About

Short CV

Boris Hodak was born 1970 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Education:
– BFA Academy of Fine Arts, University of Sarajevo, Department of Art Education, B&H, 2001.
– MFA Academy of Fine Arts, University of Sarajevo, Department of Painting, B&H, 2013.
Final Master’s Thesis entitled “Images of postmodern era (Fairy-tale or nightmare)”

He has been actively participating in local and international contemporary art scene through many exhibitions for over twenty years.
Full member of ULUBIH (Artists Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina) since 2005, and member of Arts Council of ULUBiH since 2014.

Full member of KOLEKTIV KREAKTIVA since 2006.

Full member of ULUKS (Canton Sarajevo Association of Artists) since 2016.
Received the status of Canton Sarajevo Prominent independent artist since 2020.

Lives and works as freelance artist (painter, art teacher, graphic designer) in Sarajevo.

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About art

Hodak works with painting and collage media to create his unique artwork. His artwork is filled with creative energy, very bizarre, subversive and takes a critical view of social, political and cultural issues. A parody of both the melodrama and Freudian dream explanation, urban cannibalization, the irony, satire and social-historic commentary on entertainment industry, political and royal icons, as well as interest in the changing world of today.
His works inherit the entire tradition of surrealism in theory, content and form, to the extent that it is identifiable and shaped in post-surrealism. Hodak drew quite extensively on Dali’s work at first, but gradually developed his own post-surrealist expression.
As an artist of the generation that reached puberty and grew up during the good old days, at a time when the best punk music and new wave were still being listened to, during the mid-1980s, he had as his models the older generations, who had a more critical view of the world than today. This explains the marked presence in the works of punk subculture, anarchy, humor and irony in the Monty Python style, of a critique of society and social phenomena, globalization and deviant morality, challenging the phenomenon of human stupidity, as an inexhaustible source of inspiration extensively drawn upon by Hodak.
Japan and its contemporary pop culture occupy a significant place as the subject of Hodak’s recent works. The daydreaming or typical dreamlike nature of surrealism that featured in earlier works gradually disappears, to be replaced by what might be called dark pop-surrealism.