Heroes 2007

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Material: combined technique on paper

The term New image painting is related to the inauguration of figurative and narrative principles of a particular order into the themes of art made in Serbia in the last quarter of the 20th century. From the present perspective, its is possible to understand the term new image painting as different forms of imaging and communication of the artist’s subjective world that begins with postmodern aesthetics. It is a world that is by rule eccentric, decetered and hedonistically inclined, lacking all interest in the big historical topics of modernism and the emancipation of the universal subject, a world situated in the very center of the artist’s work of the 80s and inaugurated as its exclusive credo.

The representatives of the New image(s) of the 90s developed forms of expression based on the experience of the previous generation of artists, profiled the postmodern aesthetics by a furtherer subjectivization of the artistic statements and some of them developed a form of image that the critics of the time called monumental intimisme. Basically it had to do with a procedure based on transposing very personal, almost intimate motives and narratives into monumental and representative visual wholes. In the monumental portrait and self-portrait conception, whether it is a painting, photograph, sculpture, object or performance – the visible presence of a hypertrophy of the human face and the artist’s self does not, however, any longer speak only in favor of an egocentrically inclined subject, reflecting in a kind of timeless ambientalized space of artistic play

The term New image painting is related to the inauguration of figurative and narrative principles of a particular order into the themes of art made in Serbia in the last quarter of the 20th century. From the present perspective, its is possible to understand the term new image painting as different forms of imaging and communication of the artist’s subjective world that begins with postmodern aesthetics. It is a world that is by rule eccentric, decentered and hedonistically inclined, lacking all interest in the big historical topics of modernism and the emancipation of the universal subject, a world situated in the very center of the artist’s work of the 80s and inaugurated as its exclusive credo.

The representatives of the New image(s) of the 90s developed forms of expression based on the experience of the previous generation of artists, profiled the postmodern aesthetics by a furtherer subjectivization of the artistic statements and some of them developed a form of image that the critics of the time called monumental intimisme. Basically it had to do with a procedure based on transposing very personal, almost intimate motives and narratives into monumental and representative visual wholes. In the monumental portrait and self-portrait conception, whether it is a painting, photograph, sculpture, object or performance – the visible presence of a hypertrophy of the human face and the artist’s self does not, however, any longer speak only in favor of an egocentrically inclined subject, reflecting in a kind of timeless ambientalized space of artistic play. The human figure or the artist’s very body has become the center of a unique vivisection of the social environment and the memento of the genesis of its urban identities. The frequent multiplication of the artist’s face represents an attempt to achieve a sharply contrasted “ambientalization” of fragile existences and introspective inscriptions of the every day in regards to the linear hyperactive agency of historical time and its destructive inertia.

Our attention is immediately drawn to the works of Ivona Pleskonja by the images that are a unique echoes of urban narratives told by a monumental elaboration of the portrait concept. The artist borrows the iconic structure of the two-dimensional picture plan from popular culture, more precisely the plastic and composition of the frame from the comic strip, streamlined, with broad planes and the dominant presence of the human figure in the foreground, the imaginary actor calling for action or establishing the unconditional attention of the observer.

The foreground in the cycle Heroes is most frequently defined by a portrait-bust “framed” in radical frontality and intoned hieratic posture, sharply separated from the background marked by the reduced colored emblematic of the imagined milieu of the portrayed face. The faces that parade before us are individuals from the artist’s closest surroundings, her friends, she herself or selected individuals of the “Other”, role models from the alternative urban universe representing the special alter ego of the artist (Frida Kahlo, Bruce Lee, Spiderman...). For the artist they represent “out of the ordinary fighters ... with the highest fighting skills, ability to regenerate themselves, stamina, strength and courage”. The painted surface is organized as an icon where the presence of the holy personage or hero of the newly arbitrated reality of the artist him/herself, is simultaneously mediated by the official (saintly) pre-history and the individual heroic act, which evokes the (the earthly) biography and revels a farsightedness of a supra-human reality.

This conspicuous similarity and at the same time difference with a message that follows the meditative process of constructing an image of a saint (hero), that is, recording the presence of one’s awareness of oneself during the very creative act (artist), is most noticeable in the serial of (self) portraits Heroes and in the works like I’m not a Typical (Vietnamese Girl), Save Me, Sit Up (Bruce Lee) Self-portraits (Nice Day Today), Oxygen (Wearing a Gas Mask). The central face of the newly created “story” appears from the foreground and transcends the communication to the other side of historical time where the past and future are equally virtual categories. The passage of the individual through the casemates of social myths, cultural codes and personal memories is suggested through a pseudo-mythical allegory of a traditional pilgrimage. The Amazons and the End of Planet Earth seem like frozen frames of a once lived dream or a virtual spaces detached from the corruption and tyranny of a dehumanized society.

Jelena Krivokapic, curator of the Gallery "Beograd"