Uros Djurc Killing the Dragon with Time Machine Bass_2024

The painting draws on the visual codes of Byzantine sacred art, specifically the archetypal scene of Saint George slaying the dragon. In my reinterpretation, the iconographic structure is transposed into the contemporary field of art: the saint is replaced by Uroš Đurić, an artist and cultural figure whose practice and Manifesto of Autonomism embody the struggle for artistic independence and resistance to systemic pressures.

The dragon, traditionally a symbol of demonic threat, here becomes a metaphor for the forces that endanger the autonomy of artistic creation. Instead of a spear, Đurić wields a bass guitar modeled after the one in Back to the Future, transformed into a “time machine.” This hybrid object merges the temporality of music, the mythology of rock, and the speculative technologies of film culture, suggesting that art can act across time and reconfigure cultural narratives.

By fusing the sacred narrative with the iconography of pop and counterculture, the work raises the question of what forms of heroism remain possible today. Can the contemporary artist, in line with the autonomist ideal, assume the role of the saint — not to destroy the “dragon,” but to transmute it, channeling its destructive energy into new modes of cultural imagination?.