Saša Tkačenko

The 59th October Salon – Belgrade Biennale opened on the 20th of October this year, and one of the participants is Saša Tkačenko who exhibited a spatial installation inside a basement of a former garment store in Belgrade, turned Salon of the Belgrade Museum. The Biennale is open until the 4th of December.

“The color of one’s creed, neckties, eyes, thoughts, manners, speech, is sure to meet somewhere in time of space with a fatal objection from a mob that hates that particular tone. And the more brilliant, the more unusual the man, the nearer he is to the stake. Stranger always rhymes with danger. The meek prophet, the enchanter in his cave, the indignant artist, the nonconforming little schoolboy, all share in the same sacred danger.”

Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature

Based on the quote by Vladimir Nabokov, the work Unknown, talk to Unknown matches the words Stranger and Danger in the form of entangled neon pipes that create a unitary materialisation of the fragile and turbulent moment we live in. Different colours of the neon pipes implicate opposite poles of their meanings, but in the circumstance of vanity and fear they blend into each other and create a space in which distinction is unwanted. It is those words Fear and Vanity that are engraved in the rest of the mirrors that could be found in the basement of the former garment store which was adapted for the occasions of the exhibition, and that will later on be completely renovated for the purposes of a new art space – gallery. The light of the neon is inevitably the first thing the observer sees when they step into the basement, but what they will notice while moving through the space is their own reflection in the words Fear and Vanity.

Saša Tkačenko