SHOLIM
WORK:
Heaven x Hell Series, 2020.
Heaven x Hell Series, 2020.
TECHNICAL DETAILS:
Digital animation, 4K, 10 -13 seconds
Description: Heaven x Hell Series, comprising four different works, combines the Sholim’s trademark brand of animated surrealism with elements borrowed from The Garden of Earthly Delights. Symbolic motifs used by Hieronymus Bosch are decontextualised and repurposed to create new stories. For late medieval viewers, for example, the strawberry was a symbol of temptation and lust, yet in Sholim’s hands it is transformed into huge head inhabited by a robin.
The artist also respects the colour palette of the original, with pinks and blues dominating in heaven, while hell is expressed in grey and ochre. Social commentary often underlies Sholim’s creations and in this series, the protagonists are condemned to an absurd, looped existence, a possible reflection on our present-day.
Biography: Milos Rajkovic (Belgrade, Serbia, 1985), known as Sholim, describes his work as “digital surrealism.” His animated GIFs are dream-like scenes influenced by artists such as René Magritte or Salvador Dalí, and recall the visual landscape of filmmaker and Monty Python star, Terry Gilliam. Windows, doors, machinery and heads are recurring motifs, and the idea of endless repetition, inherited from surrealism, takes on new life in these moving images.
Satire also plays an important role in Sholim’s work, which tackles consumer culture, militarism and fears of techno dystopia with elegant doses of humour. His chosen media, meanwhile, situates him firmly among the new generation of artists whose inspiration, tools and audiences are to be found online. Sholim’s art has been shown at international institutions, including Taipei Digital Arts Center (Taiwan), Palais de Tokio (Paris) and the Museum of Moving Images, New York.
︎ @sholim_
︎︎︎ Website
︎NAVE 16.MATADERO ︎︎︎07 OCT—27 FEB
