“Each speck of dust has a miraculous soul. The simplest things give me ideas, but one needs to preserve enough sincerity and purity so as to be moved.” Juan Miró.

“Cosmic rhythms”, the paintings series by Milena Mijović – Durutović, are attractive paintings and objects created by repetition and variation of the same geometric motif, carried out in mixed technique on canvas where colour, earth, straw, water and the medium are structural elements. Here the artist deals with the relationship nature – art – man. The creation of an artwork includes a delicate relationship of the material used and the natural process. Based on several postulates and premises the painter – by varying the theme of cosmic vortex – achieves fresh variations of the same plastic problem. On a base made of jute she draws balls/globes with pictorial fills, mostly in blue colour, in which we read structural games full of unexpected cuts and expressive visions, gestures and light sensations. The blue colour, in the depth of its value intensity, relates to the significances of the depths of heavens and heavenly space and therefore also to the mythical-religious and poetic vision. The significance of the blue colour as a sign of heavenly zones deepens the general spirituality.

The paintings are an active interaction of the space in the painted field and the sign that is appearing in it. The author is focused on creating an attractive correlation between the elements present in the frame – the active contextualization between motives and subtle solutions that make up its fulfilment and surroundings. In the parts where the coloured layer is absent the jute canvas reflects the light, giving thus the painting a special impression of illusory. Above all, the colour itself is matter while matter and colour increasingly become more independent of the form – the supporting structure of the space, which dissipates on the surface dissected by unexpected penetrations of light.

The artist breaks up the mimetic connection with the motif and steps into the field of abstraction. Here it is not about a spectacular and unexpected change, but a harmonious transposition that stems from a continuous action, from logical changes in the understanding of the pictorial organism. Colour is often laid in a thick spread or a compact mass is broken into atoms of unequal densities, but tactile values ​​that create an interesting pictorial situation are always highlighted.

The power of these paintings,in a painting and artistic way, is the monumentality of expression – always the same, regardless of their dimension, it possesses the confidence of gesture, the persuasiveness and simplicity of compositional solutions, as well as a successful simplification of form and, most importantly, a powerful, suggestive colouring achieved by wide strokes of thickened colour. Through complementary confrontations and expressive establishing of certain accents -black and white or blue and ochre that are made more profound in their sonorous accentuated granular and sometimes cracked texture, these works are raised to an extraordinary poetic level.

Milena emphasizes the tactility of the work by using pigments lightly bound to the surface. The organic structure breaks through the floury and not completely captured colour, revealing thus the strength of matter. Some elements are painted in blue colour, as a form of visual transformation of matter into the symbolic by using colour.

In a group of works, the artist applies a layer of earth and straw on pieces of canvas thus creating objects placed on a surface where “frames” correspond or clash with the surface but regularly establish a complex communication with it. The objects that come into the space are coloured in blue or left in the natural ochre and brown colour of earth, where they form nest-like shapes. They could be haven and calmness as well as a symbol of the circle of life.

The paintings-objects are reduced in colour and form and show a tendency toward sublimation and synthesis, summarizing acquired experience and contemplation on the essence of being. On her artistic path Milena varies from the eternal search for essence around us to the nature of the painting itself. It is a distinctive tendency to reach an idea capable of attaining unexplored areas of spirit in a multitude of motivations.

This artistic experiment presents an examination and capture of the primary substance, of something that we all come from and to which we all return to as a common primeval source.

The artist is interested in painting matter and the technological process itself: she paints with natural pigment, scrapes the painting; the colour that is left over she leaves leaking in thin traces or she sprinkles it on the canvas. This leaking is strictly controlled so that even the impression of geometric structuralism is imposed. Nevertheless, Milena makes the necessary shift into such a created structure and brings in numerous accents on painted surfaces that possess the expressive value of a pictorial data in which one can perceive the elements of a new comprehension of the painting, but also a particular artistic poetics charged with sensibility that is so close to the contemporary observer and his aesthetic needs.

These works are distinguished by a purity of signs, typical in their simplicity, which are articulated on the surface where everything is taking place. However, there is nothing in the background; there is no illusionary space, no horizon or real framework. In a solid form of ball/globe-shaped pictograms a mystical light is living and pulsating. Milena’s concept of the universe is expressed through the interaction of different elements so that nature is reduced to a system of signs that have an internal value. These signs are born gradually and are increasingly taking on a symbolic meaning.

Milena’s works correspond to the unconscious; she wishes to reduce reality to essential forms, to bring this morphology of the subconscious into the visible sphere of the painting.

This art of painting is one without any explicit evocative burdens, one that relies on earth and colour as primary means of achieving the spiritual and sublime.

The artisanal-technical complexity is also in harmony with the spiritual diversity of works that make up the setting: they are mostly done by combined working procedures, with a cherished and refined sensibility. In a quick, spontaneous rhythm and gesture Milena throws out on the surface her expressive, symbolic, sign and distinctively graphic handwriting.

Thanks to all these features, the artist achieves a psychologically expressive atmosphere, saturated with absolute silence and undisturbed peace of a particular metaphysical atmosphere. There is no mystery of the phenomenon and events in them but there is certain mystery of the state of pure space.

In conclusion, Milena Mijović – Durutović has achieved by all means a successful exhibition at the gallery “Pizana”, one that is studiously elaborated and carried out with as much discipline. It is an exhibition with a pure concept and a clear and defined, fully adapted visual language.