Carlier | gebauer is pleased to announce the second solo exhibition of Serbian artist Jelena Bulajic with the gallery. 

Jelena Bulajic’s multi-media paintings both emerge from and induce states of immersion. Her approach mirrors Antoni Tapies’ claim that “to achieve contact with reality is not to transport oneself elsewhere, it is not transcendence but thorough immersion in one’s surroundings.” The reality that Tapies describes is neither purely physical nor metaphysical, but both at once. The subjects of Bulajic’s paintings emerge from people, scenes, or objects viewed in her day-to-day life. When the artist began making the meticulously detailed large-scale portraiture that she is best known for, she found her subjects almost as if through a magnetic pull. A facial feature or expression compelled her to come closer, to linger on their face—an intuitive and affective operation reflected in the outsize proportions of many of her works and the emphasis that she places on surface.