Radenko Milak

Born 1980 in Travnik (former Yugoslavia), lives and works in Banja Luka (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and produces projects around the world. After graduating at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Arts in Belgrade, he started creating works prolifically mostly as series. Mainly focusing on painting, watercolor, drawing and animation films, he defines himself as a painter of the digital era and makes the image the very matter of his creation. Trapped in Bosnia during Yugoslavia’s unfortunate and violent break up, Milak made use of what was available to him at the time: media, books and press material as a source to develop his ideas in his studio. His works put into play the symbolic power of images and their aesthetic potential, in an epoch when they are gradually replacing articulated languages and when their production has gotten out of control with the coming of the digital age. Focusing on topics such as personal stories and collective memory, Milak’s trademark black and white creations resonate as phantasmagoric echoes of the past or elude to new issues we might face in the future. In 2017, he represented Bosnia and Herzegovina for the 57th Venice Biennale with a conceptual exhibition entitled "University of Disaster”. In 2018 he was part of the Kochi-Muziris biennale. He is currently working on his solo shows for this year at the Marta Herford Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.