paintings selection pdf
Transcription
paintings selection pdf
oT (zerkalo/prologue), 100 x 75 cm, oil on linen, 2015 oT, 100 x 75 cm, oil on linen, 2014 oT (shit n stripes), 60 x 50 cm, oil, vinyl on paper, 2016 oT (greyscale), 70 x 50 cm, oil on linen, 2016 oT, 47 x 37 cm, oil on paper, 2013 oT, 52 x 39 cm, oil on linen, 2016 oT, 40 x 27 cm, oil on linen, 2015 oT, 155 x 165 cm, oil on linen, 2012 oT, 115 x 110 cm, oil on linen, 2007 oT, 140 x 145 cm, oil on linen, 2009 oT, 180 x 155 cm, oil on linen, 2009 oT, 190 x 155 cm, oil on linen, 2009 oT (frames), 100 x 95 cm, oil on linen, 2015 oT, 54 x 54 cm, oil on linen, 2015 “z.B. Polonius” Schwarz-weiße Bilder mit einer unglaublichen Farbtiefe – zuerst einmal erscheint diese Aussage unmöglich. Aber sie treffen auf Drago Persics Malereien zu. Denn die sehr detailliert ausformulierte Maltechnik, präzise festgehaltenen Lichtverhältnisse und Materialbeschaffenheit, lassen die/den Betrachter_in vergessen, dass Farben in den gemalten Bildern abwesend sind. Sie treten in den Hintergrund und geben den Blick frei auf feinste Schattierungen, auf das Zusammentreffen von Licht und Dunkelheit und der Bewegung dazwischen, die schlussendlich vom Künstler festgehalten werden kann. Drago Persic macht sich auf die Suche nach Momenten, den Zwischenräumen, in denen Objekte eine Malbarkeit entwickeln. Ähnlich des Prozesses einer/s Schriftsteller_in, die/der unermüdlich auf der Suche nach den „richtigen“ Worten ist, nach Formulierungen, Wendungen, Verbindungen, nach den Relationen von Distanz und Nähe, die einen Text fast mühelos erscheinen lassen aber doch nicht eintönig und flach – so macht sich der Künstler intensiv daran, Motive zu finden und ihnen auf den Grund zu gehen, sie zu erfassen – besser: sie zu fassen kriegen. Für Persic ist dieses Ergründen, ist die Möglichkeit der Malbarkeit die Herausforderung und die Leidenschaft in seiner künstlerischen Praxis. In der Ausstellung z.B. Polonius wird der Vorhang zum Protagonisten. Es sind die Faltenwürfe, die Bewegung des Stoffs, aber auch die Momente des Versteckt- und Verdeckt-seins, die den Künstler so sehr interessieren. Der Vorhang rahmt und öffnet den Blick auf den Ausstellungsraum und legt sich über sämtliche Gegenstände in den Bildern. Die Objekte werden zu eigenständigen Charakteren, durch ihr Verdeckt-Sein zu Schauspielern auf der Bühne, die der Künstler in den Malereien konstruiert. Der Raum als Bühne bleibt aber noch immer ein unbestimmter – es ist den Bildern nicht abzulesen, wo sich dieser Raum befindet noch kann seine Beschaffenheit festgemacht werden. Einzig und allein ein Arrangement von Kosmeen sind frei, unbedeckt – sozusagen freigegeben für den Blick der Betrachter_innen. Die Frage stellt sich, ob sie Polonius zu Ehren – der erstochen am Boden liegt, unter seinem Vorhang, der ihn vor der Entdeckung schützen sollte um ungestört einem Gespräch zwischen der Mutter Hamlets und Hamlet selbst zu lauschen – dessen Grab zieren oder in ihrer simplen Schönheit von der Tragik ablenken sollen, die dieser Akt mit sich bringt. Der Vorhang fällt. Text by Miriam Kathrein “z.B. Polonius”, Galerie Nicola von Senger, Zürich, 2013 oT, 58 x 45 cm, oil on paper, 2013 oT, 80 x 65 cm, oil on linen, 2011 oT, 60 x 45 cm, oil on paper, 2011 In her landmark 1967 essay “The Aesthetics of Silence”, Susan Sontag introduced the concept of silence as a language. “Consider the difference between “looking” and “staring”. A look is (at least,, in part) voluntary; it is also mobile, rising and falling in intensity as its foci of interest are taken up and then exhausted. A stare has, essentially, the character of a compulsion; it is steady, unmodulated, “fixed”. Traditional art invites a look. Art that´s silent engenders a stare. In silent art, there is (at least in principle) no release from attention, because there has never, in principle, been any soliciting of it.” The paintings of Drago Persic, one comes to realise, require an unusual amount of time. The are reluctant to reveal themselves, to reveal the nature or conclusion of the larger narrative of which they each appear to be part. The viewer can simply move on, none the wiser, or stay and try to make sonse of what is happening. There are clues which can be pieced together, like documents of a crime scene, but not enough to be sure of what they mean. One is asked somehow to fill in what is not there, to stare into those passages of painted silence, those spaces in between thick with suspense, and to find something on which our imaginations can take rest. Any thread that begins to take shape does so in our own minds, anything romantic or sinister, harmless or harmful, that