EXPANSES / Josip Mijić

EXHIBITION:
Josip Mijić / EXPANSES / NFT Exhibition / Opening reception: May 17 2025 at 7 p. m.


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EXPANSES:

Generative

11 Universes

19 by Dr

29 Josip Mijić

It is with great honour that I share with you the introductory words for EXPANSES, the latest solo exhibition by Dr Josip Mijić – an artist and researcher whose practice has consistently shaped new frontiers in digital art through the fusion of computational aesthetics and conceptual inquiry. At the heart of this body of work lies a profound engagement with algorithmic logic, visual poetics, and temporal evolution – a convergence that positions EXPANSES within the lineage of time-based generative art, while marking a distinct contribution to contemporary visual culture.
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Comprising a series of vertically oriented, AI-supported generative video installations, EXPANSES opens a contemplative portal into the unfolding logic of mathematical universes. Each video work centres around a morphing visual structure that dynamically evolves on the screen, anchored visually and conceptually within the symmetry of a network. These node-based, pulsing formations resemble abstract constellations or neural circuits, continuously reconfiguring themselves over time. They echo an invisible architecture – perhaps one governed by the coordinates of prime numbers, or the hidden logic of a generative codebase – mapping the unseen scaffolding of digital cognition.
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Mijić’s formal approach is rooted in the aesthetics of transformation. The algorithm does not merely animate; it orchestrates a choreography of emergence. Shapes birth new shapes, lines split into lattices, and clusters of form dissolve into others – each transition unfolding in mesmerising rhythm. In their verticality, these works evoke sacred scrolls or monumental tablets, shifting the act of viewing into an experience of vertical ascent or descent – a journey through digital strata.
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This exhibition arrives at a pivotal juncture in Mijić’s career, reflecting almost a decade of pioneering digital practice and research. Known for his early engagement with generative art tools and the critical potential of code, Mijić has worked across physical and virtual platforms – notably contributing artworks through emerging NFT-based digital art by publishing collections on leading blockchain-supported networks. In doing so, he has not only explored the aesthetics of generativity but also its implications for authorship, permanence, and public reception in digital culture.
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EXPANSES stands alongside the work of contemporary artists who have turned to mathematical principles as generative engines for creative output. Like Xylor Jane’s meticulous arrangements of prime number sequences or Hanne Darboven’s numerical time-scores, Mijić invokes number, structure, and sequence not as rigid frameworks but as living languages. His installations are not “about” numbers – they are numbers, in motion, in space, given breath through the elegance of code and the intuition of an artist.
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What distinguishes Mijić’s generative universe is its fluidity – a universe where structure is born to transform, where each node holds the potential to generate an infinite elsewhere. These are not diagrams of fixed systems but living organisms of pure becoming. And in this becoming, viewers find not just patterns to decode, but spaces to inhabit, reflect, and imagine.
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As we open EXPANSES, we celebrate not only an extraordinary exhibition but an artist whose work continues to expand the horizons of what digital art can be. Painter JoMi’s exploration into generative networks speaks both to the internal geometries of computation and to the boundless outer architectures of the universe and mind – revealing that in the CODEd/deCODEd mind, the cosmic resides.
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Zlatan Filipović


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EXPANSES

At the core of every thought process lies an idea. But how do we translate an idea into something tangible? How do we make the invisible visible? The mind, being an endless expanse, knows no boundaries – yet the moment its ideas attempt to materialise in the physical world, we encounter countless barriers. The EXPANSES series explores precisely this process of visualisation, revealing what lies beyond the limits of perception. With the help of digital technology, mathematics, and visual art, Mijić presents a dialectic between order and chaos, the static and the dynamic, the absolute and the relative, the invisible and the visible.

At the centre of each animation lies an object created based on prime numbers. A single spark – abstract yet fundamental. This spark symbolises the beginning, a core entity that stands like a beacon within chaotic thought dynamics. Prime numbers, in their indivisibility and autonomy, represent what is primary, primal, and unchangeable. They are the atomic units of the numerical system, just as they are the atomic units of the creative process in these works.

