Ivan Grubanov was born on 9th March 1976 in Belgrade. His graduation from the Painting department at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade was followed by a two-year specialization at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, and a one-year programme at Delfina Studios in London. Shortly after he received a scholarship of Casa de Velazquez, a French institute in Madrid and was a guest lecturer at Hochschüle für bildende kunst in Braunschweig. He earned his PhD in Arts at the University of Leuven in Belgium.
The focal point of Grubanov’s art is a thematic body of work dedicated to the notion of nation. In the production of his paintings, the artist uses the well-established practice of selecting national entities whose symbols include characteristic national slogans, which are embroidered on the canvas surface. In the following stages of applying the layers of paint, petrol, and smoke, they are being covered, concealed and transformed into alternative definitions and messages through provocative visual and aesthetic presentations, posing engaged questions about cohesive properties of today’s nations, their correspondence with current social reality, possible developments of the notion of nation and the future influence of emblems.
The artist’s recent work is part of continual project of long-term researching and interpreting ideological, political, and cultural aspects of the notion of nation in which he uses painting as a method of acquiring knowledge.