Vesko Gagović was born in 1963 in Niksic (Montenegro), an important cultural centre. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo in 1988, where he also obtained his Masters in Painting in 1991. Sarajevo was the city where he made his first personal exhibition in 1990, as well as numerous group exhibitions in various cities between 1988 and 2018, including Podgorica, Venice, Vienna, concluding with a retrospective at the Museums and Galleries of Podgorica in 2018 and in 2019 was representative of Montenegro in the official Pavilion at the 58th Biennale from Venice.
His pictorial work translates into an abstract language that could easily have given the impression of an artist involved in the debate on the “end of painting” or on the “last painting”. But a careful observation of the solutions chosen by Gagović reveals that his minimalist work is performed as a pictorial manual practice, made in thick, raised layers of colour, in which he introduces barely visible vertical stripes. By arranging these paintings in identical square formats at equal distances from each other, in a series or opting for unusual arrangements (one next to the other, one below or above the other), Gagović achieves the effect of a pictorial environment, therefore opposing the norm of the exhibition practice, on the track of the knowledge that the space and the methodology of setting up are never neutral, but can and must be an active and integral factor of the artistic presentation.Gagović creates an illusionistic image that acts on reality, transforming it, and therefore becomes a reality in itself. The project of floating objects (exhibited at the 58th Venice Biennale 2019) leads us through the archetypal use of shapes, colours (gold) and light beyond the concept of time. The artist’s inspiration finds its starting point in the film “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Stanley Kubrick, which deals with human evolution, the idea of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life.
