Artist: Goran Fazil

2 February 2012. I met up with a group of fellow Art enthusiasts at the gallery in the Student Union Building, where Goran Fazil  opened an exhibition called Propitiation of War in Contemporary World. Utilizing a variety of techniques, such as combining 2D and 3D elements to create depth and perspective (such as looking past piles of rubble to see distant buildings), and using ink and graphite drawings on maps and political documents to heighten awareness of the impact those documents have on people’s lives. I was particular interested in the drawings where the US Constitution was used as the picture plane. In these drawings, the negative space was darkened in with cross-hatching, as was values to the subjects, but the paper was left exposed to create the white spaces. These compositions represented the founding fathers debating these documents     

The last two installments were a wall sculpture of grey rectilinear objects which could be viewed through suspended, framed translucent panels, and clay statues of people in a verity of positions placed on canvas tarps on the gallery floor. Wire caricatures with pencils were drawing lines between and over the statues. The first represented aerial images of a war-stricken landscape, and the second depicted how national boarders effect the individual.

After viewing the installations, we attended a discussion with the artists. He explained that his inspiration was how society has been taught that war was a natural occurrence and to be excepting of it. He also discussed how texts and documents can become sacred which, at that point, are considered absolute by one group of people, while opposing groups have their own sacred documents. Once something becomes absolute in a person’s mind, argued Fazil there is no room for discussion and war is the only alternative to address these differences. For this reason he chose to use such documents as a his media to facilitate an open dialog. In the course of the forum, Fazil also explained how the current exhibit relates to earlier ones in subject matter and purpose, drawing attention to different aspects of war and how they influence groups of people.