Jasna Samarin: Silent Currents

Vibrations Beyond the Visible

In her new series Silent Currents, Jasna Samarin enters a space where science and art not only touch, but also create a common field of research. Her point of departure is modern neuroscientific findings about spiral signals and vortex flows in the cerebral cortex, about the mysterious dynamics that regulate the rhythm of our thoughts, memories and feelings. These spiral patterns, which are reminiscent of water eddies, air turbulence or sound waves, may be the key to understanding the functioning of consciousness, as well as shedding light on the deterioration caused by neurodegenerative diseases. However, Jasna Samarin does not interpret these findings as a scientist, but as an artist: as a creator who responds to the invisible vibrations with the resources of painting and drawing, appealing to the senses and stimulating the imagination.

The canvases of the series Vortex reveal the fluid dynamics that we recognise from nature: the circulation of the wind, the movement of waves, the subtle expansion of gravitational fields. These phenomena are not, however, presented as mimetic images of nature, but as projections of internal processes. Spiral centres, optical interferences and wave sequences spread across the surface of the canvas as a visual echo of neural signals that otherwise remain beyond the reach of our perceptual field. The viewer encounters images that are both abstract and intuitive, as if the energy from brain currents had spilled over into the physical experience of observation. The artist creates works that are not intended for explanation, but for experiencing. The paintings become visual metaphors for processes that we sense but cannot see directly. This is where their power lies: they address the viewer not through scientific knowledge, but through feeling, intuition and empathy.

Jasna Samarin’s formal artistic research inhabits the border between drawing, painting and graphics. She places particular emphasis on the relationship between the line created by a vector (plotted) and the hand-drawn stroke. The automated precision of the machine creates networks and structures that the artist intertwines with a brush, an acrylic marker and spray. Technology is present, but never dominant; it remains in the background as a mere tool that enables new possibilities of expression, never functioning as an autonomous authority.
It is precisely in this interweaving that a unique tension arises: between order and chance, between the predictable and the unpredictable, between the cold precision of the machine and the “imperfections” of the human hand. It is this ambivalence that gives the paintings their lively dynamics. The drawings are superimposed with displacements, creating vibrations that ensure that the images are never static, but always in motion.

The series Neural Entropy takes this research even further, drawing on microscopic images of neurons damaged by diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS, or altered by the influence of various substances. However, rather than creating documentary reproductions, the artist translates these images into a symbolic space where entropy does not only mean loss, but also represents creative potential in terms of the countless configurations of possibilities that make up our inner world. In doing so, she raises the question of the fragility and complexity of the nervous system, but also of its universality: if neurons are the basic building blocks of our consciousness, then their entropic dynamics can also serve as a metaphor for the diversity of our experiences, thoughts and feelings.

The exhibition Silent Currents invites the viewer to stop and listen to that which is usually inaudible: the quiet music of the brain, the subtle rhythms and vibrations that accompany us at every step. At the same time, these works open up a wider space for reflection, as they explore ways in which art can translate scientific knowledge into a sensual language, connecting the inner and the outer worlds, the visible and the invisible, the mechanical and the human. In a time when we live at an accelerated pace surrounded by constant noise, when we are emersed in a flood of information and new technologies, Jasna Samarin offers something that is completely the opposite: slow, silent currents and vibrations. The canvases become surfaces where fluid lines and subtle colour transitions are experienced as meditative rhythms that return us to introspective listening and sensory experience.
Jasna Samarin’s works are not just aesthetic compositions; they are vibrations that remind us that beyond the visible, life is always flowing with currents that shape nature and ourselves. The exhibition Silent Currents not only provides an insight into the artist’s creative process, but also invites the viewer to experience the world differently, to search for that which is intangible yet ever-present, that which connects us to a universe of subtle energies.

Exhibition curator: Nina Jeza

The exhibition has been prepared in collaboration with the Ljubljana Fine Artists Society: