Atlas For An Urban Traveler

As asserted by quantum theory’s “double-slit experiment”, electrons simultaneously function as both waves and particles when unobserved. However, when observed, these electrons function as only particles. What this suggests is that the mere act of being observed literally changes the baseline actions of subatomic particles. What if this dictates the laws of macro-organisms as well? For Atlas for an Urban Traveler, Nataša Galečić states that her experiences while traveling through Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States have led to her creating work centered upon the simultaneous fragmentation and interconnectedness of small units which affect and make up the larger whole. She questions the possibility of synergy resultant of the accumulated forces of many singular beings’ interactions – regardless of whether mediated, contemplated, or accidental. Galecic clearly contemplates this notion in a series of increasingly macrocosmic relationships – self to self, self to community, community to landscape, man-made landscape to nature, and eventually artist to viewers.

Galecic’s work asserts an even more specific question, central to the core of ontology. Do humans and human gestures function in the same way that electrons do? Can the presence of one traveler legitimately change the base function of others and vice versa? Galecic’s work celebrates the complexity of relations in this way and basks in the fact that we don’t actually know the answer to these questions. Her work, in all of its spatial playing, contemplative distance, and detailed nuance, activates space in such a way that its elements, when observed, converge within the viewer, functioning like electrons, becoming a particle reality that is particular to and interconnected with the specific viewer’s world. Galecic’s gestures examine the traveler’s nature of being both a particle and a wave – a unique stance in which you are simultaneously a part of the system and simply passing through it, knowing that, when observed, your effect on the community is more concretely measured in some small way, but when unobserved, you defy the laws of physics. Your effect is neither here nor there, neither measureable nor immeasureable, neither factual nor merely theoretical. You pulsate as both an element inserted and a wave permeating the structure, and perhaps this nature of all beings is exactly what holds everything together.

Text by Dawn Kramlich, MFA