NYAB Event - Aleksandar Popovic “Sight Unseen”

Aleksandar Popovic “Sight Unseen”

Kips Gallery

This event has ended.

Aleksandar Popovic’s paintings engage viewers to consider that which often goes unseen, despite being directly before our eyes. In order to see, we must look, and looking is an act of choice. The act of seeing establishes our place in the surrounding world, yet the relationship between what we see and what we know is never resolved. By placing both the figures viewing the sight, and the viewers of the figures and sight in an unexpected vantage point, the paintings invite us to question our perception from a different angle and be active participants in the space. From this non-linear perspective, the viewer is no longer at the center of the world, but rather placed in a position of considering a sight from different perspectives. We are able to both see the landscape and situate ourselves in it. From this sight, we can also be seen.

Opening new directions for figurative art, his paintings encourage continued interest in the figure and present new possibilities for the function of figures in painting. Figures inserted between the landscape and the viewer add an intimacy to the composition and allow the viewer to situate themselves in the scene as an observer. Anonymous figures, unclothed, with no political, social, or cultural ties, avoid the trap of some narrative figurative work, which sometimes forces the viewer to feel a part of a story that is not their own.

The birds-eye view further lends itself to the anonymity of the figures, yet allows the viewer to hover above the story in a way that is still very engaged. An aerial view alludes somewhat to a documentary lens. The compressed space is a map, a kind of living map, which shows a way of seeing, and a way of being in the world. The volume of the figures rendered in subtle gradations of vivid flesh tones, in contrast to the low-saturated flat color planes, create an intriguing sense of depth, further drawing the viewer into the scene.