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The "Summer Day" exhibition as the embodiment of the philosophy of anti-materialism
At first glance, the exhibition of artist Iva Prlinčević may leave an impression of a bit of eroticism done on canvas and plates using various techniques. However, that is only the first impression. After a little deeper dedication to the works, the viewer will, with unexpected ease, arrange the exhibited works into a completely meaningful whole. What unites all the exhibits is the absolute interpenetration of formal and thematic elements in them.
They cannot survive without each other, they complement each other and together they tell a story to the observer from which, if they listen carefully, they can learn a lot.
Regardless of the technique used to create the works in question - whether they are watercolors, oil on canvas or gouache on paper, what they have in common is the free approach that the artist cultivates towards them. Line and color are the two dominant means of expression in both landscapes and portraits. The line resists rigidity, does not allow itself to be restrained by the laws of regularity and precision, it resolutely follows the path of liberated expression that almost brings it to the level of absolute autonomy. It no longer has a mimetic value, but represents a tool for itself that respects only its own rules and fulfills its own requirements, thereby providing the picture with a reality that is independent from our everyday, prosaic one. Color also gives this independent aspect to Iva Prlinčević's creativity. The color is explosive and vibrant, the contrasts are complementary and intense, while the color itself has a multidimensional character. It not only affects the viewer visually, but also has an olfactory-auditory-tactile aspect. Observing the works from the exhibition, the visitor can almost smell the scent of the salt road in sparkling white tones. The dark blue shades create the noise of the waves, while the glittering gold makes us feel the rays of the sun caressing our body.
Another common characteristic of the works is the sense of incompleteness they exude. Unpainted parts of the canvas, quick brushstrokes and winding lines show the artist's desire to paint the essence of the desired object. The works were partially created as a product of the semi-experimental relationship the artist has with painting. She allows her hand to roam the canvas free from self-censorship and conscious control over the entire process. Hyperrealism is not a guarantee of a good picture that leaves a strong impression on the viewer. Overly elaborated details very often try to make up for the lack of "soul" in the works. The essence is what is most difficult to capture. How to show a summer day? How to paint a Hollywood star? How to present these futures to the observer so that he can identify with the dreams and learn his inner experience in them? This is where the crucial talent of the artist is, who with a stylized, lapidary and elliptical style of painting manages to penetrate into the essence of what she creates.
Landscapes, as the most dominant works of this exhibition, will gain priority in the analysis. In addition to the dubious aesthetic-artistic significance they possess, taking nature as the dominant inspiration of her work, the artist also gave them a deeper, philosophical-metaphysical note. Nature is a space where an individual retreats to think about life, its meaning and its place in it. These landscapes show us the importance of self-observation and introspection. Man needs to occasionally escape from civilization and return to the primordial and natural in him. It is impossible not to remember Rastko Petrović's wonderful thought while looking at the mentioned works. Namely, our great writer noted in his work "People Speak" that very often when people talk about a state in which there is no human-made noise - there are no car sirens or roaring sounds of machines. However, only when a person becomes silent, what he hears is not silence, but a symphony of the most diverse sounds of nature. With its euphonic tones, nature reminds us of what is needed for a good, fulfilling life - air in the lungs, sun on the skin, water in the body. Unfortunately, this kind of philosophy of life, for which the artist so bravely fights, is very much threatened in modern society. The galloping development of technology, capitalism and materialism is a dangerous trap that is easy to fall into. However, one should not despair. It is enough to look at just one landscape of "Summer Day" to think that simplicity is the key to a good life.
It is interesting to see how this story of naturalness and the slow pace of life that the artist's landscapes propagate is now being integrated into the portraits of old Hollywood stars. The artist does not accept the average life that modern society offers. Conforming to mediocre standards is out of the question. If nature is not available to her to draw energy from, she turns to the world of fantasy, luxury and glamour. Monotony, routine and uniformity are unacceptable.
Lovers carried away by passion, extravagant actresses with seductive looks, la vie en rose philosophy - these are the main motives of these portraits. The artist wisely reminds us of the importance of imagination and creativity, which we must never suppress from everyday life. Why should great love be reserved exclusively for the movie screen? Why should we look at imagination as something contrary to reality, and not as a part that forms a whole with it? This thought is further encouraged by the manner in which the portraits themselves were executed. Making them on plates, the purpose of which is extremely material and even existential - their primary purpose is to hold food, it gives them a new dimension, a spiritual one. Those plates with painted figures whose character, essence of personality and the most sincere soul feeling come to the fore now offer the observer a different kind of food - food for the soul.
Finally, the only painting of an erotic nature in this exhibition represents a perfectly harmonious ending to the whole. Western civilization with its Christian-Eurocentric attitude has always viewed erotica with great displeasure. The body should be hidden, urges to be suppressed, and desire extinguished. However, ancient Greek temples, as well as Hindu ones, offer a very grim view of sexuality. Erotic scenes were ubiquitous in public, especially in temples, so that they even acquired a kind of sacred note. The body was not an object of shame and shame, but of joy and enjoyment. Therefore, the celebration of carnality, eroticism and sensuality in the work "Hindu Erotica" by the artist makes it clear that the essence that each of us should strive for is freedom. Freedom both in artistic expression, which each of her works offers, as well as freedom in everyday living without any restrictions, taboos and frustrations.
