City Luggage − Train Sculpture

Original modern sculpture, welded metal, group including two separable pieces, max H 80, total W 120, D 40cm, each piece should be shipped separately, the shipping dimensions in this listing are only approximate. I made the 'Train' as a piece of my cycle entitled 'City Luggage' first presented on a solo show at the ULUS Gallery, Belgrade. The piece served as a an inspirational model for a bigger outdoor sculpture, which will be soon opened in Apatin, Serbia. The introductory text for the exhibition catalogue encapsulates its major sentiment: ‘Traveling’ sculptures by Djordje Aralica, collages of archetypal images—allegories of traveling, transport a viewer into a realm of imaginary destinations. It seems that they themselves levitate in the intermediary space between being-here and being-there. Djordje Aralica surprises us—just as he has done in the past—with richness of his metaphors. The outlines of famous edifices from world’s metropolises emerge before our eyes joined, surprisingly, with the contours of everyday objects. By synchronically zooming in and out, enlarging or shrinking the objects of seemingly incomparable dimensions, Aralica is rethinking the relationship between scale and distance. The ‘traveling’ sculptures thus produce a dual experience: the monumental can be touched, whereas the everyday can elude to the sphere of the unapproachable. Playing with the primary character of the material only contributes to the ambiguity of the insight: seemingly tactile and intimate materiality struggles within the domain of the cold and the distant. This year’s exhibition of sculptures by Djordje Aralica at the ULUS Gallery poses unavoidable questions about permanence and belonging. As we all struggle with similar questions, City Luggage reaches us as a parable of the present-day ‘on-the-move’ identity. Tanja Conley, PhD, Historian and Theorist of Architecture, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston