad
2016 Gallery BEOGRAD, Belgrade
2014 Niš Art Foundation, Belgrade, Niš
2013 Live painting, performance, ” Blue Balls Festival ”, Lucerne
2013 New Serbian Abstraction , RTS Gallery, Belgrade
2013 New Serbian Abstraction, Cultural center , Paris
2012 Associazione Culturale Atelier, Novi Sad a Roma
2011 Gallery MC – Manhattan
2009 Contemporary Art in Serbia after 2000, Cultural centre, Paris
2009 Sallon des Nouvelles Realites, Paris
2008 Contemporary Art in Serbia after 2000, Nis, Belgrade, Novi Sad
2008 Art in Vojvodina today, author historical artist Sava Stepanov,
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Novi sad, Vrsac, Subotica, Sremska Mitrovica
2008 Project ” Kaleidoscope ” happening Madrid -Novi Sad ”1989 km”, Novi Sad
2007 II Bienale ” In the light Milena ”, Pozarevac
2006 35 th Salon of Novi Sad, Gallery of ”Vojvodjanska Banka”, Novi Sad, Serbia
2006 Philip Morris Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia
2006 Gallery of Contemporary Art Serbia, Nis

AWARDS

2007 ” Youth palette ” Award, Vrbas, Serbia

2006 2nd Purchase prize , Nis Art Foundation, Nis, Serbia

2003-2004 National Talent Fellowship, Republic of Serbia

PUBLICATIONS

Womenn’s Museum, Female artists in museums,
Theoretical discourse of contemporary female culture, Jelena Ognjanović



Statements / Reviews

Artist’s Statement (English and Serbian), Art Review (Sava Stepanov)

About my painting

/Jelena Đurić/


My creativity comes from an inner motive, from the need to know my own nature, but also the nature of the image as itself. This is the principle of innermost necessity, about which Kandinsky was talking.

As an initial impulse, I always use a specific obsessive event. These are my internal spaces in which there is currently no place for a figure, as well as for something that is on the surface and for something that is an illusion, an external manifestation. It is only present what the figure releases or the place that remains behind it. This gesture is sometimes an expression of distress or pleasure, a reflection of mental, spiritual power or weakness. The text that appears in the context of an image in the form of incomprehensible assemblage of letters represents the remnants of communication, or a new, inarticulate language. The writing loses its primary purpose and becomes nothing more than a drawing.

As I come from the Balkans, well-known as a Gate where the cultures of the East and the West meet, at some point in my maturation, my life circumstances, my travels, my acquaintance with various cultural heritage, I was directed toward a different understanding of the image and its meaning. This initiated me to begin searching for the invisible essence of my own being. I treat my image as a living organism. The content of this painting is defined by the elements of art (through an expressive and experimental approach) where I try to achieve the autonomy of the action. The image pulses through the vibrations of lines, the color effect, the living structure of matter and the surface.

My works are not static reservoirs of memory, thinking, dreaming, but they represent a situation in which color or drawing can become “their own” for a moment, without any rationalization.

Such a process of creation I often like to compare with the beauty and perfection of the children’s abilities to look at the world openly, without any rational retention. This is the moment when in the process of creating I become separated from the initial impulse and consciously I allow myself to open up and to indulge in the experience.

It is my intuitive search in which the notion of creativity is not some static quality, but the potential that must be developed at all levels of being. My inner need for work is my being. That is an area where nobody can take away from me any right to anything, the place of my dreams, through which I better see the reality in which I live.

Trying not to be just an ordinary witness of current life and artistic events, with my art I am trying to participate in creating my own social and cultural environment.  That’s my reaction. Reaction as defense. Reaction as a need. As an obligation. Reaction to the destruction of the created, to the re-establishment of the already rejected.

Reaction to reaction.

O mom slikarstvu

Moje stvaralastvo nastaje iz unutrasnjih pobuda, iz potrebe da se spozna vlastita priroda, ali i priroda same slike. To je princip unutrasnje nuznosti, o kojem je govorio Kandinski. 

Kao početni impuls uvek koristim specifičan opsesivni događaj. To su moji unutrašnji prostori u kojima trenutno nema mesta za figuru, za ono što je na površini, za ono što je privid, spoljašnja manifestacija. Prisutno je ono što figura oslobađa ili mesto koje ostaje za njom.

Taj gest je ponekad izraz teskobe ili zadovoljstva, odraz mentalne , duhovne snage ili slabosti .

