Doors - Metka Kavčič | Bogdan Borčić |
Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti v Slovenj Gradcu march/ april 2008 |
KEYS THAT OPEN THE DOORS TO MEMORY SNIPPETS |
At first glance the ohjectivised images with the motifs of doors by Bogdan Borčič and Metka Kavčič escape the standard art history taxonomy. Through the joint exhibition the unusual 'picto-sculptures' that were created independently in the painter's atelier in Slovenj Garckec and the sculptress's work ahop in Iv1arihor seemingly overcome the notion of the everyday differentiation of art into paintinys and sculptures. In the reciprocal flirtation they escape this dichotomy and merge into one, with which they prove that in the post-modernist times such divisions are a thing of the past, for they do not reflect the actual slate of contemporary creativity, which freely uses and combines any means of expression. At the same this creativity adapts numerous new, non-traditional media and non-artistic concepts through which it enters the previously unthought of fields of artistic creation. With a more exact analysis of the painting assemblies, woven into a net of associated realistic objects and included into the basic structural frame (that is undoubtedly, even though non-functionally linked to the more or less picaorial surface that is in everyday life drawn on the walls hy the door) it apears that Borčič art, regardless of the emphasised hapticism and objective links to the clear associative form does not move away from his basic, 'infected' with the idea of high modernism painting at which the painting field is in the first line a training course for an extremely cultivated and rich art game. To the same extent the 'doors' by Metka Kavčič address (through sculpture) the development of the form within a space that is limited with the dimensions of the found object and then flallonecl and more or less clearly defined only when viewed from one side, even though it is clearly felt in all three of its dimensions. Even with his newest, for some surprising works, Borčič does not stray from the route shovvn by the painting of the so-called formalistic abstraction from the 1950s and 60s onwards. This abstraction continued with its modernistic search of the form without pictorial depth and compositional complexity that eventually lead to a flattened and levelled painting surface. Even in his most radical minimalist paintings - except maybe in the variations on a certain theme - Borčič has never truthfully abandoned the associative links to the direct initiatives from the environment. He always purposefully softened the solipsistic character of his abstract images with small, sometimes almost invisihle or camouflaged interventions, mostly in the form of signs that could he understood only hy him, symhols of very personal, Intimate stories, spices added to the seemingly impersonal and empty abstractions. And once we can follow these tiny, concealed hints, the consistency of the ontire opus reveals itself. We can notice its Ixottomless ingenuity and after more than fifty years Of unhroken work oriented into researching art mysteries the artist still has undiminished creative power. This power has always drawn on the effects of 'objectivised' colours, most directly in the final cxanylos of an individual idea when merely the painting remained. Once rid of all unnecessary details the painting became merely a naked, undispulable and undistorted visual sensation. The story of Borčič's painting is thus first of all a story of colour. The chromatic density remained the suggestive power of his newest images, even though its sublime self-sufficiency was supplemented by the effects of I)oclily collages of non-painting materials, while the 'spaceless' painting field condensed into its hyiic hocly. This conditional 'body presence' slowly drops the painting from the heights of the raised limns(enclence of the colour effect and moves it to the here and now, into the concrete world where it touches lit(,. Previously hard to read, into the smooth surface of the painting unohtrusively stamped signs are now materialised into recognisahle objects which (with their concreteness) open the image to contexts and interpretations and the specific language Of 'pure' art is tilled with meanings. Borčič accepts the chosen motif of the doors as a ready-made image, but he treats is as a material, an availahlo object with a picturescIue presence, at which the context of the real ambient and Its symbolic atatus has merely a secondary meaning. The individual elements of the doors represent the 'sensory material', which in the chosen format of the painting canvass and in the frames of the clearly lined structure of the t;raspable art coordinates generates the reconstruction of the appearance of the realistic impression. Borčič is at his most brilliant when he shows himself as an extremely subtle observer of realistic situations and as a unsurpassable master of their transformation into artworks that spring to life in their own internally and artistically organised world. The found or selected object that finds itself on the surface of the painting is different from the object as it was when it was alienated from its 'natural' habitat - when Borčič uses it he is fully aware that he has placed it in the space of art 'fiction'. In the compositional sense he Subdues individual elements to the 'model' and finally he gives his work a title that leads towards the source, a title that is clearly recognisable and equipped with the aura Of phenomenological uniqueness and objective non repeatability.
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