The Real World is Out There

Artget gallery, KCB
Trg republike 5/I, Belgrade
18.04—18.05.2024.

The third exhibition in the 2024 programme of Artget Gallery showcases the works of Nemanja Knežević and Robert Marin, in a dialogue. Both artists developed distinguished practices in which they reflect on their immediate surrounding by using photography as their main tool. Above all, Knežević and Marin are observers of the world that surrounds them, so they apply snapshot photography to document it the way it is. Their images may often seem objective and unaffected, almost naturalistic record of the world in which they aim to find topical and, at the same time, very ordinary issues.

The exhibition entitled The Real World is Out There thus showcases raw, rough and unembellished photographic material. Knežević and Marin are not exaggerating but rather simply documenting the world without a filter, a strange practice in the (modern) era of appearances. They subvert the usual features of dominant visual culture that requires beautification and stylisation of everything. Therefore, nowadays the reality may seem surreal. The photography is still, and even more than ever before, considered to be a medium that has the ability to make things look better than they actually do. On the contrary, the artists present raw images of ordinary life while they also try to convey subtle and profound narratives.

Read the full essay here.

Art director of the Artget gallery in 2024: Miha Colner
Programme director: Senka Ristivojević
Production: The Cultural Center of Belgrade
Text: Miha Colner
Translation: Vesna Strika
Exhibition setup: Stojan Krčedinac, Darko Komazec
Print: Dina
Photos: Ivana Tešić

The exhibition is supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in Belgrade.