School of Visual Arts and Design assistant professor Amer Kobaslija was recently featured in the popular contemporary arts publication, Art in America. Art in America is a major monthly art magazine based on the vibrant and jaw-dropping contemporary art scene in the United States of America and abroad. The magazine was founded in 1913 and currently has a circulation of 26,000 featuring artist and genre profiles, art movement updates, show reviews and schedules to up-and-coming exhibitions, shows, and lectures.
Kobaslija’s art was exhibited at Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans earlier this fall from Aug. 3 – Sept. 21 and featured his latest work, scenes of Florida and the Southeastern U.S. Kobaslija was also featured this summer as a finalist in the Orlando Museum of Art’s annual Florida Prize in Contemporary Art.
Below is a selection of the review in Art in America by Francesca Anton:
Orlando-based Bosnian painter Amer Kobaslija’s show at Arthur Roger in New Orleans, “Florida Noir,” opened on the heels of Hurricane Barry, the most recent natural disaster to hit the Gulf Coast, a region especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Reviewing the exhibition, which comprised twenty-four paintings depicting scenes from the Southeastern US, often with allusions to the work of the old masters, A.i.A. editorial assistant Francesca Aton notes that while Kobaslija’s paintings can seem “postapocalyptic,” their quotidian subject matter helps ground them, the images perhaps suggesting a not-so-distant future.
As Aton describes: “In After Bruegel II (2019), two hunters and their dog ride in a motorboat with several alligator carcasses stacked in the hull parallel to a shotgun. Putrid greens and yellows give a nauseating cast to water that appears viscous and gooey, gathering in globs like toxic sludge along the painting’s surface. Evoking the monstrous vignettes found in Bruegel’s paintings, Kobaslija’s scene is all the more frightening because of its naturalism; the mangled world depicted here could soon become a reality.”
Read the full feature on Art in America.
Featured Artwork Information: Amer Kobaslija: Lowe’s Tubes, Ichetucknee II, 2017, oil on panel, 15 by 16 1/2 inches; at Arthur Roger.