(taken from the Slovenian Emigrant Association)

On Thursday, 5 July 2012 an exhibition by academic painter Vesna Lenić Kreže was held in the National Assembly as part of Pan-Slovenian Congress.
Chairman of the Commission for Slovenians Abroad Franc Pukšič informed the attendees to the event about the work and life of young author from Banja Luke and invited them to the big hall to see the exhibition.

Exhibition entitled In the land of someone could be seen in the National Assembly from 2 – 6 July 2012.
The next exhibition will take place on 4 October 2012 on the premises of the Slovenian Emigrant Association.

Dreams and dreaming

At first sight, paintings by Vesna Lenić Kreže look like unnatural landscapes, floating in a vast and empty universe. Those landscapes are composed of planets and suns, oceans and undiscovered continents, vegetation and parts of earth. They are often inhabitated by strange living beings of amoebae shapes. Those monumental and difficult forms would have looked threatening, had the author not relaxed them with filigree painted branches of gentle stylized trees. In the centre of the composition, a motif of an all-seeing eye can be found, while we often find the shape of an egg; it can be seen that the new fantasy worlds are born from those oval, egg-shaped forms.
Work by Vesna Lenić Kreže is filled with elements of surrealism, images from the nature and is also connected to symbolic feeling. It seems that the shown physical reality is merely a metaphor for the author’s inner worlds. Considerable part of the paintings is the titles which insert poetic feeling into the works and often look like verses. Melancholic, sometimes gloomy atmosphere is close to poetic symbolism of the same kind and by using dark shades the author gives even more emphasis thereto. However, dark colours are always cut by thin lines of light and this game of light and shade introduces special art quality into the painting of Vesna Lenić Kreže.
Author also plays with art techniques. She mixes colours of jeans and sand, thus achieving rich texture of paintings and strengthening the feeling of painted landscape. She often uses sharp tools to engrave a gentle image into the fresh paint. She uses multilayer and interesting surface of the canvas to express sensuality, dynamics and spatial dimension. Sometimes, this emphatic sleepiness of paintings represents a bridge between fantasy painted world and real world.
Vesna Lenić Kreže intertwines the world of reality into paintings by adding photocopies of photographs, parts of paper, glass, wood and other objects. Parts of old documents and photographs open the door to street history of the author. That is why we can say that painting by Vesna Lenić Kreže does not explore only the relationship between the reality and imaginary world, but also the link between outside physical appearance and personal confession.

Monika Ivančič Fajfar