Abstraction for Beginners – A Solo Exhibition by Milenko Prvacki
Private Preview: Saturday, Jun 17, 2023 (By Invitation Only)
Exhibition Opens to Public: Jun 19 – Jul 8, 2023
Artist Talk: Saturday, Jun 17, 2023 (2 – 3pm)
To RSVP, call us at (65) 6339 0678 or email us at enquiry@ipreciation.com
iPreciation is proud to present Abstraction for Beginners, a solo exhibition by Milenko Prvački (b. 1951, Singapore), featuring Milenko’s ongoing series that surveys his evocative visual vocabulary.
Abstraction for Beginners is an ongoing series since 2017 that traces Milenko’s development in abstraction, the paintings and unique prints on handmade Japanese papers will showcase Milenko’s continued expansion in his visual lexicon. The artist repeatedly alludes his integration into a new domain to learning a new language, twice – first when he studied in Romania without knowing how to speak Romanian, then coming to Singapore without any knowledge of English. Having learned many entries that have their origin and meanings, Milenko discovers that the alphabetical structure of a dictionary has not allowed any narrative or story to dominate the notation. A concept he absorbs, Milenko presents multifaceted works. A myriad of elements that may not necessarily complement each other are often randomly placed together, then leaving assorted interpretations to be derived from different perceived possible combinations.
As Milenko constructs or perhaps more aptly, reconstructs his memories and life events, fragments of past return as memorandums for the future, albeit the fluid nature of remembering means this act of retrieval will constantly change and never stay the same. Collectively, the anamorphic figures, mosaics of colours, alphabets, wild strokes and blobs of paint, and geometrical as well as deformed shapes, reject any bucketing or categorisation. As small details get littered and scattered on the plane, a wealth of information gets compressed and packaged into a bizarre configuration of things that seem confusingly readable and unreadable at the same time. The dynamic interaction between these elements hence invites creative associations from different angles, backgrounds and understandings. Such a bold composition of the ambiguous and indicative, challenges the notion of abstraction and highlights Milenko’s remarkable pursuit to expand the boundaries of abstraction.
About the Artist
Milenko Prvački was born in 1951 in the former Yugoslavia. He graduated with a Master’s degree in Fine Arts (Painting) from the Institutul de Arte Plastice “Nicolae Grigorescu”. Milenko moved to Singapore in 1991 and became a Singapore Citizen in 2002. Between 1998 and 2010, Milenko was the Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Singapore’s LASALLE College of the Arts. He currently holds the post of Senior Fellow at the institution since 2011. In 2005, he also founded Tropical Lab, a global programme for students from art institutions worldwide.
He has been invited to hold solo exhibitions in Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney Biennale, Beijing, Jakarta and more recently, Serbia in 2019. He was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2011, and Singapore’s Cultural Medallion for Visual Arts in 2012 by the National Arts Council for his contributions to Singapore’s visual arts scene. In early 2012, he also received the Silver Medallion for Knights in the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Embassy. In 2020 Milenko received the 22nd Sava Šumanović Fine Art Award, the Serbian national art award for Visual Arts.
Milenko’s art residencies include but are not limited to the Visiting Artist Programme at the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore (2019), 1st Tao Hua Tan International Artist Retreat and Painting Residence in China (2017), 18th Street Art Centre in Santa Monica, USA (2013, 2016 and 2017) and Keppel Centre for Education at the National Gallery Singapore (2015). His works are permanently collected by museums and institutions worldwide, including the National Museum, (Belgrade, Serbia), Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade, Serbia), Museum of Contemporary Drawing (Nurnberg, Germany), Museum of World Portraits (Tuzla, Bosnia & Herzegovina), Museum of Contemporary Art, (Novi Sad, Serbia), National Museum (Pancevo, Serbia), Obalne Gallery Collection (Piran, Slovenia), Singapore Art Museum (Singapore), National Gallery Singapore, Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia), and ICAS, LASALLE College of the Art Collection (Singapore).
