(Born in 1942, Belgrade, Serbia)

Although Neša Paripović’s oeuvre is rather small (in the words of B. Peić, this is “asceticism based on hedonism”), he is one of the key protagonists of conceptual art in Serbia. Photographs, posters, language works, films and videos are the media through which Paripović has been developing his metavisual language about the nature of art and the status of the artist since the beginning of the 1970s.

While in the series of photographs “Examples of Analytical Sculpture” (1978) the artist deconstructs perception of a classical art form – sculpture – by introducing elements of body art including erotic topoi in analytical procedure, his video work “Rhythm” (1981), on the other hand, reflects the process of painting. It is shot with a static camera, and shows the artist putting layers of paint on a white surface by drumming his fingers on the surface. This gradually creates an “abstract painting” consisting of several blots, and finally a thick amorphous surface. Referring to Pollock’s action painting, the artist emphasizes repetition and monotony in opposition to a dynamic gesture that comes out of the movement of the whole body. Hence, the artist positions himself analytically and critically while appropriating ironic distance in relation to paradigms of modernist painting. At the same time, by using a different medium, Paripović adds something which is immanent to the painting and yet invisible in the final product: rhythm, sound and time.

Branka Stipančić