The exhibition Today Is the Day When No One Brought the Ball…* at the Gallery-Legacy of Milica Zorić and Rodoljub Čolaković presents an important thematic segment within Predrag Terzić’s oeuvre and the result of his decades-long engagement with the phenomenon of sport—more precisely, with basketball—as a sphere strongly shaped by the socio-political, economic, cultural, and technological contexts of the contemporary world.
Terzić’s fascination with basketball stems from his long-standing pursuit of the game as a devoted follower, careful observer, and dedicated player. For him, as for many generations in this region, basketball was a crucial part of growing up and forming values in socialist Yugoslavia. Basketball courts—once an indispensable feature of residential blocks and village playgrounds throughout the former Yugoslavia—become the central motif of the artist’s works, a kind of tribute to a social system whose fate, from its rise to its dramatic collapse and transition, was largely shared by sport. Abandoned and neglected today, these sites remain silent monuments to the spirit of community, social interaction, and specific forms of identity formation through subcultural styles that, even in a global context, increasingly resemble nostalgic memories of a complex yet, in its own way, more immediate world.
Terzić frames the story of basketball through the lens of the contemporary social moment, in which professional sport has almost lost the innocence of game. Sport has become another field of capitalist imperatives: profit, physical and mental conditioning as a prerequisite for competitiveness, and status and prestige as integral elements of the spectacle of mass entertainment. For the artist, contemporary sport functions as a mirror of broader social dynamics and struggles: market logic and systems of control replace playfulness, spontaneity, and intuitive play, translating the excitement of competition into a tense image of collective and individual survival. Terzić further explores this moment of transformation through a critical reflection on the relationship between basketball and technological innovation, which has become an essential tool in optimizing both team and individual performance, as well as in shaping coaching strategies.
The growing influence of technology also significantly shapes the experience of the sporting event itself, offering unprecedented possibilities for engaging audiences through digital and virtual formats, including gaming content, augmented reality, social media, personalized streaming, and other forms of simulated participation and real-time connection with the game or individual players. Terzić asks what is gained and what is lost in this new reality: can technology truly convey the psychological tension of a basketball duel, the unpredictability of the physical presence of teammates or opponents, as well as the atmosphere and interactions that imbue every movement and decision with emotional intensity? Through different media, analog processes, artificial intelligence, and VR, the artist’s most recent series reexamines the radically changed image of the world across all spheres of social life—including sport—where every act of contemplation, slowing down, and resistance to manipulation may open the possibility for a different course and meaning.
Predrag Terzić (Belgrade, 1972) graduated in 2000 from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Department of Painting, in the class of Professor Čedomir Vasić. He earned his master’s degree at the same faculty. In 2001, he became a member of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS). Terzić earned a PhD in interdisciplinary studies: Theory of Arts and Media at the University of Arts in Belgrade, under the supervision of Professor Divna Vuksanović. Following his master’s degree, he participated in numerous exhibitions both in Serbia and internationally. His works are held in several private collections. He has presented 23 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 40 group exhibitions in Serbia and abroad (Germany, Slovenia, Belgium, Canada, Austria, USA, Italy, Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Sweden, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Turkey, Moldova, Albania).
* Thanks to musician Ajs Nigrutin, whose lyric from the song Basketi bez lopte inspired the title of this exhibition.
The realization of the exhibition has been supported by: Fakultet za medije i komunikacije, Muzej nauke i tehnike, Kinopravda Institute, ArtZona, Lenovo, Motorola, FINEGRAF, Coolmedia & W Solution
Curated by Miroslav Karić.