To meet the unusual, noneveryday, challenging and – at first sight – nonconforming, often mystical and indescribable influences which are exerted over existence, is an experience that incites one towards transformation and deepening.
An international group comprised of seven artists, including two blind persons, has surrendered to the unpredictability of free experimental expression. Through devoted and meditative dwelling in the natural ambient, their individual sensory and extra-sensory experiences surfaced and got translated into a dimension of shared reality. This exhibition represents a series of works inspired by the world of visually impaired persons, focusing on the processes of exploration, getting familiar, learning and creating through a deeper inner approach.
Authors: Danijel Šivinjski, Christopher Paul Gill, Andrea Petrović, Slavoljub Epifanić, Andrea Krunić, Šejla Mujdanović and Ágnes Györe.
Gallery Rigo
6 / 7 — 29 / 7 / 2016
Opening at 21h
When I close my eyes, the inner world comes closer, while the outer world starts speaking another language. Regardless the fact that visual stimulus is absent, the visual experience is being created though a synergic dance of various impulses meeting on the same vibrational field.
blind fields is a series of nature expeditions confirming that a human possesses much more than five traditionally acknowledged senses. For several years I have been researching this issue through nonreligious spiritual practice and experimental artistic creation. This year alone I have visited the following locations: Fruška Gora, Dobogókő, Stara Planina, Novigrad and Plitvice Lakes.
With the aim of exploring the new manners of expression within the different states of being, in this case one deprived of visual stimuli, I have dwelled in nature with my eyes blindfolded, devoted primarily to my own meditativeness and openness to the deeper signals of Mother Nature’s currents. The impulses have been mainly registered through the inner visualizations resembling virtual reality. Consciousness delegated a form, colours and position to almost each of the impulses, while a root of their experiencing often laid within inexplicable feelings. The curiosity to find and affirm the links between the subjective inner visions and the physical reality of surrounding was incessant. For that reason I have occasionally asked my assistants whether what I experience is clearly visible from their perspectives as well. As opposed to a deformed sense of time, the orientation in space was distinctively more precise. Surely the greatest challenge was to find creative ways to take what I “see“ while blindfolded and translate it from the experiential spiritual dimension, eventually recording it through visual media – photography, video and drawing. In this process the artistic creation approximates the extremes of experiment and unpredictability, while a result represents an attempt to channel the flux of energy through an artist, who is serving as an earthly prism, into an artwork. Concerning the drawing, I found especially interesting the spontaneous discovery of a new style inspired by topographic maps, which can be described as the mapping of energies which I felt at given locations. In a course of the work the substantial focus was at silence, which enabled me to access a significantly larger extra-sensory capacity. Other things I deem as worthy were devotion to the purest moment of “here–and–now“ presence and placing confidence in my assistants, thanks to whom I was able to entirely surrender to myself, nature and, in some spots, could move around independently, without help. —Danijel Šivinjski, project author