Tekst koji se u kontekstu slike pojavljuje u vidu nerazumljivih skupova slova predstavlja ostatke komunikacije, ili neki novi, nemušti jezik, pismo gubi svoju primarnu svrhu i postaje ništa drugo do crtež.

Kako dolazim sa prostora –Balkana-kapije gde se susrecu kulture Istoka i Zapada, u nekom trenutku mog sazrevanja, zivotne okolnosti, putovanja, upoznavanja sa raznim kulturoloskim nasledjima, zatrazila su od mene drugacije shvatanje slike i njenog smisla. To je iniciralo da zapocnem traganje za nevidljivom nutrinom i sustinom vlastitog bica. Svoju sliku tretiram kao zivi organizam. Tkivo te slike je definisano likovnim elementima( kroz ekspresivni  i eksperimentalni pristup u samom procesu rada) gde pokusavam da ostvarim autonomnost dejstva. Slika pulsira strujanjem linija, dejstvom boje, zivom strukturom materije i povrsine.

Moji radovi nisu statični rezervoari sećanja, razmišljanja, sanjarenja, već predstavljaju situaciju u kojoj boja ili crtež mogu za trenutak postati ” svoji”, bez ikakve racionalizacije.

Takav proces stvaranja često volim da uporedim sa lepotom i savršenstvom sposobnosti dece da na svet gledaju otvoreno, bez ikakve raconalne zadrške. To je momenat kada se u procesu rada odvajam od pocetnog impulsa i svesno dozvoljavam sebi da se otvorim in prepustim dozivljaju.

To je moje intuitivno traganje u kojem pojam kreativnosti nije neki statički kvalitet već potencija koja se na svim nivoima bića mora razvijati.

Moja unutrašnja potreba za radom je i moje bivstvovanje, to je prostor gde mi niko ne može oduzeti pravo na bilo šta, mesto mojih sanjarenja, kroz koja ja bolje sagledavam stvarnost u kojoj živim.

Trudeći se da ne budem samo običan svedok aktuelnih životnih i umetničkih zbivanja, nastojim da svojom umetnošću učestvujem u kreiranju vlastitog socijalnog i kulturnog okruženja, da pronadjem osecanje izgubljenog i nadjenog vremena.

To je moja reakcija. Reakcija kao odbrana. Reakcija kao potreba. Kao obaveza. Reakcija na unistavanje ostvarenog, na ponovo uspostavljanje vec odbacenog. 

Reakcija na reakciju.

A Brief Note on the Painting of Jelena Đurić

/Sava Stepanov/

Painter Jelena Đurić emerged on our art scene during the first half of the new century, after completing her undergraduate studies (2001) and her master’s degree (2005) in the painting department under Professor Milan Blanuša, at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. In Serbian society, this was a time of permanent crisis caused by the still unforgettable events of the fatal nineties and numerous transitional traumas that appeared after 2000. In such social circumstances, the young artist found an adequate painting response. Her early works are of a figurative nature, and the title of the series Greek Figure as a Modern Symbol, as enigmatic and provocative as it may be, precisely describes the artist’s concept and intentions. In Jelena Đurić’s (then Stojković) paintings, antique figures dominate and the artist places them in everyday situations. With these unexpected scenes, the young painter philosophizes about the position of modern man, “homo informaticus,” often mute (like an antique statue) witnesses to global events who sometimes try to isolate themselves from contemporary society that burdens them with numerous woes. Because today’s developed capitalism and global communication system neglect the wholeness of man, his integrity, and needs – insisting only on his timely and efficient execution of work functions. Therefore, Jelena, with a sure expressive gesture and strong color palette, painted paradoxical scenes in which antique figures are often part of the urban milieu, placed against a wall painted with graffiti, faced in a boksing ring, submerged in a pool, “lost” on a shelf with tools,… With her first comprehensive cycle, Jelena Đurić showed the ability to express a critical and engaged stance (figure, scene), permeated with an effective synthesis of reason (line, drawing) and sensibility (color, palette).

