In his work, Jovan Matic experiments with biomorphic procedures for
shaping ceramic sculpture. Through a certain mimicry of material and decomposition of the work into
a multitude of mutually dispersive units, he structures individual elements
into a visually and spatially coherent whole when exposed in space.
Remaining quite faithful to the standard
techniques of making ceramic sculpture in the material and processing procedure,
he explores the associative potentials of scenes motif-related to the heads and
skins of animals that are mass-grown and used in the food and clothing
industries. Developing somewhat abstract representations of fragments of animal
bodies, he strives to open a series of questions that go beyond the aesthetic
and form, but in that process he tries to avoid the immediate type of
engagement, as well as the unambiguous application of the represented in the
form of a social message or symbol. He achieves this with a slight touch of irony and playing with gestures
taken from the visual language of pop art, and at the same time with the
tactility of the work, as well as its expressive materiality.
He expresses the idea of acting on the
general consciousness through the search for types of alternatives that would
separate the treatment of the human environment in the domain of nature from
reducing the animal world to the level of mere resources, exploited exclusively
for profit or regulation of a certain lifestyle and ambience.
He creates works that, in an extremely ironic
way, seem trophy-like since they paraphrase the shapes of stuffed pig heads and
skinned animal hide. In terms of composition,
through the form of wall sculpture which visually dominates this setting, he
creates a certain patchwork of ceramic ‘skins’, made of tiles of different
colors and reliefs, whose arrangement and links establish strong visual
dynamics and forms the whole work. The ambivalence between the integrity of the work and the perceptual
disunity of the visual whole can be seen in the contrasting colors and textures
of its individual elements. Their emphasized diversity in uniformity, a kind of difference in correspondences,
as well as the impression of the fragility of the fragments of which it is
composed, seem to decompose and somewhat dematerialize the presented content.
In that way, the integrity of the performance
of the works is somewhat mediated by the impression of material decay.
