Exhibition Dreamcatcher by Aleksandar Zograf

The exhibition "Dreamcatcher" dedicated to the comic book author Aleksandar Zograf, one of the most significant representatives of the alternative and autobiographical comic book scene in the region and beyond, opens in the historic building of the Balkan Cinema, organized by the Sasa Mirceta Foundation on Friday, 6th June at 20:00. The exhibition will be open to the public until 28th June, and admission is free.

The exhibition will showcase Zograf's decades-long artistic practice in which comics become both a diary, a chronicle and a dream book. The focus of the exhibition is on dreams - the thematic and formal starting point of numerous Zograf's comics, which the author records from the so-called hypnagogic state, between dream and reality. In this sense, the title of the exhibition "Dreamcatcher" refers to Zograf's role as a dreamcatcher, an artist who transforms images from the unconscious into narratives, through his artistic language.

Aleksandar Zograf has been present on the international comics scene since the 1990s, when his works began to be published in the USA and throughout Europe. During the NATO bombing, he became one of the first comics authors to record and publish the reality of war in real time, through electronic bulletins and comics that were simultaneously published abroad. His works, such as Life Under Sanctions, Psychonaut, Bulletins from Serbia and Dream Watcher, have been published in many countries, while he has exhibited in galleries from Vienna and Paris to San Francisco and Thessaloniki.

The curator of the exhibition, Stevan Vukovic, combines formalist and psychoanalytic theories of comics in his approach, illuminating Zograf's work as both intimate and universal, as a space where personal dreams and collective reality meet.

In addition to Zograf's works, visitors will also be able to see visual interpretations of his comic scenes in textile works by Gordana Basta, who uses traditional embroidery techniques to transfer motifs from drawings to a tactile medium.

During the exhibition "Dreamcatcher", visitors will have two expert guided tours with the artist and curator, on 12th and 24th June at 19:00. In addition to the expert guided tour, a catalog promotion is planned for Tuesday, 24th June.