At one point, life circumstances “demanded” a different understanding of the image and its meaning from the young painter. This initiated a significant change: dealing with personal sensibility, Jelena Đurić leaves the external and visible reality presented by figurative painting and begins to search for the invisible inner core and essence of her own being. Diving into the abstract painting, she insists on reaching essential pictoriality. Following the pattern of her own personal nature, Jelena Đurić establishes and treats the painting as a living organism. The tissue of this painting is defined by pictorial elements with which the artist achieves action autonomy, and the painting pulsates with the flow of lines, the action of color, the live structure of matter, and surface… All this results in a complex painting in which the most delicate thoughts and feelings are expressed with authentic pictorial elements and means. In the period 2008-2010, in Jelena’s art workshop, a cycle titled “Reaction” was created. This title indeed reveals the artist’s motives. Adhering to the stance “that reaction is defense, necessity, and obligation,” as she published on her website, the artist “defended” herself from all personal worries, troubles, and obsessions. This is indicated by the fact that in these, we would say confessional paintings, color is spread across the entire canvas, from edge to edge, so that with its monochromatic surface (black, red) it forms a pictogram-like appearance of a heart. Here, the role of drawing is extremely important: in these paintings, lines flow in parallel intervals, resembling an electrocardiogram. These linear records diagnose the state and degree of the artist’s excitement, indicate the rhythm of pulsation, and highlight a unique pictorial vitalism (Heart Core, 2008/09), whose metaphorical effect is applicable in everyday social relations and behavior. In a figurative sense, Jelena’s paintings from the “Reaction” cycle diagnose the state of a society in crisis, a society that, in the Solzhenitsyn sense, needs healing.

During the gradual creative maturation, artist Jelena Đurić, in the period after 2010, insisted on the plastic-pictorial solidity and compactness of the painting. She creates her abstract painting, now quite obvious, by the principle of “inner necessity” about which the great Wassily Kandinsky once wrote. This principle is based on the primal need to achieve an authentic discourse of color and other pictorial elements which, synthesized in the painting, lead the observer to inner spiritual values. In a slow process of subtle and discreet changes, the painter gradually calms the exaggerated expressive outbursts and gestures, opting for pure, genuinely experienced and contemplated pictorial situations. The plastic unity of the painting is formed by sedimenting delicate layers, a multitude of linear strokes, and other operational procedures, all the way to achieving the desired intensity of color, the appropriate tone, value, shade… Such a painting pulsates with an interesting linear structure in which the true peculiarity are the artist’s handwritten (in)decipherable inscriptions and drawings. They are difficult to decipher, here they act like fragments of documentary, diary, confessional, poetic statements, and some kind of mysterious testimonies. In the structure of the painting, all these lines of various appearances, characters, and intensities have an important function of reinforcement that supports and strengthens the entire painting, making it coherent. All this makes Jelena Đurić’s painting achievements complex, layered, dense, rich, and very sensitive pictorial creations.

In the third cycle of Jelena Đurić’s paintings titled “Dreamers,” emotion is the dominant basis of the entire communication series artist-work-observer. Everything is based on color and its delicacies. Although in this painting, each colored layer represents a separate piece of information about the artist’s sensibility, although it is a painting all in trembling, which imposes the impression of wonderful fluidity, although her painting is dominated by the impression of elegance and some kind of festive beauty – this painter is not at all sentimental before sublime aesthetic phenomena, but sovereignly maintains the spiritual power and meaning of color as the basic means of her pictorial action and expression. Jelena Đurić’s painting is authentically defined because it is formed by the synthesis of sensitized linear veining, colored bloodstream, pulsation of matter, irreducibility of the pictorial surface. Such a painting reaches the status of a “self-referential structure of autonomous plastic elements” (S. Mijušković). By building an autonomous world of painting and establishing autochthonous plastic harmony, the painter resists the disturbing disharmony of the social environment and existential reality, remaining dignified in all that environment of crisis everyday life.

What is the meaning of Jelena Đurić’s painting/paintings in the actualities of the world and art? Due to the dominance of computer technology and the character of developed capitalism that completely occupies contemporary man and neutralizes his emotions, the character of the painting has changed, encompassed by advanced electronic technology, rapidly transforming towards informational-communicational areas, towards sociological and other scientific examinations and research… Painting has lost its position as the leading visual language in art. Fortunately, authoritative art achievements still possess the strength and power to present us with a relevant projection of reality and to lift us above the level of practicality and utilitarian functions. These paintings, amid daily manifestations of epochal crisis, present us with seductive ideas of harmony, beauty, and contemplation. And it is precisely these ideas that have been so supremely achieved in the paintings of Jelena Đurić.

