About

Artist's Statement

As a contemporary painter, I aim to portray how digital technology molds our perception of time, nature and oneself.  I've been painting ever since my first unsolicited mural appeared on the wall of my parents house in the late ‘80s. Now, in a continuation of over a decade of digital design work in the tech sector, I aim to convey a visual sensory overload born out of technoculture. 

My canvas offers familiar web graphics, and then distorts them: with no assigned compositional hierarchy, the layers cut and disrupt one another, achieving the most human tendency tech demonstrates: a lag, a bug, a glitch. I find that nothing articulates virtual as well as the glitch does. Like beauty, it commands our attention, and wakes us up. We notice being plucked out of immediate reality and sucked into a virtual one. As digital noise compromises the materiality of canvas, I invite the viewer into such a waking opportunity.

Djuro Selec, contemporary painter

Bio

Durdica Selec, or Djuro [jUro:h], is a fine artist and digital designer whose work encapsulates the persistent techno utopian ambient of our contemporary existence, which she explores through painting, digital art, and embroidery.

Drawing inspiration from her creative background in the IT sector, Djuro embraces an abstract expressionist approach, using a vibrant visual language that is a harmonious fusion of perceptual sensitivities and technical curiosities.

Originally from Croatia, Djuro divides her time between her desert retreat in Andalusia, Spain, and her life and art studio in South London, UK. She exhibits her captivating artwork in the UK and continues to deepen her understanding of painting through dedicated studies at Turps Art School.

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"There is no definitive perspective that dominates Selec’s works. Instead, they are both connected and disjointed by the changing grids and pixels contained within. On occasion the outcome is more fluid and attractive, other times it provokes risk and retaliation. Unlike an algorithm error set in place only to eradicate negative feedback, Selec warns and allures you towards tempting digital worlds."

~ Maryam Arshad, FAYD Editor in Chief

  • Djuro Selec painting process

    Method

    I use spray paint which I apply through netting that I’ve painted on with latex. A lot of layers are masked off before I apply the next one. Most of my pieces were roughly planned in a graphic software, made halfway, photographed and glitched in code again to see where the algorithms would take it. In that sense, the canvas becomes my digital graphic file, cutting and pasting until the perfect distortion appears. It is an ongoing migration of image and format, from screen to canvas, from machine to human and, as you view them now – back again.

  • Djuro Selec studio view

    Reason

    Following the trail of Hito Steyerl and Legacy Russel’s writing, I celebrate the glitch as an agent of resistance to the machine and a signifier of humanlike traits in technology. Glitch expresses our collective anxieties, our techno-utopian desires, and reminds us we are sane in our maladjustment. It shows idiosyncrasies in our collectively dreamed-up, hyper-connected world. Likewise, my paintings are imaginary artifacts of the information age: lacking in pictorial sense, they offer noise and resolution: an art of carefully planned accidents.

studio life