Mila Kostic and Shari Pratt: Fragments

Expand

Mila Kostic, "Fragments," 2017

Opening Reception: Thursday June 8th, 7 pm with a reception to follow

Fragments is an exhibition that will be held at the Deer Lake Art Gallery featuring the works of Mila Kostic and Shari Pratt.  Fragments is hosted and organized by the Burnaby Arts Council.  The Exhibition will open on June 8th and will run until July 1st, 2017.

“Fragments” is the journey of two visual artists through their real and perceived memories, which is expressed in a mixed media compositions in order to bring these fragments into the real.

Kostic is Canadian visual artist and curator whose roots are in the former Yugoslavia. Kostic has found mixed media to be the language with which she can address the evils she has witnessed in the world. Her experiences refused to be silenced; her pieces are a vehicle with which she can communicate as nothing else could. She mixes media freely; building from a base of oil or acrylic, several canvasses at once. This is done so that there is cohesion in her expression onto the canvas. Her work is vibrant and solid in its expression.  By applying abstraction, she tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way and so involves the viewer in a way that is sometimes almost physical. Kostic has been actively exhibiting and making art for over twenty years. She is based in Vancouver.

Pratt is an award-winning Canadian born artist who works predominantly in the medium of painting, but often includes found photography and artifacts in her installations. Pratt has a Bachelor of Art Education Major from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Memories play an important role in Pratt’s work.  Her current work is a compilation of how our own past fragments of reality can be erased and replaced bearing only the traces of the earlier recollection. This formulation of our past is what identifies us; it has many levels of meaning, development and history. Her work has the hazy aspect of memories laid carefully in our past. Often using photography in her paintings and a singularly beautiful use of blue, one can almost touch the past. “The possible seems true and the truth exists, but it has many faces”, as Hanna Arendt cites from Franz Kafka.