Nikola Bozovic
Nikola Bozovic Transforms Car Parts Into Phantasms at Belgrade Design Week
Nikola Bozovic presented his work at Belgrade Design Week
Designboom web portal, Italy, 17.10.2014.
By Nina Azzarello
The exhibition ‘Phantasm on wheels’ by Nikola Kolja Bozovic presents the results of the Serbian artist’s own research into various aspects of the car as both a physical vessel, and a carrier of cultural and social significance. On the occasion of Belgrade Design Week 2014, Bozovic has displayed a series of manipulated machinery sourced from automobile segments, acting as a metaphor for fetish, fantasy, obsession and status.
In addition to sculptural objects created through the transformation of disused vehicular parts, Bozovic’s spatial installation for the gallery space of the BDW Dizajnpark exhibitions within the old Staklopan factory suspends the viewer in a fictional world of personal phantasm, seemingly with phallic undertones. Designboom spoke with the artist about the metaphorical context latent within automobiles, in what ways he sources these unconventionally artistic, yet ubiquitous materials, and his own notions regarding the bridge between art and design.
For Bozovic, a car is not just a machine — it represents capitalism, consumerism, creativity and cultural obsession. The gallery space becomes a field for reinterpreted shapes, reconstructed from the built creations that make up our environment. with these irregular-formed geometries and ‘exploded’ segments of cars, the artist consciously changes the established direction and connotations of the physical world around us.
The artist begins his work with the disassembly and reconstruction of distinguished vehicle parts from various manufacturers, which than are physically transformed by replacing their social role with an aesthetic one. Bozovic’s intention is to personify the parts, giving them human features: headlights look like eyes, a cooler resembles a mouth, a carburetor could be internal organs, fuel is blood and the body is like a skeleton. The emerging transfiguration of objects symbolize the present situation and rituals derived from societal relationships; in turn, he implies that fetishes, fashion trends and collections of art — for example — can of often become a replacement for the physical and emotional relationships sustained between people.
Bozovic’s distinct union of pop art and automotive fetish is reflected in the materials used: the surface of the sculptures is made of sheet metal, putty and plastics, is painted using colored car lacquer, and finally mirror-polished. After the physical transformation of structure and shape, each object becomes a composition in itself. The artist uses fiats and other various four-wheelers as the starting point for generating a surreal interpretation of an object used in everyday life. the installation was curated by Misela Blanusa.
About Belgrade Design Week:
2014 marks the ninth edition of Belgrade Design Week, an annual, internationally-renowned festival for creative industries and modern business in serbia and throughout the South-east European area. Since 2005, founder Jovan Jelovac has successfully forged multicultural connections between artists, designers and entrepreneurs from the region with the greater global design scene. The initiative serves as a platform for creatives to engage in the exchange of ideas across a range of disciplines — advertising, architecture, arts management, communications, design, fashion, marketing, new media and publishing — delivering approximately 30 international speakers who share their perspectives and personal developments in their respective fields.
This year’s conference program ‘Brand New World’ sets opens up discussion regarding the creation of new values in today’s fast changing world. On the occasion of this edition, President of the Republic of Serbia, Tomislav Nikolic opened the initiative, stressing the importance of the creative industries for the continued development of the country’s economy. Local designers stand side by side with some the world’s greatest talents in a rare opportunity to bring the world to Belgrade and to present Belgrade to the world.
Read the original article here.