we might perceive is no more that that: a perception. We are players in quiet drama whose storyline the artist only barely suggests. Persic‘s careful arrangement of props, often isolated in sparse and unfamiliar settings to provide stimulus for our thoughts, has interesting parallels to something the Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden referred to within literature as Unbestimmtheitsstelle: a certain deliberate vagueness, which the reader (or in this case viewer) should interpret in his or her own way. In some of the paintings it seems as if something might be about to happen, in others that it has just happened. Seldom do we register something still in process of happening. This strange, metaphysical duality is an important feature of the artist‘s work. A good many of his compositions have dislocated foci of attention: a chair turned toward the wall several feet from a light, or a girl with her back to an untidy sofa. It is this constant switch of attention, while never quite releasing it, that implies movement and the progression of a narrative. An interest in dichotomy, the natural world‘s own process of self-division and contradiction, can also be read in the artist‘s studies of leaves and branches. Persic acknowledges and makes use in his painting of a number of devices more commonly associated with related media. The inclination to crop and extract details of larger scenes can be attributed to photography, which as a studio aid provides the primary source material for his work. It introduces a further degree of complexity, and a mechanical sense of perspective to compete with those both real and painterly. Perhaps more importantly, it contributes in large part to the silence and mystery that lies at the heart of his work. Painting, David Hockney once said, has layers of time in it. What a photograph does is fuse object and field by suspending both in time, trapping them together in a single, frozen moment. This moment is then itself suspended from the temporal continuum. Hence the stage curtain, a motif which recurs frequently in Persic‘s work. Time behind a curtain can also be frozen; one moment it is ours, then next it is not. The artist‘s interest in the history and techniques of cinema is also apparent in his work. As with photography, it contributes both to the construction of the paintings and to their atmosphere. His narrowing of the focus onto small, singular objects set within larger situations – a light fixture, a plant or the foot of a curtain – is somehow the inverse of Hitchcock‘s device of leading with the detail before panning out to the whole. The reappearance of similar or identical objects in different paintings in turn gives weight to the suggestions that somehow this is all connected, as if we were passing through a series of different rooms or recalling the flickering memories of a dream. In these recent works the artist‘s palette is restricted to black, white and a series of greys made from mixing them, while his line is precise and dispassionate, detached even. The decisions behind their various compositions are thereby exposed, their apparent simplicity gradually giving way to a noted complexity. They are, in a certain sense, more credible. While the paintings seem at first glance to carry the immediacy of a photographic image, they are by no means read with the same speed. The measured and deliberate stillness with which they have been planned and executed successfully slows down our consumption of the image. In the space between presence and absence, what we can see and what we can‘t, lies a vast arena for interpretation. It is here that the paintings of Drago Persic come to life. Text by Jasper Sharp, 2007 oT, 145 x 155 cm, oil on linen, 2007 oT, 185 x 195 cm, oil on linen, 2007 oT, 210 x 155 cm, oil on linen, 2007 “Voute. Freie Gegend. Im Hintergrunde das Meer...” The paintings, existing at the border of the hyperreal and the unreal, express certain ambiguities, and only deliver indications in the form of empty objects placed in the midst of a monochrome surface. The pieces shown in his exhibitions can be read as parts of a story barely touched on by the artist and never fully explained. Persic works with staged photographs as his master illustration. The arrangements produced are carefully illuminated with artificial light and captured with the camera; conventional objects, a curtain, a cloth or chair, are isolated by the artist and absolved from their regular functions. They become the protagonists in their own portraits just like the characters he draws. Rarely is there a hint of a spatial connection, as in the form of a lamp or section