IGOR SIMIC

68projects proudly presents the first solo exhibition with Serbian-American artist Igor Simic. The artist explores a variety of topics involving: politics, climate change as well as the change of our world through digitalization, in a serious yet simultaneously ironic way through story telling. Some stories are told as video, some as a computer game or a song, and all combine to form a grand narrative about the 21st century, which is presented in our exhibition in the form of two video works with sound, three neon works, two video games and a large as well as a multitude of A4- sized drawings. The exhibition will be shown during the Gallery Weekend Berlin.

Personal emotions and global events are combined by Igor Simi into what he calls a globalized “saudade” - the nostalgic, equally strong and indeterminate longing for something that usually cannot be put into words. Simic, however, is not explicitly concerned with this one feeling, but rather with how our view of the ever more complex world is guided by a multitude of contradictory feelings. In his works, he takes these feelings seriously, only to break them ironically at the same time. The title of our exhibition “FEEEEELINGS” with five times the letter "E", is a good example of this, the three neon works with their words and phrases illuminating the gallery in pink letters another. “WELTSCHMERZ” stands on the floor, supported by two low pylons made of raw concrete rubble. On the wall, the abstracted heart emoji “<3” glows at us. The third neon work above the entrance to the exhibition proclaims: “MINISTRY OF LONELINESS” - with only the letters “L O L” still glowing in the word “Loneliness.” In the UK, a Ministry of Loneliness has actually existed since 2018. This was created to counteract the constant loneliness of older people in particular. Igor Simic takes up this idea as characteristic of our time, but at the same time allows himself the joke of shortening "Loneliness" to “LOL”: laughing out loud.

The presentation and execution of the three neon works give the impression that they are remnants of a lost civilization. The manifold references and relationships between the groups of works are thus underlined: in the two video games of the exhibition, “Highwater” and “The CUB”, the words found in our exhibition, among others, shine as large-format neon lettering in bright pink on the architectural ruins of our literally submerged world. Messages from, but also comments on, a submerged past that is both distant and near.

The two videos premiering in Berlin - “Don’t Be Fake” and “Late Night Weltschmerz” - revolve around the theme of loss. Here, too, ironically broken, and connected with the question of the contrast between fact and fiction. Songs are performed in the guise of a news broadcast or a late night talk show, whose lyrics not only appeal to the feelings of the viewer, but are also reflected in the behavior of the singers in the video. In “Don’t be Fake”, for example, the simulation of reality is formally broken up in the course of the video: the image section expands, the perfect illusion of a news broadcast gives way to a look "behind the scenes". What is real here, what is fake?

The exhibition is rounded off by a large-format drawing that once again illustrates the theme of the exhibition as well as how the diverse references of Igor Simic's works to each other: the drawn word “FEEEEELINGS” is a quote from his games, where this very word can be seen as a large neon sign half submerged in water precisely when a very emotional song is playing. Again it is about big, serious feelings, and again they are ironically broken. The drawing shows the word in three-dimensional blocky letters, partially overgrown by vegetation. A larger number of drawings on colored DIN A4 sheets, which are both preparatory sketches of ideas and supplementary representations of catchwords and scenes from Simic's universe, round out the exhibition. In the video work Instant but distant, a selection of these A4 sheets complements and comments on both the lyrics and the music of a nearly 15-minute song.

Igor Simic (*1988 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia) is a multi-award winning visual artist, filmmaker and game designer with a BA in Film Studies and Philosophy from Columbia University New York. In 2015 and 2017 his work was shown in Frankfurt at the B3 Biennale of the Moving Image. In 2021 he was awarded the prize for the best video game just there. In 2016 he received the 1st Prize Discovery Award of Loop Barcelona, in 2014 and 2022 he participated in the Berlinale Talents program, in 2022 as a tutor. In 2018, one of his video works was featured in the exhibition Virtual Insanity at Kunsthalle Mainz, in 2019 he was featured with five neon works at the 40th edition of the world's leading technology festival Ars Electronica in Linz, in 2022 at Manifeste 14 in Pristina, Tribeca Film Festival and Fragment Gallery, both in New York. Other exhibitions of his work include at the October Salon - Belgrade Biennale and Klemm's Berlin (2021), at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Ulm and Kunsthalle Giessen (2020), as well as at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (2019) or Athens Digital Arts Festival in Athens (2017).

Igor Simic lives in Belgrade, where he runs demagog studio, with which he creates video games. His game ”Highwater” has been listed on Netflix since March 2023.