„A GALAKSIJA OKOLO SIJA“ – MAGNUM OPUS VLADANA RADOVANOVIĆA

Abstract

The artwork And the Galaxy Shines Around, after many years of preparations, numerous technical obstacles, and the search for funds necessary for the realization of this monumental project, was finally installed and premiered to the audience in the period from August 31 to September 12, 2021, in Hall 4 of the Belgrade Fair. It is a massive, extremely complex, and layered creation that belongs to the sphere of art synthesis, an authentic concept that Vladan Radovanović has been working on since 1957, and which implies, in the most general terms, the bringing together of different “multisensory media”. Radovanović’s continuous and dedicated artistic research towards art synthesis gets its most complex realization precisely in this achievement, which we can understand as the pinnacle of his creativity and his magnum opus. Following the concept of art synthesis, this project was designed and realized, according to the author, as “a kind of installation with visitors as performers” that includes elements of architecture, sculpture, image, light, tactility, text, music, and movement. At the center of this paper is the presentation and analytical reading of the work And the Galaxy Shines Around, first of all from the perspective of the author’s poetics/autopoetics (which includes both the observation of the process of creation itself, technical features, as well as the consideration of all aspects of media threads involved, from material to meaning), and theoretical problematization of the basic ideas underlying it.