Gerhard Flekatsch from Austria is in Novi Sad these days within the ‘Plants AiR’ residential programme implemented by the ‘Novi Sad 2021’ Foundation. He is a member of the Professional Association of Visual Artists in Austria since 1990, Freelance Visual Artist since 2005 and since 2006, Mr Flekatsch is the Artistic Director of the ‘Kunst – Fehler – Kultur’ Symposium. He is the Artistic Director of the ‘naher osten – naher vesten’ Intercultural Dialogue.

This artist from Austria is interested in non-objective art, processes of perception, realisation and imagination, and as he said, ‘the fragmentary subjectivity of each individual idea of our world (and possibility for communication between different identities)’.

During his four-week stay in Novi Sad, he will get a chance to find the balance between new experience and observations from one side and focus on work. Expectations from the residency summarises in the following idea:

‘Coming here without any preconceived ideas, I am like a blanc paper ready to absorb what comes across. Encounters, ideas, emotions… and to visualise them. I am curious about discovering cultural aspects we have in common and those in which we probably differ, as well as to answer how strong the attempts to communicate across borders of different languages and self-conceptions are. After my arrival at the airport, everything is new to me. The simplest activities will be more difficult than at home: where to have breakfast, how to decipher the foreign writing of street names or which material and space will be available for my work? Everything will be a discovery slowly filling the blanc map of my new surroundings. I love doing something for the first time, and this residence is a unique chance to start work without any previous experience or comparison. This demands full attentiveness, and approach to the topic can be playful and free.’