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Alem Korkut, Hrvoje Dukez and Ivana Franke
More interesting than the search for commondenominator in the work of the three graduate students of theAcademy of the Fine Arts in Zagreb, who may have alreadyarticulated their expression into the recobnizability, is thedetection of differences since the fumbling of one's own path inthe vast space of equal iconographic, genre or formal discourseis not an easy task. However, the semblance of some mutual"unbearable ease" or airy optimism is suggested.Deducible from youth maybe or more likely subsisting as acontinuation of the generation that gave up the high principlesand tracking of definitive truths, the authors and theirgeneration favour playing with the clishés or applying simplesolutions not lacking humour and ludism in the eager, exploratoryapproach to the media.
Alem Korkut presents his world ofcelestial bodies, natural phenomena and elements through polishedarpesque shapes which are, in spite of their fluid contents("Fog", "Fire"), always structured intostable entireties. In shaping and in the use of colour, insteadof mimetic or metonymic volition, his tendency towards simplearchetypal conceptions and poetic pre-speach is evident. Silverand white Moon has twenty eight thorns and golden -yellow Sun hasfour rays. The choice of symbolic "additions" isrunning on the ludistic level rather than calling for therevelation of cosmic secrets. The colour, although creatingpoetical illusion, is not a noncompromising addition becauseunder its transparent cover the structure of wood is still"readable"; thus, Korkut is safely back on the firmground: he discloses his procedure and instructs of hisfavourable materials and modes of creation.
With his own"protected spaces" HrvojeDukez is, in the true spirit of new-age, defending himselffrom the swoon of agressive technological proposals for theidealization of the world. Dukez's congenial starting vistaspresume the "diminution"1 of uncomprehensibilyentangled world as it is. In Dukez's case these are diary notes,intimating of images which he decomposes in his own code. In hisprevious graphic opus the condensed form (island) transformedinto the sign has the same value as the scattered gesture whichsuggests the atmosphere. By the choice of the media that givesnew possibilities, Dukez transfers the motive of the island inequally distilled fragment, while the atmosphere creatingdispersed gesture is replaced by the colour and the whiteness ofthe graphic paper by the whiteness of the wall. To favourreductive and disciplined expression does not mean surrending tosuperiority of geometrical strictness. Dukez avoids any form ofimposed regularity even when the frame is concerned. He opens itor curves, stubbornly fighting with freezing immobility of thepicture. The enformel matterness of the pictorial substance whichDukez creates according to his own technology - mixture of beewax and natural pigments - he controls with disciplined gesture.His newest objects from the outside look like tropical fruits,hide starlike structures which are later relativised in the gameof the reflections produced by irregular mirrors. The utopiansearch for the wholeness within and of the fragments developsfrom the constant dynamic tension between square and circle,uncovered simplicity and hidden complexity, chaos and disciplinedeffort to restitute the authors own rules of order.
As the colour of absence and transition fromvisible to invisible, white is denoted as the colour of thelunar, cold, female world. Snowy tenderness of femininity isrevealed by the choice of soft and fragile materials: cotton,wool, crępe, styrofoam, veil and thread. In the work of IvanaFranke whiteness is not an unifying principle forced from theoutside, but the decision to start from zero level; a zenapproach that opens empty spaces of silence in which it ispossible to animate the openess for listening to the mosttranquil occurrences that appear in determined rithmycalregularities. Whether the question be of a close-up view(associations of sprouting) or from afar (processions of people)or more monulental sculptorial act congenial to Robert Moriss'stextile witticismes, patience in workmanship that is most evidentin persistent making of paper rolls, is in a kind of merry andequanimous collision with the propensity to choose improvised,porous materials.
Radmila Iva Jankovic ,
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1/ "die Verkleinerung", Idoll undIdylle. Dietmar Kamper, Unmogliche Gegenwart
2/ The Dictionary of Symbols, Nakladni zavodMH, 1983.
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Hrvoje Dukez was born in 1972 in Zagreb. He isa 4th year student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in theclass of Prof. Duro Seder. He lives in Zagreb, Vrapcanska draga38, tel. 01/155 331.
Ivana Franke
Ivana Franke was born in 1973 in Zagreb. Shegraduates from the School for Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb.At present she is a 4th year student of the Graphic Department atthe Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in the class of Prof.Miroslav Sutej. She lives in Zagreb, Krizaniceva 11 a, tel. 01/4551 585.
Alem Korkut
Alem Korkut was born in 1970 in Travnik. He isa 4th year student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in theclass of Prof. Sime Vulas. He lives in Zagreb, A. Stipancica 17,tel. 01/319 447.
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Type of programme: exhibition
Lasting time: 09.07.1996. - 26.07.1996.
