Marbles

The phenomenon of happiness and the search for it through a physical and spiritual journey is the keystone that unites the latest series of works "Marbles" and is a logical continuation of the previous series "Helpful Things". Each work represents an intimate note of a lived spiritual experience that contributed to the inner development of the author and enriched him experientially, so that he recognized it as a spiritual value and a memory that requires inheritance, in a delicate and clean visual record.

In his intention to "capture the thin line between the idea that happiness is outside of us and the concept that we need to find happiness within ourselves", Vladan Sibinović tells us to stop, take a breath and ponder. The author, with his own experience, philosophy and references to Jung's psychology, warns us about the fallacy of waiting and achieving happiness. Happiness as a phenomenon is elusive and intangible, invisible in its coming and going, but its presence and absence we deeply feel, and because of the search for it, we often wander.

Closely related to the phenomenon of happiness is the repetitive motif of the game, which is symbolically represented by marbles on most of the works. They are a symbol of happiness and carelessness that we felt in childhood. Through play, we learned and developed our personality. It was the only constant in our first knowledge of the world and ourselves. In addition to marble, an indispensable element of the paintings is a duality in the interior-exterior relationship. The viewer is almost always placed in a room from which he can see the mountain, the sky or the sea. Here, the author illustrates the fine line between the search for happiness somewhere outside (exterior, externality, activity, extroversion and openness) and within ourselves (it is that cozy room, home, personal space where we are safest, introversion and introspection).

The key characteristic of Vladan's visual expression is precision and purity, the harmonious arrangement of just a few colors that provide exceptional peace and harmony that pleases the eye and establishes a complete balance of the composition. The very painting technique and the use of special brushes made of natural hair, but also certain motifs such as - Koi fish, Taiyaki cake, sake cups, Mount Fuji... point to the extremely rich heritage of Japanese culture that the author cherishes.

Sibinović creates precisely and thoughtfully. He carefully chooses his emotional experiences and integrate them into a work that provides an apparently desolate scene at first, but is actually very rich in a personal and extremely meaningful narrative. His paintings are quiet and patient, I would say. The author intentionally and wittily disrupts their tenderness and harmony with certain illogicalities and irregularities, pointing to the duality of life itself, which never unfolds as we imagined it. This is best illustrated by the line of Cohen's song, which is only one of Vladan's inspirations - "There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in".

Ana Kršljanin, art historian