| Gallery Representation: |
ARTaVIVA, Peter Miller Gallery, Chris Winfield Gallery |
| Gallery Representation URL: |
ARTaVIVA |
| Short Bio: |
Relja Penezic is a video artist, painter, photographer, printmaker, and a filmmaker. His work is a multimedia blend that combines technology and painting, performance and video, art and craft.
Penezic was born in Belgrade, in former Yugoslavia in 1950. After studies of fine arts at the University of Belgrade he relocated to Paris, France where he based his art practice from 1975 to 1980. In 1985 he immigrated to the United States. Until 1990 he was based in New York City and his art practice consisted mainly of painting and printmaking. He started experimenting with digital media, video and photography in 1991 when he moved to San Francisco where he lives and works today.
In 1996 Zakros InterArts label Chronic Art published his CD-ROM "Computer Film Sketchbook" and premiered it at the San Francisco International Film Festival. His 2002 Audio/Video installation in collaboration with composer Victoria Jordanova at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art entitled "Panopticon" was published by ArpaViva label as a DVD and is distributed by The Cinema Guild of New York. His paintings and media pieces are part of numerous private and public collections in the US, Europe and Japan. In 2004 he was selected to create a permanent site specific media installation "The Alaska Cycle" by Alaska Arts Council. In 2005 and 2006 he finished two large scale site specific paintings "Alaska Time-Lapse" and "Views of Tundra" for the Alaska Psychiatric Institute, commissioned by Alaska Arts Council.
Relja Penezic is a cofounder of ARTaVIVA, company/curatorial project dedicated to promotion of audio/video art as a permanent installation medium. In addition to an international career as an artist he served as a Creative Director for ID8, Los Angeles based branding agency, an Art Director and a Designer for Jump Ship Studios, San Francisco, and a Designer/Visual Effects Artist for Fleet Street Pictures of San Francisco. Relja Penezic was also a Master Printmaker for John Nichols Printmakers of New York specializing in silk-screen and lithography limited editions. He was a lecturer at the Princeton University School of Architecture, Haverford College, and Bowling Green State University.
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| Additional Comments: |
Video Landscapes:
Unlike conventional films and videos which evolve and conclude, my pieces remain unresolved, are not dependent on time, have no beginning and ending, and are presented as continuous loops. My work is rooted in landscape genre. Building on landscape traditions from Romantic expressions of religious mysticism through majesty of nature to the road movies of today I try to capture a sense of physical and conceptual place - an amalgam of symbolism and sensation. I use and subvert time and motion aspects of my scenes in a similar way Caspar David Friedrich used to invert some aspects of atmospheric perspective or construct unnatural symmetry in otherwise realistic landscapes. I also believe that cinematic can stand on its own– without the cinema.
I see the art of landscape as a tangible meeting point between nature and culture. This view is source for all other concepts I am examining as landscape artist: escapism, exoticism, freedom, discovery, foreignness, anonymity, spirituality, isolation, timelessness, emptiness, alienation, luminosity etc.
Music and sound design for my landscapes are always done by composer Victoria Jordanova. She has the unique ability to create music not dependent on time to develop its themes, music constantly present in its totality like the sound of an ocean or wind, while still being music.
Last, but not least, my work is about the medium it was made for–television. Imagine if content for television was more like the world of paintings and other non-time-based art-forms that can be approached by the viewers on their own terms. Without required period of time to dedicate to it. Where "in" and "out" points are viewer's, not editors, choice. No teasers, no "coming next", nor other implications that you'll miss something if you tune out. There is something comforting about it. Isn't it? You wouldn't have to stop watching in order to start thinking.
Relja Penezic, San Francisco, March 2007
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