of parquet. Often this is completely absent and the freestanding objects seem to float on the canvas, which is coloured either black or white, a lack of perspective lending them a sculptural quality. Through his pictures Persic leads us into a fragmentary world of silence and irritation. With his extremely precise implementation of black-and-white technique, referring to Grisaille painting, Persic’s works remind one of the paintings of the old masters. The minimal colour palette the artist uses is explained by his personal fascination with monochrome, its inscrutability, allowing him to focus on shade and to search for form. In the process the different nuances of the grey tones develop solely through the strength of the application of the paint. At first sight the pictures seem easy to understand in their simplicity of composition, however, a notable complexity is soon disclosed. The viewer’s closer inspection reveals disturbances with which Persic questions the objectivity of photography and relativises it. The mysterious mood of the works, combined with a peculiar melancholy that emanates from the scenes, is not only caused by the use of black-and-white; like the fragments of a dream which remain in one’s memory, identical objects appear again and again in his works and awaken the curiosity of the viewer. At the same time, trimmed angles and perspectives avoid a clear understanding of the motive of the picture. Such characteristics of building tension in a scene, famously used by Hitchcock, along with other filmic elements of the suspense genre in general, flow through Persic’s work. Persic shifts time and space in his pictures, by isolating an object he freezes the moment and thus grabs the viewer’s attention. The artist plays with our nearly imperturbable faith in the authenticity of the shown; irritated and at the same time fascinated by the puzzling mood, we look for a solution to a story that seems apparently presented but, nevertheless, remains out of reach. Text by Judith Platte “Voute. Freie Gegend. Im Hintergrunde das Meer...”, Galerie Nicola von Senger, Zürich oT, 175 x 165 cm, oil on linen, 2011 oT, 59,4 x 42 cm, oil on grounded paper, 2014 oT, 85 x 70 cm, oil on linen, 2012 Malraux / Mozart / Millstatt, 16mm Loop, 2014 oT (Anne), 40 x 30 cm, oil on paper, 2014 oT (zwei Vouten), 100 x 75 cm, oil on linen, 2015 oT, 175 x 165 cm, oil on linen, 2015 The Paradox of Drago Persic Silent road movie meets painting in the conceptual framework of Drago Persic. His métier is a mimetic plasitc synthesis of painting, film photography, and minimalism. Gilles Deleuze ascribed repetition and difference to two categories: „clothed“ and „bare“; while „bare“ characterizes a simple mechanical repetition of the same element, „clothed“ relates to something of greater compelxity with differences hidden wihtin itself. Drago Persic falls in the more complex category with small-scale projections of 8-mm film loops transferred from digital stills of exterior landscapes or precise installatios of large paintings that are of an interior void and produced by his own hand in the sudio. The films are autonomously generated by a software program with the end result falling somewhere between a moving image and a still that has been transferred to film. Leaving room for improvisation and chance in his paintings, Persic utilizes printed analogue and digital drafts to produce a two-dimensionla „maquette“. Further alterations can be made by a sleight of the painter’s hand. These quasi-filmic pictures are for the most part analog optical experiments with the suggestion of a truncated narrative placed within their monochromatic black surfaces. Each one is of differing textures ranging from smooth to jagged palettes or expressive painterly brushstrokes. Floating in the dense viscous fields is an item of clothing painted in shades of pearlescent gray to appear draped on hanging on a rack. The decision to make do without perspecive gives the clothing an ornamental sculptural quality within its folds. Such to and fro between different media offers the viewer a paradox of genre, and perhaps it is a paean to the last analog century. Painting survives the unleashing of virtual reality and new media upon society with its own arsenal of tricks and special effects extracted from its own rich tradition and history. Drago Persic seems to compress space, time, and gravity by appropriating his own digital markers in painting some „obverse“ conception of the digital vacuum. Where film and painting meet he has aded in the perceptual gaps of depth missing from the virtual interface. Text by Max Henry “Lebt und arbeitet in