Finally, it remains to underline the anti-materialistic aspect of Iva Prlinčević's creativity. None of her works celebrate trivial, mundane, material things. Even the depicted objects, like sailboats in numerous paintings, seem to be humanized, as if they are not only secular and profane, but contain a spiritual, human touch. In those ships and boats, we can almost feel the character and personality of a person, feel as if we are observing a close friend. For joie de vivre philosophy does not need money, material wealth or possessions. Look at the works of Iva Prlincevic and before you go looking for happiness, check - maybe you are already happy?
Lea Stankovic
Art historian
Iva Prlincevic Reminding
Iva Prlinčević is an artist who is so diverse in her artistic expression that the only consistency in her work can be recognized as the artist's refusal to shape her work according to just one aesthetic, thematic or stylistic rule.
The exhibited works confirm this statement, considering that they were made in various techniques – from oil on canvas, through gouache and ink, to lithography. Some works, however, were made in a combined technique on paper, which can be interpreted as an absolute materialization of the painter's curious nature and the need to explore, examine and experiment.
Fast movement with the brush, expressive lines, vibrant colors and the tendency to distort figures characterize Prlinčević's work. By using such a visual vocabulary, the artist managed to transform the static nature of painting into the dynamism and fluidity that characterize real life. However, this does not mean that these works foster the practice of imitating nature. Iva Prlinčević is not a realist by his painterly nature. She does not strive for a realistic or naturalistic imitation of the world, but like an artistic medium detects the vital energy of everyday life, which she then transposes into her works.
The paintings exude liveliness and vigor. Whether it is a cityscape or seascape, a still life, or a figural composition, Prlinčević creates an energy field of the depicted motifs using line and color as the basic artistic elements. The vibrating vitality of these works is a direct product of the collision of the physical and metaphysical worlds that the artist intuitively transfers to the canvas.
Finally, the title of the exhibition can be interpreted as a synthesis of the Weltanschauung that Iva Prlinčević cultivates through her work. The joy of living, the beauty of everyday life and seeing the world through a higher prism of spirituality are concepts that every person must be reminded of again and again. Joie de vivre as the leitmotif of the painter's oeuvre reminds us of the importance of rising from the profane and secular to spiritual awakening.
Lea Stankovic, art historian
Painting as the embodiment of joy
The name of Iva Prlinčević is already well-known on the domestic creative scene. This, however, did not happen thanks to some kind of jokes and provocations, which is otherwise a common case in modern times. Iva, on the other hand, is immediately recognisable in quality and oto the qualities of his paintertva. It is new, authentic and fresh, and at the same time, it evokes the memory of certain, classic works of the modern era for the observer. In this respect, she is stilly the closest for a whole century to the older expressionists and fauvists, whose expression today ima needu, which she breathed new life into in a special way.
The two main tools used by Iva Prlinčević as a masterare color and line. Undoubtedly, she is an exceptional colorist and achieves great expressiveness in her works. Sometimes it seems that her pictures are a real explosion of colors, and yet at no time does one feel the aggression, which usually accompanies this kind of coloristic temperament. On the other hand, her playful lines, although more than dynamic, are not hysterical. They do not destroy the forms but they finely build them up to the minimum level that is enoughto evoke in the observerthese pleasant associations. If we were to return to the comparisons with modern classics, Iva's work is most similar to the works of the French Fauvist Raoul Diffie and the German expressionist Emil Nolde. With them Iva shares a tendency to shape his pictures into a kind of embodiment of joy.
The size of the exhibition space allowed Iva to present herself to the Belgrade audience through as many as three cycles, under the names "Dolce vita", "Ljubav (erotica)" and "Igra", on which she worked tirelessly during the last years. In the first cycle ("Dolce vita"), she demonstrates her already proven power to "capture the moment" of the action in such a skillful way that the frame from the film is not presented as a fragment and discontinuity, but rather to succinctly summarize the essence of the event and foreshadow all its development in that one "snapshot". The second cycle ("Love") is dedicated to erotica which Iva portrays very explicitly, but at the same time she manages to avoid vulgar associations and ennoble sex, deliberately evoking ancient traditional models (old India and ancient Greece) in which this physical and physiological interaction was elevated to the level of art. The third, most recent cycle ("The Game") is in a way the connective tissue of everything she has done so far, because, although very literally, it represents what the title says - play and dance - this activity is transformed into a kind of archetype. In the essential sense, Iva Prlinčević illustrates with her dancers and car dancers Hindu the metaphysical principle of "lila", the understanding according to which the whole universe was created as a result of the game of God citation-1745 citation-1746 citation-end-1746">this.
In the House of King Petar Ivo, however, not only exhibits the creation, but visitors will have the opportunity to witness the creation of the work live. Far from aiming for any self-promotion with this performance, she reveals to the audience the secret of her creation, thereby everything else that je exposed receives a logical explanation and resolution. Namely, Iva belongs to those painters who create, if not very easily, then quickly, passionately, tirelessly and constantly. Van Gogh was overcome by the "fury of work", Milić by Machve "white glow", and Iva could be said to be overcome by the "passion of play": give her a brush and paints and she, in the absence of canvas or paper, will immediately paint on the walls, on furniture, on objects and on the human body.
Parallel to this painting performance, another one takes place at the opening, which seems to be the embodiment of the game presented on canvases and lineswinter. This multidisciplinary act, which includes dance and music, is at the same time on the border of happening, because it allows visitors to take part in a special live creation, similar to an ephemeral spectacle directed by Iva Prlincevic.
Prof. Oliver Tomic, PhD