V1 GALLERY PROUDLY PRESENTS
Cancellation
A solo exhibition by Milosz Odobrovic
It is a great pleasure to present Cancellation, the first solo exhibition by Milosz Odobrovic in the gallery.
Milosz Odobrovic works with abstract painting, informed in equal parts by urban patterns and abstract expressionism. His paintings, created with emulsion and spray paint on canvas, are often limited to a palette of 3 or 4 colors. The works are roughly layered, much in the same way as graffiti is buffed – the term used for painting over graffiti – only offering the viewer a hint of the calligraphy or mark making covered by new layers of paint. Imagine Mark Rothko cancelling a Cy Twombly. The emulsion paint gives the works a matte and dusty finish. As a viewer you are intrigued as to what message was removed by covering the scribbles and the works raise questions concerning authority and authorship. They also emphasize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Odobrovic’s force is in the subtle and limited gesture. Leaving the works with a hovering and raw composition.
Milosz Odobrovic’s (born 1990, Donetsk, Ukraine) work first came to my attention when he started following me on the social media Instagram (elgeye). I looked at his profile (milosz_odobrovic) and saw several images of abstraction in 1x1 cm, some of them his paintings (100 x 100 cm and 150 x 300 cm) and some of them photos of careful urban observations, buffed graffiti on walls and roller gates and various textures and tableaus. I found his homepage and wrote to ask about more information on his art and we started a dialogue. He graduated from Kharkiv National Academy of Design and Art in 2011 and has been part of several exhibitions around Ukraine. I still have not met Milosz Odobrovic and unfortunately he will not be able to attend his own opening at V1 Gallery. He is currently a refugee from the conflict in Ukraine, living and working in Naples, Italy, where he created the works for Cancellation. We hope for an urgent end to the conflict in Ukraine.