Wien”, Kunsthalle Wien, 2009 oT, 60 x 45 cm, oil on paper, 2011 oT, 46,3 x 39,5 cm, oil on paper, 2013 oT, 155 x 125 cm, oil on linen, 2008 oT, 115 x 90 cm, oil on linen, 2013 oT, 100 x 85 cm, oil on linen, 2011 oT, 190 x 200 cm, oil on linen, 2009 oT, 40 x 45 cm, oil on linen, 2008 oT (Felhöszakadás 1), 110 x 100 cm, oil on linen, 2015 oT, 47 x 39 cm, oil on paper, 2013 Siemensstern, 130 x 120 cm, oil & acryl on linen, 2007 oT, 70 x 50 cm, oil on linen, 2006 oT, 60 x 60 cm, oil on linen, 2010 oT, 90 x 70 cm, oil on linen, 2010 oT, 85 x 55 cm, oil on linen, 2004 dead pheasant, 100 x 75 cm, oil on linen, 2007 Le peintre viennois Drago Persic fait émerger de sa peinture noire des objets du quotidien, des personnages vus de dos. Par des effets de mises en scènes et d’èclairages, l’artiste semble raviver ces éléments plongés dans une forme d’abime. Les cadrages ne coïcident pas exactement avec les sujets représentés. Les corps se voient décapités, les objets tronqués. Ce parti pris confère à l’ensemble une tension dramtique exacerbée par le vide et la lumière. L’installation monumentale “Shot” (2010) reprend à plusieurs reprises le motif de tissus froissés. Reproduits de manière réaliste, les vêtements flottent à la surface de la toile, alors que le fond noir reste indéfini et abstrait. Doiton y voir la chute d’un corps ou l’évocation d’un moment suspendu? Inutile de chercher ici des éléments contextuels. Cette peinture se dérobe et laisse le spectateure démuni. La répétition du motif dans un format panoramique, l’accrochage de plusieurs panneaux légèrement décalés, ne sont pas sans rappeler les œvres inspirées de l’univers médiatique de Robert Longo, notamment la série du début des années quatre-vingts intitulée “Men in the Cities”. Sur de grands formats, l’artiste dessine au fusain des hommes et des femmes sur un fond d’un blanc immaculé, dans des positions contraintes. Leurs corps contorsionnés se replient sous l’impact d’un probable uppercut. Chez Drago Persic, nulle violence. Les objets paraissent esseulés, surgissant du fond de l’image. L’éclairage ciblé sur chacun d’eux invite le spectateur à y prêter plus d’attention. La finesse et la précision du rendu de l’objet ainsi que le modelé de la touche incitent à ralentir notre consommation de l’image. Dans toutes ses séries, les fonds uniformes très sombres ou très clairs permettent aux objets de se détacher de manière immobile. Ils se soustraient ainsi à la réalité. L’artiste interroge, dans ses travaux les plus récents, la survivance du noir en peinture, largement employé au XVIIe siècle pour ajouter à la dramaturgie des scènes de martyrs traitées en clair-obscur. Comme dans le “Saint-Serapion” de Francisco de Zurbarán (1628), le tissu tendu de “Untitled” (2011) occupe toute la surface du tableau. L’homme est absent, il n’en reste que les vêtements. Le regard se concentre alors sur la manière dont les plis accrochent la lumière et sur la dextérité acec laquelle Drago Persic parvient à obtenir des effets quasi photographiques, par une palette restreinte, exclusivement composée de noir, de blanc et de gris. De ces œuvres hyperréalistes se dégage une certaine artificialité, qui peut faire penser aux oeuvres textiles de Haether Cook. Cette artiste fait illusion avec ses tissus suspendus au mur recouverts de plis en tromp-l’oeil obtenus par de fines gouttelettes d’eu de javel. Dans les deux cas, les artistes n’hésitent pas à concilier une approche rigoureuse et conceptuelle à la sensualité de l’objet peinture. Dans ses films, Drago Persic exprime pleinement sa recherche de sobriété et de mise en lumière de divers éléments sur fonds sombres. Sensible à l’univers cinématorgraphique de Francois Truffanut et de Jean-Luc Godard, il s’interesse aussi à l`archéologie des médias, déja perceptible dans le sujet de ses peintures où figure par exemple un support à projecteur de diapositives (Sans titre, 2009). Son dernier film reprend des images numériques sur un support 8mm. Il cherche ainsi à déconstruire les principes de la vision en réinvestissant des pratiques anciennes par la nouvelle technologie. Alors que certains vouent une véritable fascination aux techniques de l’image, aux effets spéciaux obtenus au prix d’innombrables heures de travail, Drago Persic emploie tout son talent à former, avec une certaine objectivité, une aura autour d’objets bien réels. Text by Alexandra Fau “Projections: vers d’autres mondes”, Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables d’Olonne, France oT, 170 x 160 cm, oil on linen, 2008 oT, 150 x 110 cm, oil on linen, 2007 oT (frames), 100 x 95 cm, oil on linen, 2015 oT (Proszenium), 155 x 115 cm, oil on linen, 2014