January 2016. Sava Stepanov

Mali zapis o slikarstvu Jelene Đurić

/Sava Stepanov/


Slikarka Jelena Đurić se na našoj likovnoj sceni pojavljuje tokom prve polovine (n)ovog veka, nakon završetka osnovnih studija (2001) i položene magistrature (2005) na odseku za slikarstvo kod profesora Milana Blanuše, na Akademiji umetnosti u Novom Sadu. U srpskom društvu to je vreme permanentne krize uzrokovane još nezaboravljenim događajima iz fatalnih devedesetih te brojnim tranzicijskim traumama koje su se javile nakon 2000-te. Takvim socijalnim prilikama mlada umetnica iznalazi adekvatan slikarski odgovor. Njeni rani radovi su figuracijskog karaktera a naslov ciklusa Grčka figura kao moderan simbol, ma koliko zagonetan i provokativan, precizno opisuje umetničin koncept i namere. Na slikama Jelene Đurić (tada Stojković) dominiraju antičke figure koje umetnica postavlja u svakodnevne situacije. Tim neočekivanim prizorima mlada slikarka filozofira položaj čoveka našeg vremena, „homo informaticusa“, najčešće nemog (poput antičkog kipa) svedoka globalnih događanja koji ponekad nastoji da se izoluje iz savremenog društva koje ga opterećuje brojnim tegobama. Jer, današnji razvijeni kapitalizam i globalni komunikacijski sistem zanemaruju celovitost čoveka, njegov integritet i potrebe – instistirajući jedino na njegovom pravovremenom i efikasnom izvršenju radnih funkcija. Zbog toga je Jelena, sigurnim ekspresivnim gestom i snažnim koloritom slikala paradoksalne prizore u kojima su antičke figure najčešće deo urbanog miljea, (p)ostavljene uz zid islikan grafitima, sučeljene na boskerskom ringu, zaronjene u bazen, „zagubljene“ na polici s alatom,… Tim svojim prvim celovitim ciklusom Jelena Đurić je pokazala sposobnost da slikom iskaže kritički i angažovani stav (figura, prizor), prožet delotvornom sintezom razuma (linija, crtež) i osećajnosti (boja, kolorit).

U jednom trenutku, životne okolnosti su od mlade slikarke „zatražile“ drugačije shvatanje slike i njenog smisla. To je iniciralo bitnu promenu: baveći se personalnom osećajnošću Jelena Đurić napušta spoljašnju i vidljivu stvarnost prezentovanu figuracijskom slikom, i počinje da traga za nevidljivom nutrinom i suštinom vlastitog bića. Zaranjajući u slikarstvo apstrakcije ona, istoivremeno, insistira na dosezanju suštinske pikturalnosti. Po obrascu sopstvene personalne prirode, Jelena Đurić sliku uspostavlja i tretira kao živi organizam. Tkivo te slike je definisano likovnim elementima kojima umetnica ostvaruje autnomnost dejstva, te slika puslira strujanjem linija, dejstvom boje, živom strukturom materije i površine… Sve to rezultira kompleksnom slikom u kojoj su autentičnim likovnim elementima i sredstvima izražene najtananije misli i osećanja. U periodu 2008-2010 u Jeleninoj umetničkoj radionici nastaje ciklus naslovljen „Reakcija“. Taj naslov odista razotkriva umetničine povode. Držeći se stava „da je reakcija odbrana, potreba i obaveza“, kako je to objavila na svom sajtu, umetnica se „branila“ od svih ličnih zabrinutosti, tegoba i opsesija. Na to ukazuje činjenica da je u tim, rekli bismo ispovednim slikama, boja rasprostrta preko celokupnog platna, od ivice do ivice, tako da svojom monohromijskom površinom (crna, crvena) formira piktogramski izgled srca. Ovde je izuzetno značajna i uloga crteža: ovim slikama, u paralelnim razmacima, protiču linije koje se doimaju poput polikovljenog kardiogramskog zapisa. Ti linearni zapisi dijagnosticiraju stanje i stepen umetničine uzbuđenosti, ukazuju na ritmiku pulsiranja te ističu svojevrsni pikturalni vitalizam (Heart Core, 2008/09), čije je metaforičko dejstvo primenjljivo i u svakodnevnim društvenim odnosima i ponašanju. U prenosnom smislu Jeleninim slikama iz ciklusa „Reakcija“ dijagnosticira se stanje društva u krizi, društva kojem je, u solženjiconovskom smislu, potrebno izlečenje.

