THE EXPERIENCE OF SPACE
„Here we are, thus, at the bottom of the abyss. It can’t be known why evil exists in this world, for all that exists neither has meaning nor reason. Goya in an eerily naive way uttered his last word on the subject of and gave the full measure of his nihilism by negating the existence of the next life having denied the meaning of this one: in one of his etchings, we see a slightly raised tombstone with a skeleton appearing from un- der it and pointing to a piece of paper that reads: “Nothing”. So, there is nothing there either. That is the dead man’s message and that is the deepest point of Goya’s despair.”
– Ivo Andrić – “Conversation with Goya” 1
In the series of etchings, The Disasters of War (Los Desastres de la Guerra), Goya records disturbing scenes of suffering from the Iberian Peninsula during the War of Independence. On copperplates, he prepares a series of engravings which will only be published later on, in 1856. In one of the prints from this series three soldiers are torturing a man whom they had previously beaten into a terrified scarecrow, a noose around his neck. Goya inscribes under the image: POR QUE? (Why?).
In his later years, Goya (a painter from the court of the Spanish king) fills the walls of his home Quinta del Sordo (Villa of the Deaf One) with ‘im- posing’ dark murals called the Black Paintings
(1819-1823). The author so it seems is left to the mercy of the demons and horrors of war that abduct and undoubtedly pull him into to the depths of the abyss from which despair issues forth. Why?! We rightfully ask ourselves a second time: why instead of heroic representations of battle does war in consequence become the scene of Goya’s tragic chronicle? Goya is a master artist with an interest in social affairs (politics) in his paintings, whether this is implied by a surreal bizarreness, or used as a pivotal point for the fact that “no one and nothing” is more phantasmagorical than “life itself”. The examples abound.
For those of us who experienced war in direct proximity, from behind the front line, in a city in whose genealogy history has an excessive tendency to become an unpleasant and constant feeling of déjà vu, conflict and discord come to determine identity. With no conflict there is no difference and that which is essential melts into generality. If Goya understood the world of the nineteenth century through nihilism and he opened the door to modern art in a time of persecution and inquisition which regarded him as a “perverted painter”, a time of wars and misery but also dishonorable wealth, vulgar opulence verging on the loathsome grotesque, then today these testimonies and our still vivid experience are additional reminders of humaneness, whilst the orientation which excludes politics and treats the sensibility of human beings outside of any ideology and category seem to be a mute ideal.
Nature often inflicts harm on us with its ‘strategies of survival’, carrying out in harsh conditions its plan for the ‘species’: the body responds to stressful changes to its organism by slowing the metabolism, reducing the body temperature to the lowest point that will not bring on death and lowering the heart rate so it does not damage the brain or the other vital organs, and in doing so induces a specific, dormant state of hibernation as its modus vivendi. It is in the lasting state of meditative dormancy, in the form of a hi-tech region of a synthetic paradise in which elements of science and nature cross one another, that Dragan takes refuge: ‘From a symbolic point of view, Zdravković seeks in this way to displace himself from the reality and socio-political system in which he lives. “He conserves” personal and creative energy so that via the process of artistic creation he can give his maximum to creating a world of experience of this private reality isolated from the quotidian and therefore existing on the edge of metaphysical understanding.”2
In the painting bearing the title Hibernation the anatomy of a time capsule is shown, a recent phenomenon in the aesthetics of massurrealism3. It is placed centrally in the composition and in juxtaposition to the surrounding environment— that is a landscape presented in the negative and executed with dynamic brush work and contrasting white, azure blue and black paint. Via the use of textural richness Zdravković places one space within another, and these different spatial systems, without a clear and singularly linear con- notation, suppress time as a concept (a notion in philosophy, science, art, as a linear continuity, or an irreversible sequence). The snowy light emit- ted from the painting’s surface stands out for its whiteness, leaving the objects of the central zone occupying a peaceful landscape. The light falling across the monitor brings into play a unique mise- en-scène which is the only fixed and recognizable object within the multitude of elements suggest- ed and hinted at, possessing the technical possibility of a transition to the state of an ‘uncanny’ dream (or moonwalking?), or of a dream as a hybrid simulation (the regime of hibernation vs the regime of sleep).
