Untitled by Nenad Burgić, 1989.

Nenad Burgić was born in Brus near Kopaonik, he finished high school in Kraljevo, and in 1975 he graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade and acquired the title of professional diplomat. As a cultural attaché, he stayed in Japan from 1979 to 1983 and on several occasions in China during the same period. This is where his lasting connection with the Far East began, which will influence his intellectual orientations: Burgić is one of the most important orientologists and sinologists from the former Yugoslavia. He discovered Japan like Roland Barthes: an ocean of other impressions and knowledge. Japanese friends passed on to him the knowledge of the famous tea ceremony, and in addition to ordinary meetings in Japan, he also had several friends among famous Japanese contemporary artists. Following the example of old Japanese workshops, he founded his own studio, which he called “Same”, and he chose an ideogram for him, which means the same in both Chinese and Japanese. The work was done with a shower on paper on which there are traces of strong deeds. Burgić realized all the works exactly like that: publicly or less publicly, but always gesturally intervening with a paper shower, introducing movement, body and bodily functions into the visual result. Most often, this act reveals the tendency to write a sign of a calligraphic nature. Burgić’s dramatic manipulation of the elements, the colour, the background that receives it and the bodily action initiates a play with the observer’s perception in terms of the visual and the meaningful.

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