City Luggage − Pets Sculpture

11.5 kg. I made 'Pets' in order to add to the ,on-the-run' city impressions presented by solo show entitled 'City Luggage' first presented at the ULUS Gallery, Belgrade. The introductory text for the exhibition catalogue encapsulates the exhibition's 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