Lara Dhondt // Tomáš Moravec // Jovan Stevanović
Introduction: Marko Stamenkovic

16-17-18.06.2011 // Contemporary Visual Arts Gallery Niš

Opening: Thursday, 16 June 2011 // 19:00

Salon 77 // Beli Bey's Mosque,  The Niš Fortress

THE DEPARTMENT OF WITHDRAWAL is the title of a long-term project that aims to focus the public’s attention on the concept of withdrawal. Withdrawal is here understood as only one among numerous possibilities of proposing and re-articulating ways in which the symbolic and real meaning of the gesture of retreat is thought, experienced and recognized and how it manifests itself in the prescribed system of social behavior, as an existential and professional protest against it (and its harbingers).

WITHDRAWAL SYNDROME, an exhibition event taking place within the fortress of the city of Niš, Southern Serbia (Studio 77), is one in a series of artistic programs of the project bringing together three young artists of different generations: Lara Dhondt (*1979, Belgium), Tomáš Moravec (*1985, Czech Republic) and Jovan Stevanović/Justin McKenny (*1992, Serbia). It is conceived as a short-term (three-day) visual event, corresponding to the period of a butterfly’s life-span and revolving around a joint presentation based upon the various modes of display.

In the framework of a given exhibition venue (a 16^th century mosque whose prior function has been transformed over time), the event is constructed upon a synchronized orchestration of multiple media-formats (such as an introductory speech, wall drawing, digital photography, mobile objects, printed materials, light and sound). Resembling a contemporary form of “ephemeral spectacle”, the exhibition questions the concept of event and its materialization by means of artistic intervention into the temporal and spatial dimensions of existence. It aims at transforming those manifestations of social symptoms that often silently and noticeably govern our everyday experience: hovering objects (Moravec), demonstration of personal protest (Dhondt) and suicidal gestures (Stevanović/McKenny).