Evo potpuno poravnatog i pregledno strukturisanog teksta, sa pravilno raspoređenim odeljcima i razmacima između pasusa radi lakšeg čitanja. The Ethics of Play Through the cycle of paintings created in 2025, presented within the exhibition Playing with the big boys, artist Davor Dmitrović constructs his own mythology — fusing figurative narrativity with philosophical reflection. His painting becomes a site of inner quest, a space of selfencounter where narration, thought, and doubt intertwine. The key figure of this cycle — anthropomorphic, fragile, puppet-like — leads us through a series of spaces that, though seemingly playful or even illustrative at first glance, carry an unmistakable existential tension. Instead of strict narrative linearity, these monumental canvases unfold in episodic sequences revealing the process of inner, fragmentary maturation. The figure is in constant motion, traversing labyrinths, shores, and caves — diverse spaces and atmospheres functioning simultaneously as external obstacles and internal projections of consciousness. The character exists in a state of inner dispersion, wandering through voids and fragments of ideals it both destroys and rebuilds. Amid this silence of ruins, it ultimately discovers the process of self-knowledge. Through a certain atmosphere of longing that hovers over these surfaces, identity is revealed not as a stable form but as a volatile tension between expectation and reality. Between ambition and insecurity, between idealism and a sudden awareness of one’s own vulnerability, the path of growing up is marked by failure, loss, and disappointment — experiences that do not destroy the figure but transform it, enabling its evolution. Within this dialectical dynamic between the outer world and introspective pursuit lies the essence of Dmitrović’s artistic vision: the world becomes a mirror of selfexamination through a curious naïveté that functions as both moral and social awareness. Dmitrović’s painterly expression is characterized by chromatic serenity — dominated by hues of sky blue and grass green. Yet, these tones paradoxically oscillate between grounding and transcendence, between the weight of existence and spiritual aspiration — between earthly anchoring and celestial striving. In the act of creation, the figure, like a romantic wanderer, examines the given space and its own role within it. Its physical dimension becomes a playground — a field that allows it to touch its own interiority: psychic, spiritual, sensorial. Symbolically, the ground — the terrain of life — becomes a site of questioning, experimentation, and transformation, the place of an ultimate encounter with oneself. Clearly framed compositions, staged like theatrical boxes where inner dramas unfold through ingenuous play, address themes of sexuality, nudity, shame, and fall — not as provocations, but as pivotal moments of transition, of growth, of lost innocence. The figure is captured by the painter at the moment it steps into its own realm of ethical freedom. In this sense, Dmitrović builds an ethics of play — not in a trivial or decorative key, but as an ontological inquiry, a method for uncovering the complexities of identity and the relationship with the Other. The protagonist emerges from the pattern of predestination and predetermined models, forging his own path: free will is, in fact, constructed through clearly defined play, through action. His ironically radical naïveté and vulnerability do not evoke pity, but luminous empathy — a compassion for that which is weak, transient, mortal. This illustrated hero lives in a world devoid of sacred values and social conventions that demand seriousness and obedience while concealing deceit. Through his romantic spirit, he faces reality without illusion: through conscious undressing, through the exposure of the body and the senses, through a curious uncovering, the figure — crossing the boundary of the permissible — enters a zone of transgression, thus reaching a higher level of inner awareness. The crossing of one’s limits, the breaking of inner prohibitions and restraints, the entry into the other side of reality — tangible, sensual, immediate — opens the space of self-realization. Childlike curiosity is not a sign of superficiality but of the energy of perpetual seeking. Eroticism here is not an ornament or motif, but an act of passage — an entry into a new state of liberation. In this way, the unveiled being steps forth in its true nature, attaining a lucid gaze. In Dmitrović’s painting, the dream of the unattainable lies beyond individual, cultural, and moral boundaries. His works redeem the uncertainty and nothingness of everyday life by establishing an elevated, inwardly fulfilled existence in which meaning and desire prevail. This process unfolds through fragmentation, discontinuity, and displacement — through the act of free will. The rhythm of adventure pulsates across the canvas — in series, in progressions, in actions interwoven into a harmonious ensemble. Davor Dmitrović’s painting is a painting of yearning and striving for revelation, a quiet plea for the Absolute. In a constant escape from the prescribed patterns of life, the