artist statement
I paint what the mind glimpses, what dissolves when named too quickly, the mental, sensory, and emotional impressions of life, the “qualia” of existence. My work draws on disrupted patterns and intangible forms created by fleeting perceptual, digital and optical phenomena.
Through addition and subtraction, distortion and ambiguity, my process-led painting bridges the somatic and the spectral, becoming visual investigations of perception and embodiment: at times fragmented, at times profoundly interconnected.
bio
Ðurđica Selec, also known as Djuro is a digital designer and painter. Her work encapsulates the sensory interplay between technology, perception, and the intangible, which she explores through painting, drawing and embroidery. Hailing originally from Croatia, she divides her time between her studio in Deptford, London and her desert retreat in Andalusia, Spain. Upon receiving her BFA First Class Honours with the Art Academy in London, she was awarded the Liberty Specialty Markets Art Award 2022/23. She has continued her art education with Turps Education in 2022/23 and 2023/24. She is a member of the Unprimed art collective. She also exhibits around wider London and UK with the Split collective.
cv
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work / education / awards
2023 - 2024 - Turps Art School Correspondence Course
2022 - 2023 - Turps Art School Correspondence Course
2022 - 2024 - Liberty Specialty Markets Art Award
2019 - 2022 - BA Fine Art, First Class Honours, Art Academy London
2019 - Drawing Foundation with The University for the Creative Arts at OU
2015 - 2020 - co-founder and designer, Space Squirrel
2010 - 2014 - runs Illo.me, a character illustration studio
2007 - 2016 - independent digital designer
2007 - Tanay studio, Zagreb, Croatia - creative painting degree with Emil Tanay
2005 - History and English language, Faculty of Philosophy, Osijek, Croatia
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exhibitions / fairs
UPCOMING: May 2026 - With No More Sound Than The Mice Make, Peckham, London
Nov 2025 - Annual Open, Southwark Park Gallery, London
Oct 2025 - Postcards From The Studio, Split Collective, London
Oct 2025 - Striding Edge, Unprimed Collective, Brixton, Londin
July 2025 - Split, Turps group show, London
May 2025 - Time to Time, Unprimed Collective, Peckham, London
May 2025 - Split, Turps group show, Wigan
Mar-Apr 2025 - Split, Turps group show, Wrexham
Oct 2024 - Layers, Unprimed collective, Brixton, London
May 2024 - Drawing Open, No Format Gallery, London
Apr 2024 - Lick, Safehouse Peckham, London
Nov 2023 - Painting Open, group show, No Format Gallery, London
Sept 2023 - Modern Life, duo exhibition, Deptford X Festival, London
Sept 2023 - Do Not Swallow, group show, Safehouse Peckham, London
June-July 2023 - The Other Art Fair, London
March-April 2023 - Mud, for you, group show, Fitzrovia Gallery, London
July 2022 - Graduate Showcase at the Art Academy London, Borough, London
April-May 2022 - Ambient Anxiety, duo exhibition, Curious Kudu, Peckham, London
"Selec’s work investigates the glitch, something that is mysterious, unknowable and usually temporary or short-lived. This transient fault is intrinsically difficult to troubleshoot and therefore hard to pin down in technological terms and life! The same can be said of the effects of uncertainty and the anxiety caused by technology and consuming media. The layers of glitch on glitch can confuse us further and thus mounts the tension and anxiety."
~ Karen Parker, Intersilient
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Practice
Djuro combines the spontaneous nature of paint application like spray paint or pouring with controlled masking techniques, brushstrokes, using acrylic and oil paints. She incorporates paint-soaked netting and a process of masking, adding and subtracting layers, building anachronistic compositions that create visual interference evocative of screen glitches, as well as of hypnagogic, inner eye images.
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Language
The artist's visual dialect blends technology with the esoteric and spiritual, going beyond the screen as merely a technological output. Mimicking and lovingly mocking computer screens, her work borrows from over a decade of graphic design experience in the tech sector. Her art reflects a continuous quest for balance: screen-nature, techie-luddite, and the digital-spiritual.
“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 blurs the boundaries between the tangible and the ephemeral,
I invite the viewer into such a mindful opportunity.”
~ Djuro