jovan-matic.com

Biography

Jovan Matić (b. 1996, Belgrade, Serbia) is an artist working primarily in ceramics and sculpture. He earned both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Ceramics at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade (2014–2020). From 2022 to 2023, he was a research fellow at the Ishoken Institute in Tajimi, Japan. His research there was supported by the Canon Foundation in Europe, the Kanbe Foundation, and the Contemporary Art and Culture Promotion Foundation. In 2025, he began a three-year postgraduate program at the Royal Academy Schools in London.

Artist statement

 

I find myself at an everlasting crossroads of decisions. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Secondly, minutely, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, across a lifetime. I feel the pressure of constantly having to choose.

 

 

Technology has globalised us and shrunk the fabric of time and space, yet we still feel the ticking of the clock, now alongside the instantaneity of the feed. I move through the depths of human society and history, and the accelerating space of the internet, trying to understand my position within systems much larger than myself. I become a number among numbers, legible to machines that observe, calculate and anticipate my choices.

 

 

My work moves between analogue and digital worlds, between what can be touched and what cannot. I am interested in the footprints we leave in both: what remains, what disappears, and whether anything truly disappears at all. I combine the known with the unknown, the concrete hardness of materials with the softness of human experience.

 

 

I question how we locate ourselves within an ever-expanding space and an ever-shrinking world. How much of a choice belongs to us? How much has already been shaped by the masses around us, and what happens when we realise that those masses are also us?

exhibitions

Solo shows

2025

Cut Me Out, November Gallery in Belgrade, Serbia


2024

Digital Cravings Matic x Dekadenca, Belgrade Pride opening event, Miljenko Dereta Space,
Belgrade

Disrupting the Feed, Hayashi+ Art Bridge Gallery, Tokyo, Japan


2022

Abundance Zone, November Gallery in Belgrade, Serbia

2021

Private Zone, American Corner Novi Sad in Novi Sad, Serbia

Symposium Marble and Sounds – World of Ceramics, Pavilion Biveta in Arandjelovac, Serbia

Life in vain – Life in pain, X Vitamin Art Gallery in Belgrade, Serbia

2019

Abandonment / Covers, Gallery of Student Cultural Center in Belgrade, Serbia

Exhibition of Ceramics Students, Gallery of Vracar municipality in Belgrade, Serbia

Group exhibitions
2023

Scene 01, Jildart Gallery, Nagoya, Japan

Summer Vibes: Summertime Sadness, Novembar Gallery in Belgrade, Serbia

Graduation Exhibition, Voice Gallery in Tajimi, Japan

2022

Mid-Term Exhibition, Tajimishi Tojikiisho Research Institute (Ishoken) in Tajimi, Japan

Bling Bling?, International Ceramics Competition in Geneva, Switzerland

2021

Triennale of Drawing and small plastics, Pavilion Cvijeta Zuzoric in Belgrade, Serbia

2020

Belgrade Ceramics Biennial, Residence of Princes Ljubica in Belgrade, Serbia

2019

Private value 2, Residence of the Ambassador of Switzerland in Belgrade, Serbia

Festival 9 – Alchemy, Old Brick Factory in Belgrade, Serbia

2018

Miniature 3, Singidunum Gallery in Belgrade, Serbia