Prima Center Berlin

Mia Stojanovic has started her artistic growing up and exhibiting activity at the end of nineties, at the time when in the contemporary Yugoslav art, numerous creative concepts excised equally, when the efforts of postmodernism and renewed modernistic tendencies intermingled, when art, with its language and contents was trying not to be only the consequence of stirring times, but an active reflection of social happenings at the end of 20th century. Looking for an “appropriate” expression, searching for and forming her own attitude through sculpture forms, through drawing and painting the young artist has been finding out and expressing numerous (often extremely different), comprehensive, conceptual, plastic and emotionally-poetic conclusions. But something that was always a constant is her tendency to achieve the authentic art, and by using primary artistic elements to reach the efficient plastic effect.

Mia Stojanovic is directed by such tendency even when making series of collage paintings, by handling still life in a comprehensive series of collage paintings, she is calmly, thoughtfully and essentially rationally checking her own pictural sensibility. Her collage paintings posses a synthetic equilibrium of contents and form. In these plastic entities, the two components have cause and effect relationship: almost morandic simple motive is merely the assigned frame of contents that helps to create an authentic picture, to help it realize its plastic being, to make its artistic elements effective and artistically valid, in the same way in which the plastic idea of Mia Stojanovic is disciplined.

Her plastic thought is essentially authentic. Her “nature morte” compositions are expressed clearly, understandably and precisely, from the perspective of composition. The artist proves herself as a sure drawer, as a painter who is capable of defining the complex of formal relationships within the composition entity. Mia Stojanovic is a painter with great gift to define precisely her reception, and by using the by line to give the character to that reception and to impose her own sensibility, to convey to the observer, her expressive excitement in front of the chosen motive.

She has different attitude towards colour and colourite. Color is deprived of severe representative function. It is primarily the announcer of emotional feeling, the main element of a poetic atmosphere that is present in collage paintings of Mia Stojanovic.

The specialty of these creations is the material used for collage paintings. These were mostly papers of different structure, qualities and thickness. Rarely does this paper occur in its primary form. The artist paints the paper and draws on it and then treats it as a separate compositional fragment, as one of collage units, which is fitted into the complex entity. At the same time, paper is comprehended as collate material with all its physical values. By gluing these paper fragments onto the base, Mia Stojanovic builds a structure of her collage creations, builds the plasticity of the picture and makes it attractive not only to look at it, but to touch it as well. This way she expresses her own feeling and she makes the tactile values of her collage paintings stronger...

Obviously, the series of collage still life by Mia Stojanovic represents the complex and relevant artistic appearance. The artist proves herself, in these plastic creations, as a creative personality with clearly expressed artistic views: she manages to realize authentic plastic representations in a clear artistic manner and to offer to the observer her own artistically-poetic attitudes and her own spiritual gains. Such realizations testify, quietly but persuasively, about artistic comprehension and understanding of the world, but they are completely ready to provoke authentic artistic emotion. And that is the greatest value of collage creations of Mia Stojanovic.

Sava Stepanov