20 September - 25 October 2008
Exhibition open Wednesday - Saturday, 3 - 8 pm

ARC Projects presented a solo show of new work by Belgrade based artist Milena Putnik. Known for her investigation of urban space through painting, photography, and publicly sited installations, the artist observes the city around her, providing a means to revitalise experience and see every day anew.

'Every Day Has a New Tomorrow' was conceived especially for ARC Projects gallery in Sofia, based on research made in Belgrade and Sofia. The exhibition featured seven new paintings, plus a photographic installation inspired by two neighbourhoods - the artist's own in Novi Beograd, and her adopted one along Sofia’s Vitosha Boulevard. Putnik often takes the vantage point of the inhabitant of a high-rise building. Her paintings capture street life awash with bright sunshine or illuminated by nocturnal neon. 'Every Day Has a New Tomorrow' identifies motor vehicles as symbols which reshape our perceptions of space and the boundaries between public and private. Such contestations are visible or implied throughout Putnik's new paintings and photographs.

One series of works are dominated by a view through a leafy canopy, beyond which we can glimpse small details of the cityscape. The lush foliage of the foreground is the masque which each new day wears, occasionally revealing its modest secrets underneath - parked vehicles, air conditioning units and neighbours’ flats. Another pair of works are based upon photographs taken from a moving coach, presenting the viewer a fragment of the journey. The landscape is reduced to a formation of semi-abstract signs, framed by the coach window, the reflected interior lights breaking up the picture plane. Putnik's new paintings are often rendered in bold colours, in line with more recent works but a striking departure from the artists' earlier, more sombre studies of architectural form.

Something in the composition of these images evokes a meditative order. The details are acutely observed, yet somehow the overall mood of the paintings is at the same time resonant and magical. The lucid yet slightly wistful realism employed by the artist is reminiscent of the Bulgarian landscape painter Nikola Tanev (1890–1962). However, the artist is aware that the landscape tradition has been re-thought in contemporary art, and serves different ends. Putnik seeks to address the contemporary urban condition: in this sense it follows a realist tradition. Yet there is a lyricism, a poetry to the artist's exploration of landscape through painting and photography which transcends the confines of tradition. A sense of the cinematic, expressed through light and shade, composition and framing, of tableaux vivant inscribed with narratives: implicit or potential.

While certain earlier works such as 'Nina 2' (2006) carried echoes of film noir and invited comparisons with Hopper, the revisiting of this subject, 'Bloody Nina' (2008), sees the emblematic neon sign of the title half obscured by foliage; Putnik's palette is vivid, the brushwork more expressive. The reading of the text literally becomes occluded, the leaves of the foreground forming a pattern which, like camouflage, renders the sign an abstract drawing in light. This exploration of pattern, colour and texture in vegetation continues with two more paintings where the palette alternates between hues of magenta and pale green, lending an other worldly aura to the scene depicted. These vistas obscured by trees perhaps recall the work of Peter Doig. There is though a specificity in the post-Socialist Balkan context which defines their choice of subject matter, more reminiscent of Albanian painter Edi Hila.

‘Every Day Has a New Tomorrow’ includes Putnik’s ongoing site-specific project ‘Counterviewpoints’. The first public iteration was commissioned for ‘Areas of Negotiations’, Belgrade Summer Festival 2007. The project at ARC Projects follows the artist’s residency which involved mapping the city of Sofia in search for various vantage points. Making photographs from the top of key buildings in the city but always aiming at the same spot, the artist gives the viewer a sense of someone else’s viewpoint.

'Every Day Has a New Tomorrow' traces the urban fabric, the familiar and the seemingly mundane through a process of persistent and deep observation. Through this ritualised act of observation over extended periods of time, a heightened distillation of meaning is transferred to the work. To paraphrase Ruskin, urban reality provides for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.

The exhibition will tour to Belgrade Cultural Centre in 2009, accompanied by a catalogue featuring a commissioned essay by Maja Ciric.

Milena Putnik (b 1976 Belgrade) received the Mangelos Award for Young Artists 2005 in Serbia (funded by the same foundation as Bulgaria’s Baza Award). The artist went on to internationalise her practice, including residences at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York; and KulturKontakt, Vienna. She has exhibited in international biennales including the 12th Biennial of Visual Art, Pancevo 2006; 5th and 6th Biennial of Young Artists, Vrsac 2002-04; and the 44th and 45th editions of Belgrade's October Art Salon, 2003-4.

Recent solo exhibitions include 'Never or the Next Time' (with Nevena Popovic) at DKSG Gallery, Belgrade, (toured to Arta Terme and Bitola); 'In the Vicinity', Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; 'Milena Gordic und Robert Munteana', Siemens artlab, Vienna; 'Ten Seconds Seven Kilometres', Remont Gallery, Belgrade.

Group exhibitions include 'Here and There is Over Here', Belgrade Summer Festival 07; 'Found Footage', A. Plamadeala Art College Gallery, Chisinau; 'Off Center Femininities: Regards from Serbia and Montenegro', Helen and Martin Kimmel Center, New York and Robert Else Gallery, Sacramento; 'Postcards', Cultural Center Gallery, Belgrade; 'Non-places', Roda Sten Cultural Centre, Gothenburg; 'Near Dark', Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; 'Dislocation - Utopian Spaces', Ozone Gallery, Belgrade; 'Central', Tresor im BACA Kunstforum, Vienna, which toured to venues in Central and Eastern Europe including the Sofia City Art Gallery.

Exhibition curated by Chris Byrne and Iliyana Nedkova. ARC Projects Major Sponsor LIA company, Sofia. Exhibition Partner Belgrade Cultural Centre. Exhibition Media Partner The Sofia Echo. Exhibition supported by ADOB Design; Flo.