Reception for Gallery Artist at Westfield Memorial Library on November 14

On Friday, November 14 from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m., the Westfield Memorial Library will host a reception and an after-hours viewing of CORE by Irena Pejovic, the current artist in the gallery. Visitors will have a chance to meet the artist in person and find out more about her work. Light refreshments will be served.

CORE began with rapid-fire drawings the artist made on-site, at the rehearsal space of Brooklyn-based dance troupe “KoreResponse” in early 2012. After watching numerous rehearsals, Pejovic transmitted the drawings into a wide variety of printmaking techniques and materials, finally arriving at the works on papers that are both opaque and see-through.

Some of the works consist of single images viewed in series; others are comprised of many translucent layers. According to the artist, they transmit a sense of intense compression and bound-up energy. And yet, they seem lighter than air.

Dancers are by and large more disciplined ‘movers’ than most people; as they move their musculature becomes little more than a line to the eye, a memory of the trajectory of their path. Pejovic translates that trajectory into the language of line and form, often compressing her shapes so highly that they dominate the entire page. They fold in and upon themselves intensely, and at times read more like abstracted creatures than humans – bears, cats; whirlwinds of arms and legs.

Pejovic is an interdisciplinary artist based in NJ. She received her BFA and MFA from Montclair State University. Pejovic makes events that go beyond the visual realm, choreographing movements that turn the audience into an explorer of a world that is active and becoming—as a set of unfolding relationships—in a way that they have not before.

Recent solo exhibitions include KSP Centar Jadro-Skopje, Macedonia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Macedonia; Nancy Dryfoos Gallery, Union, NJ; Galerija Karas, Zagreb, Croatia; Gallery MC, New York. Selected group exhibitions include: Transart Triennale, Philippines and Germany, Filmideo, Index Art Center and Newark Museum, Newark, NJ; Forms of Repetition, Glasshouse Artlifelab, Brooklyn, NY; dirt-e, curated by Ben Davis, Central Booking, New York City.

She was part of SWIM, a theater piece by Robert Whitman, presented at the Alexander Kasser Theatre in Montclair (2015) and at Fridman Gallery in New York City, in cooperation with Dia Art Foundation and Julie Martin, Director of Experiments in Art and Technology (2016).

Pejovic was awarded the 2024 Individual Artist Fellowship Award in Interdisciplinary Arts and in 2018 in Photography by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, 2021 Individual Artist Recovery grant award from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, 2020 Artist Relief Fund Grant, an initiative organized by the Academy of American Poets, Artadia, Creative Capital, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MAP Fund, National YoungArts Foundation, and United States Artists and has received grants by the Ministry of Culture of North Macedonia and Croatia.

The Exhibition is on view until 11/30/2025

To sign up for a library card, or learn more about the library’s resources, please visit https://wmlnj.org/, or follow the library on Instagram. The library is located at 550 East Broad Street. Library hours are Monday - Thursday 9:30 a.m. - 8:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 9:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.; and Sunday 1:00-5:00 p.m. The library will be closed Tuesday, November 11 for Veterans Day.