Ana Crespo and Meliha Teparić

October 4-18, 2018

Spanish artist Ana Crespo and Meliha Teparic, artist from BH, found common artistic interests and ideas y brought forward an exposition which in its entirety, thoughtfulness and elaboration surpasses the sum of its individual parts.

Ana Crespo pieces together empty sheets of paper, creating sculptures of different shapes and sizes, light, airy and sophisticated, giving the emptiness of a blank sheet a new sense and meaning, while adding of thin lines of red or gold subtly emphasizes the whiteness of paper. The titles of her work, which remind of Sufi authors like Rumi or Ibn Arabi and her themes of love, wisdom and secrets introduce us into the mystical world of Sufi spirituality as a true space of existence and understanding of her sculptures.

Meliha Teparic in her installation Seven Silk Screens uses large sheets of white fabric which hanging in the space and moved by the flowing of air shape the gallery and the direction in which the visitors move. The sheets are distributed in the gallery in a way which observed from the layout reflect the calligraphic forms of God’s name, in the form of labyrinth, horizontal and vertical lines, which can be found in other works of this author, in different materials and techniques. The title of the installation, Seven Silk Screens, reminds of the sheets which need to be removed from our eyes on our path to Knowledge and number 7, being one of the most universal ideas in the world of religions, can also symbolize 7 spiritual degrees of mystical experience, like the Persian Sufi author Attar speaks of travels of birds of the soul through 7 valleys, the Sufi from Iraq, Nouri, describes 7 walls of the spiritual castle and the Spanish mystic Saint Therese of Ávila imagines 7 internal castles. The installation is accompanied by the sound of Sea Organ from Zadar, created by swaying of waves moved by the wind, just like the movement of air moves the hanged sheet.

(…)

In today’s culture in which the expression means moved from the paper and canvas onto the digital monitors and displays of computers, mobile phones and tablets, the icnonoclastic and minimalistic whiteness of the blank paper and sheet of Ana Crespo and Meliha Teparic is a warning about the loss of the spiritual values on which our culture used to be formed and as a reminder of the spiritual values included in the void and the abstract. The frontiers between the states, nations, languages and religions mean nothing for these themes, like Ana Crespo and Meliha Teparic show with this exposition.

Dr. sc. Rosana Ratkovčić (From the exhibition catalog)