Bonsai landscapes Drawing

Bonsai Landscapes "A tree that is left growing in its natural state is a crude thing. It is only when it is kept close to human beings who fashion it with loving care that its shape and style acquire the ability to move one." Utsubo Monogatari (The Tale of the Hollow Tree) c.970 Reflecting on the influences of "images of nature" on the emotions of the individual, this exhibition by the painter Marija Masha Jovanović critically analyses the ecological problems we face today. The syntagm "man and nature" seems to have created an unbridgeable abyss between the two; modern life encourages mutual ignorance. Aspirations towards the world of ideas and abstract thought have distanced modern man from nature. Picturesque landscapes have become wallpaper for the social network profile. We are forgetting that we are an integral part of the natural world where our every act elicits a response. In a restrained visual language, almost achromatic, with only a few gentle overtones of green and accents of red, the artist creates a metaphor of general alienation from her roots. The minimalism corresponds to the sensitivity of nature, line as an artistic expression and, finally, the intimate experience of the artist herself. She plays with associations, ambiguously, just as today we engage socially in order to protect nature, paradoxically, from ourselves. Lyrical scenes dominated by empty spaces resemble primordial memories in which we are aware of the domination and power of natural forces. First, we are presented with individual, free air plants, which then grow into a cycle of bonsai landscapes. The exhibition is completed with monumental works in which appears a depersonalized stylized human figure. Representations of fragments of nature that are transferred to the inner spaces of the human habitation, suggest man’s obsessive need to exert control over nature and modify it according to his wishes. Modern design utilizes fragments proper to the exterior as a form of decorous inventory in accord with the wishes of the customer. The beginnings of this phenomenon can be found in the tradition of Japanese bonsai, which spread to the West after the famous Paris exhibition of 1900. Displaced from the land where it had been nurtured for centuries, this ancient philosophically profound Eastern artistic practice slowly took on the role of interior decoration. The modern age has broken with the significance of tradition, and so the ancient custom of cultivating bonsai has also changed. The pressure was towards faster growth, with the production of "instant bonsai". But the bonsai is not a potted plant, it is a tree. The meaning of "plants in pots" is a subgenre of the art of creating miniature landscapes in containers. With these art forms, the goal is not to re-create a natural landscape in a vessel, but to retain its essence and spirit. At the same time, it is a principle of contrast. At the philosophical level, it represents the Chinese artistic conceptualization of the universe governed by the bi-polar cosmic energies of yin and yang. Viewed artistically, complementary contrasts create rhythm and a dramatic tension that is resolved in a dynamic balance, a delicately harmonized equilibrium. Japanese monks brought this art form back from China, adapting it to the symbolic representation of Zen Buddhism and the Japanese understanding of aesthetics. It developed stylistically over time, but the property of fusion between powerful ancient beliefs and an Eastern philosophy of harmony between man, soul and nature remained unchanged. Some of the manifestations of the disturbance in these relations, characteristic of our times, are anxiety and depression in humans, the extinction or modification of animal and plant species, and drastic climate change. A drawing of a female figure in an undefined space, her back turned to the observer, lilies erupting from her shirt, symbolizes the crisis of identity that inevitably occurs when you turn your back on the environment to which you belong, which defines you. Scenes are shown in which flowers grow from a female body, from a shirt ... They represent the individual who can be drawn into the virtual world, "uprooted" from the natural environment but at the same time inseparable from nature. Nature will always respond to our deeds with liberation, rebellion or disappearance. Metaphorically, this exhibition presents us with the doomed quest for a new refuge as a replacement for a lost existence. As a counterpart to the man without a homeland, Jovanović presents us with aerial plants, plants without patrimony. They are depicted in small glass spheres that resemble miniature planets, micro-worlds, or cages imprisoning them. Their roots are not bonded to the earth, but hang in free-fall. If they were replanted in the country from which they originated - they would soon wither. Today we face a similar fate; for modern man the ambience of nature has become foreign and distant. He is searching again for a lost identity. Each aerial plant grows separately, as is now frequently the case with us, alienated and lonely. The plants shown are a metaphor for modern man alienated from his natural habitat, and at the same time lacking an adequate replacement. Failing to identify himself in the newly created circumstances, he has been unable to find a new space in which to achieve complete harmony. We gain the impression that we are levitating through spatial life, like the aerial plants shown here. It is unthinkable, the work suggests, that we should abandon the root; we must go back to where we belong. The flower that is not rooted is identical to the alienated individual. Detached from nature, man's only chance of survival is the nature he carries within himself.