Every inch (millimeter or centimeter) of the linen canvas is subjected to a surgically skilled craftsmanship and meticulous control, creating a painterly quality that possesses a certain quality reminiscent of the old masters’ workshops: from those of the 16th century Flemish-Dutch school to the Byzantine icon painters who for their artis- tic vision depend on the power of prayer as a modus operandi. Like for example Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Perspective box with Views of a Dutch Interior (1663), housed in the National Gallery in London in which an abundance of details and meanings overlap in an enigmatic painterly miracle. The painstakingly composed interior in which a perfect peace prevails is an examination of the various (significant) perspectives and places the viewer in the position of a “miraculous observer” captivated in the act of finding his/her way about the rules set by the artist. The unfathomable world that conquers by rejecting is hypnotic in its sense of harmony, but stays outside our sphere of influence. It is exactly then that Venus with a diadem on her head un- suspectedly buds out before us, reclining on a bed and in the company of Cupid, like a corporeal embodiment of hospitality in a state of absolute submission, or exaggerated solitude. The good and evil fate of Eros is here taken over by solitary objects in their multitude.
Photorealism, elements of pop art, the combi- nation of the craft-based and tactile with the expressive for the artist have their stronghold in the movement of the New Leipzig School, the influence of whose most eminent representatives, Neo Rauch, David Schnell, Tilo Baumgartel and Matthias Weischer’s early works, becomes evident only in the background of Zdravković’s work4. What is common to these artists is their mixture of geometry and landscapes, multi-layered narratives that encroach into various time zones, surrealist abstraction and the eclecticism of models and templates. However, Zdravković retains an ambiental neatness, a clear symmetry in the division of the painting accompanied by the aesthetics of beauty, which additionally enhances the sense of painterly self-assurance. With precise strokes, controlled and planned in advance, a hyper-realistic imaginary painterly order of landscape elements and architecture is created.
The fragility and sensitivity of the painterly eld is as noticeable in the work titled Turn of the Century in the format 205×125 cm as it is in the much smaller Siena Room (35×50 cm). A collage- like proliferation and overlapping of planes in which the fragments of the narration are retained creates the sense of spatial ambiguity: a synthesis of impressions that acquires the psychological character of a Rorschach psychology test. “By observing, we are confronted with the experience of the contemporary state of life as it has been conditioned by technological baggage, and by what ensues, after the burden of information overload and the canceling out of all sensible explanations, on the paradoxical edges of existence in the void of our current post-history epoch, outside learning and in the elated action of enlightenment.” writes Nikola Šuica in the fore- word to the catalogue for Dragan’s exhibition Gazdinstvo (The Farm) in Belgrade.20
For Zdravković, silent human absence is felt most in spaces which aren’t fundamentally places for human beings. The viewer is locked into a fiction based on virtues and objects which only gain their full sense with man’s absence. In this way he constructs a personalized relationship with the can- vas as is evident in the painting The Night Kosta Passed away, dedicated to the Belgrade-based artist Kosta Bunševac, a painter who like a magus5 worked across film, theatre, marketing, television, leaving behind cult TV shows and was influential in the underground culture scene. The art historian Dejan Đorić notes yet another peculiarity which he defines as “the elitist Belgrade view of the world”, linking Zdravković’s painting with the refinement that survives in Serbian painting as something sophisticated, dignified, peaceful and mild, profoundly intellectual, inherited and retained from high Byzantine art.
The “comfort” that is offered however leaves after itself elements of fear and anxiety. In the painting In the Name Of an emptied-out landscape shines like a desert in which a flame flickers ominously like a flag. The “frame” is frozen in a moment that does not offer any answer, so that we are left expecting, anticipating and wondering where to go and how to proceed. Has the situation come to an end, or is change coming? Is there a line of transit? We are left and pulled into a frozen and insecure state, like the art theorist Stevan Vuković who in his text “Between sense and meaning” leaves the possibility of different readings of Zdravković’s work: “With the vision they offer, their formal organization, and their material execution, those artworks bear in themselves the potential to evoke an experience, that is on the individual, personal, unique and idiosyncratic level, that is the type of experience which activates the entire personality of the viewer, and in doing so instigates the need to respond to them with a personal interpretation.”
– Ksenija Samardžija
References:
- Ivo Andrić, Serbian writer and diplomat of the Kingdom of Yugolsavia (1891-1975), who won a Nobel prize in Literature for the novel The Bridge on the Drina (1961); in his essay “Conversation with Goya” he engages in an “intimate” dialogue with the artist, introducing the reader to the painter’s obscure world, in which the writer discovers the origin of modern art.
- Hibernation Mode, curated by Mišela Blanuša, Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, 2016.
- Massurealism is a term coined in 1992 by the American artist James Seehafer, who described a trend among some post-modern artists to mix the aesthetic styles and themes of surrealism and mass media, including pop art.
- In 2011, Dragan Zdravković resided in Leipzig for the International Art programme
- Magus: Zoroastrian priest, an astrologer, sorcerer, or magician of ancient times, from the Old Persian magus magician.