The central object, composed of three Ulam spirals – one for each axis (x, y, z) – is embedded in spherical glass forms, representing the atomic particle of a concept. It symbolises the first thoughts that ignite every creative and innovative process. A complex Plexus animation – a visual network of thoughts and possibilities that pulsates and connects – surrounds this static yet rotating object. This is not pure chaos at play, but a structure in which simple and complex components intertwine, reflecting the way the human mind shapes, elaborates, and evolves ideas. A thought never remains isolated but expands, creating new dimensions of meaning. It is through this dynamic process of creation and evolution that a multitude of paths, interpretations, and variations are born.

Mathematics – often perceived as a cold, strictly logical discipline – here takes on an almost metaphysical dimension. Prime numbers are not just algorithmic units – they are fundamental patterns upon which the structure of the universe is built. They offer a path to understanding order within seemingly chaotic visualisations. Each number in the animation has its place and meaning, forming complex geometric relationships reminiscent of neural networks in the brain, or even broader, cosmic patterns.

Glitches, which appear periodically, represent moments of uncertainty in the transmission of thoughts from the mind into the visible world. They symbolise disruptions in understanding – moments when information is lost through imperfect transmissions. In a psychological context, glitches evoke cognitive dissonance; cracks in our consciousness through which ambiguity and doubt slip. Yet it is precisely in these imperfections that a space is created – for reinterpretation, for a different perspective, for shifting the boundaries of perception. The sounds of these visual glitches further intensify the experience, transforming visual information into auditory impulses that vibrate in the imperfect rhythm of transmitted thoughts.

If anything defines the contemporary moment, it is humanity’s inability to endure silence. Overwhelmed with information, we increasingly struggle to distinguish the essential from the fleeting, the authentic from the staged. Without immersion and intense focus, we are blinded by a Tower of Babel in which meaning is lost. In such a context, EXPANSES does not come as an answer, but as a provocation – a trap for a gaze that believes it can stick to the superficial . Its surfaces breathe, change, and reject one meaning while generating another.

While modernism believed in the autonomy of the artwork, and postmodernism in the plurality of interpretations, this artistic series dismantles both paradigms; here, artworks are neither autonomous nor subject to endless interpretations. They are riddles that never get fully resolved. EXPANSES functions much like a mental map; it charts not only the space of the gallery but also the space of the viewer's perception. What happens when we are faced with a form that resists fixation? When the eye tries to grasp an image that is constantly being transformed, pulsating, disrupting its own integrity? That moment of uncertainty – a cognitive gap – is exactly what drives this series and Mijić's artistic practice. Because art is not here to serve a decorative function, to be a tapestry on the wall of intellectual comfort. Art is here to destabilise.

That is why EXPANSES is not an exhibition in the classical sense of the word; it is an energetic field, a space in which art is not observed but experienced – like a wave, a vibration, an earthquake. Because what is art if not a continuous collision of the visualised and the conceptual? If not a radical questioning of the boundaries we impose upon ourselves? After all, can we still speak of aesthetics in a world where everything is aestheticised? When social networks filter our perceptions and reduce visual experience to algorithmically selected sensations, is there still space for an authentic encounter with art? EXPANSES raises exactly these questions. Mijić’s compositions do not offer simple, visual pleasures – they are a challenge, an intellectual terrain where the observer loses their footing. In a phenomenological sense, this exhibition places the viewer in a state of alertness; a position that demands a recalibration of one’s way of seeing. Cognitive ease is not an option, because this is a space that rejects familiar codes. This is not art to be understood – this is art to be lived.

The EXPANSES exhibition is not merely an artistic act – it is also an act of resistance. In an age when everything is interpreted through spectacle, art that refuses to be consumed easily is, in itself, an act of defiance. Mijić creates in the space between vision and perception, between matter and idea, between image and its deconstruction. It is precisely in this tension that the power of the exhibition lies.

In the end, what remains is not just an image, nor a mere mathematical structure. What remains is an impression – a sense of the infinite, of possibilities branching outward, of ideas spreading through the digital and physical ether.

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