Serbian pop artist Vladislav Scepanovic gets limelight in Pohang

The Serbian Embassy in Seoul joined hands with the Pohang Museum of Steel Art (POMA) in the southeastern city of Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, to give a glimpse of lesser-known contemporary Serbian art to Korean audiences.

The exhibition, titled “A Painter’s Testimony,” introduces the works of Serbian artist Vladislav Scepanovic, known for his pop art-style paintings criticizing capitalism and global hegemony. This is the first solo exhibition here for Scepanovic, who represented Serbia at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, together with Milena Dragicevic and Dragan Zdravkovic.

During an interview with POMA curator Lim Eun-min, who organized the exhibition, Scepanovic said that watching the wars and

disintegration of the former Yugoslavia while studying at the Faculty of Fine Art in Cetinje (Montenegro) shaped his political attitudes toward representation in the mass media, the political dynamics of international relations and neoliberal capitalism.

“I watched the armies pass by, felt the energy of the fratricidal war, and saw the land of my childhood fall apart. Political processes, greed and international interest have replaced the places of certainty and harmony in which we lived. This encouraged me to start bearing witness to time through art in my honest way, trying to avoid the propaganda and lies that were all around us,” the artist said.

Aleksandar Dordevic, charge d’affaires ad interim at the Embassy of Serbia in Korea, said that the exhibition will contribute in particular to a better understanding of Serbian modern art and the country’s cultural heritage in Korea, as well as to strengthening people-to-people exchanges and overall bilateral relations between Serbia and Korea.

“Scepanovic’s art bears the distinct markers of being socially and politically engaged, questioning some of the features of modern society: the ruling political and economic structures, war and conflict, capitalism and consumerism, globalization and the alienation of individuals, the media’s control of society, propaganda and manipulation,” Dordevic said.

“In his works, Scepanovic deals with today’s world of simulation, which has the tendency to transform reality itself into an eternally controlled and manipulated spectacle. His paintings carry subversive messages aimed at deeply rooted so-called mainstream values, created by the dominant mass media. To this effect, he uses a strategy of propaganda versus propaganda, wherein he intervenes in contemporary elements like film, advertising, fashion, or any other industry that modern culture is made from, thereby contextualizing in that way (his) criticisms of the modern world’s simulacra.”

In the exhibition, there is a special section shedding light on the history of the southeastern European country, which has struggled for independence and freedom while being surrounded by larger powers. A series of engravings depict when Serbia became independent from the Ottoman Empire, which lasted for 400 years from the late 15th century.