Tokom postupnog stvaralačkog sazrevanja umetnica Jelena Đurić je, u periodu nakon 2010, insistirala na plastičko-pikturalnoj čvrstini i kompaktnost slike. Ona svoje apstrakcijsko slikarstvo, sada je to već sasvim očigledno, stvara po prinicpu „unutrašnje nužnosti“ o kojoj je svojevremeno pisao veliki Vasilij Kandinski. Taj princip je zasnovan na iskonskoj potrtebi da se ostvari autentični diskurs boje i drugih likovnih elemenata, koji sintenisani u slici posmatrača vode ka unutrašnjim duhovnim vrednostima. U laganom procesu sporih i diskretnih promena slikarka postupno smiruje prenaglašene ekspresivne izlive i gestove, opredeljujući se za čiste i istinski proživljene i promišljene likovne situacije. Plastičku celinu slike formira sedimentiranjem tananih nanosa, mnoštvom linearnih poteza i drugih operativnih postupaka, sve do ostvarenja željenog intenziteta boje, do odgovarajućeg tona, valera, nijanse… Takvom slikom pulsira interesantna linijska struktura u kojoj pravu osobenost predstavljaju umetničini rukopisni (ne)čitko ispisani i nacrtani zapisi. Njih je teško dešifrovati, oni ovde deluju poput fragmenata dokumentarističkih, dnevničkih, ispovednih, poetskih iskaza i nekakvih tajnovitih svedočanstava. U strukturi slike sve te linije najrazličitijeg izgleda, karaktera i intenziteta imaju važnu funkciju armature koja podupire i učvršćuje celokupnu sliku čineći je koherentnom. Sve to slikarska ostvarenja Jelene Đurić čini kompleksnim, slojevitim, gustim, bogatim i veoma senzibilnim pikturalnim tvorevinama.

U trećem ciklusu slika Jelene Đurić naslovljenom „Sanjari“, emocija je dominantna osnova celokupnog komunikacijskog niza umetnik-delo-posmatrač. Sve je zasnovano na boji i na njenim delikatnostima. Iako u ovom slikarstvu svaki bojeni sloj predstavlja zaseban podatak o umetničinoj osećajnosti, iako se radi o slici koja je sva u treperenju, koja nameće utisak čudesne fluidnosti, iako u njenoj slici dominira utisak elegancije i nekakve svečane lepote – ova slikarka nikako ne stoji raznežena pred uzvišenim estetskim fenomenima, nego suvereno drži do duhovne moći i smisla boje kao osnovnog sredstva svog pikturalnog delovanja i izražavanja. Slika Jelene Đurić je autentično definisana jer je formirana sintezom senzibilizirane linijske nervature, bojenog krvotoka, pulsacijom materije, nesvodljivošću pikturalne površine. Takva slika doseže status „samoreferencijalne strukture autonomnih plastičkih elemenata“ (S. Mijušković). Gradeći autonomni svet slike i ustanovljavajući autohtonu plastičku harmoniju, slikarka se opire uznemirujućoj disharmoniji socijalnog okruženja i egzistencijalne realnosti, ostaje dostojanstvena svom tom okružju krizne svakodnevice.

Kakav je smisao slike/slikarstva Jelene Đurić u aktuelnostima sveta i umetnosti?
Zbog dominacije kompjuterske tehnologije i karaktera razvijenog kapitalizma koji potpuno okupiraju savremenog čoveka i neutrališu njegove emocije, promenjen je karakter slike koja se, obuhvaćena uznapredovalom elektronskom tehnologijom, rapidno transformiše ka informativno-komunikacijskim područjima, ka sociološkim i drugim naučnim preispitivanjima i istraživanjima… Slikarstvo je izgubilo poziciju vodećeg vizuelnog jezika u umetnosti. Na sreću, autoritativna slikarska ostvarenja još uvek poseduju snagu i moć da nam predoče relevantnu projekciju stvarnosti te da nas uzdignu iznad ravni praktičnosti i utilitarnih funkcija. Te slike nam, usred svakodnevnih manifestacija epohalne krize, predočavaju zavodljive ideje sklada, harmonije, lepote i kontemplacije. A upravo te ideje su tako superiorno već ostvarene u slikarstvu Jelene Đurić.

Januar 2016.            Sava Stepanov