In his new work ID_75, Ivan Buvinić speculatively situates intimate memories within the city where he grew up. The works were created over the past year, during which the artist consciously confronted what is familiar, repressed, or alienated. He intuitively captures the space, guided by visual associations that prompt self-reflection. Rather than opting for a documentary approach, he uses the chosen locations as triggers for detecting traces of memory. The objects in the photographs become markers of personal micro-history and serve as motifs that symbolize events from fragmented memories.
ID_75 is the result of the process of mental reconstruction in which emotional visual reactions to familiar spaces are manifested. The artist engages in a deeply personal “excavation”, piecing together a collage of scarps, fragments, and traces. The work affirms uneasy memories, which then flow into urban nightly contemplation, subtly revealing personal and spatial transgressions.
The work is not a coherent whole, but is open to multiple interpretations, inviting viewers to explore possible meanings and recognize their own emotional reactions. We become aware of the location of past events, yet it retains a broken relationship with time, while the alienated objects in the photographs are haunted by a vague past.
The exhibition’s layout suggests several levels of interpretations. The side walls open up the view of the objects and spaces as flashes of personal memory, while the two central pieces are positioned outside the space of memory. The side walls summarize an archive of fragmented memories; an abstract hanging map materializes the cognitive space of research; and a disintegrated self-portrait captures the artist’s transformative experience of being immersed into the past.
Lea Vene