protagonist turns to his imagination and nostalgic expectations. He longs for freedom of consciousness, for the fulfillment of desire — for, as the tone of the exhibition suggests, it is more terrifying to imagine than to live. Imagination demands courage — to step into the void, through solitude, through the labyrinth of change in which being is perpetually imprisoned by social stigma. In this sense, these paintings evoke the active state of transition between adolescence and adult maturity, between unconscious existence and reflective being — the state of courageous confrontation with oneself that ultimately leads toward inner serenity. Milica Zorić A Beautiful Lie: On Pinocchio by Davor Dmitrović On his canvases, Davor Dmitrović seamlessly and skillfully fuses anecdote with expression, illustration with painting, humor with pathos. In doing so, he has created the perfect foundation for his new cycle, devoted to the theme of fairy tales. For fairy tales contain all of this: they present to us a fantastic world appealing to children, yet one that always harbors an undercurrent of suffering, trembling somewhere in the background. Through the translucent and shimmering veils of these tales, grim and painful insights about human life break through — revelations about the eternal cycles to which we are enslaved. Dmitrović’s robust figures, caught in seemingly naïve or comical situations, speak of desire, suffering, disappointment, and the pervasive absurdity in which human beings spend their lives. The protagonist of many of his most recent paintings is Pinocchio — the wooden puppet from Carlo Collodi’s tale who desperately wants to become a real boy, to be humanized, to achieve what every person longs for: to affirm his humanity and justify his unique existence in the world. On that journey, he encounters numerous enemies — but his greatest adversary is the inner one: with every lie he tells, his wooden nose grows a little longer. It is a parable about the need for a life free of deceit, about the necessity of honesty toward oneself and others, and above all about the importance of taking responsibility — for only thus can we justify our lives, claim to have left a positive trace in the world, and not have squandered our brief time on Earth. One might even call it an almost Sartrean parable. Yet the question remains: how can one live without lies? Everything we see and perceive is a lie — mere electrical impulses received by the cortex of our brain, images we continuously adapt to our perception. Everything told to us by states, churches, schools, and parents is a lie — an ideology whose purpose is to make us obedient subjects, compliant citizens, well-tailored offspring adjusted to the standards of the society in which we live; heirs ready to kill heroically or amass great wealth for their tribe. All art is a lie — an illusion (of space, of fictional narrative, or simply of compositional brilliance, it matters little) through which a skilled artist plays with our emotions while searching, along with us, for some greater meaning of life and the world. Even the story of Pinocchio itself is a lie — a nineteenth-century moral sermon, a comforting illusion about the inner ethical constitution as a prerequisite for a happy individual life and, consequently, a happy society. The same lies were written — and believed — by many writers of Pinocchio’s century: Dickens, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, and others. Dmitrović’s paintings seek to expose that lie. His Pinocchio dreams of perfect love that will never come, amuses himself with childish displays of masculinity, loses himself in meaningless sexual fantasies, or tries to breathe life into an inflatable doll — a lifeless object of barren desire — all the while unaware that he himself is a puppet. The inanimate gazes upon the inanimate; meaninglessness is born within meaninglessness — this seems to be the refrain of these canvases. These are scenes of humanity’s futile quest for something greater than the everyday existence into which it is thrown, greater than the emotional confinement to which it is condemned, and greater than the hell of social and interpersonal relations in which it lives. The only hint of hope for something beyond all that appears in these paintings as a plane trail in the sky — a promise of an exciting journey, of elevation and departure into the unknown blue, into another life. Yet Dmitrović is not here merely to nihilistically and destructively unmask lies or to burn the wooden puppets that authority figures use to frighten us, presenting them as models of good or bad behavior. On the contrary, he loves those puppets. He reminds us that it is precisely their lies — those that resist the tyranny of reality — rather than the striving for moral superiority that breeds guilt and submission to authority (as evidenced by many religions), that define what it means to be human. For human beings are the only creatures capable of inventing fairy tales — those delightful and wondrous lies about a better self, a better life, and a better society. And why not, sometimes, believe in them — hoping they might, at least once, come true. Feđa Gavrilović