An Ode to Love (Lovers) Print

Born: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1970 Lives: Sarajevo, B&H Emerging visual artist depicts the violent nature of humanity and a crisis of disillusionment in contemporary culture. As a mixed media artist, Hodak works with painting and collage media to create his unique artwork. His post-modern artwork is filled with creative energy, very bizarre, subversive and takes a critical view of social, political and cultural issues. A parody of both the melodrama and Freudian dream explanation, urban cannibalization, the irony, satire and social-historic commentary on entertainment industry, political and royal icons, as well as interest in the changing world of today. He prefers not to force his own interpretation or philosophical opinion upon viewers. You are absolutely free to interpret his artworks in your own unique way. In the majority of his artworks, he tries to merge images of real things with subconscious images of the surreal and philosophical thoughts. That is why some of his creations can appear similar to mental puzzles where viewers can choose to take a trip from one point to another by analyzing symbolic objects lying around for their curious minds. Occasionally, a subject matter of the images is unclear when the path is hidden under layers and layers of mutually exclusive items and the picture itself can seem to be excessively meaningless, but there is always something for you to discover if you're patient enough. We can feel technical and ideological influence of Dada and surrealist collage and its constitutive techniques of cutting and pasting. The small and delicate perverse and surreal collage pieces explore the juxtaposition of the traditional with the unconventional. These images that are contained in each collage are both conscious and subconscious. Fragmentary compositions of the collage are often causing semantic clashes of the elements to make a disturbing and dreamlike impression. Collages should not be seen as pure expressions of the unconscious, but rather as a dreamlike exhibition of the irrational which serves as an important means in the social-political action of the surrealists against the rationality of today society.