This sculpture-installation came after the Aladdin’s Genie, a diffused, crisp sculptural form created and exhibited last year in the Forum Gallery in Zagreb. This three dimensional form derived from the author’s long lasting practice of dense drawings on different surfaces, which, in the last couple of years, were created using a graphic needle on galvanized metal sheeting. This is a systematic, long-lasting, meditative procedure of creating swarms of circular and undulating, spiral strokes-scorings, spiral agglomerations that well out of the different points of the surface, interfusing at the end in a saturated weave of the created surface. His work on sheet metal, in accordance with the nature of the material, ultimately includes an illusion of the third dimension, a kind of Op Art effects, which change with the position of the observer vis-à-vis the exhibit, or with the effects and changes of the light. This illusion of spatiality or the dynamism of change of a static drawing prompted the artist to transmit his drawing literally into the third dimension. And this is how the sculpture-installation exhibited in the Forum Gallery was created. A ready-made object was used as the structural unit of this form-object, which, circling through the air, moved from the ground to the first floor of the gallery and vice versa, thicker in the middle and thinner at the edges, like a snake. This ready-made object was a plastic straw, a three-dimensional material equivalent, the analogy of a short stroke-scoring of the drawing the sculpture originated from.
This form was the act of emancipation from the limitations of two-dimensionality, a liberated form that left the surface and conquered the space. However, the author did not see its liberation as a finished process, on the contrary, it is like an utopian process whose new manifestations mark only a temporary improvement. No matter how much these materially concrete and tangible realizations always contain the idea of a spiritual substance, or literally – of the spirit, in case of exhibition at the Forum Gallery this was a “trapped“ (Aladdin’s) genie, to which the interior of the gallery actually became a metaphor for the bottle, i.e. of being trapped in it. Although it seems like a spatially well-elaborated form, according to the author’s interpretation, the interior of the gallery becomes a limit zone for its diffuseness; the sculpture embodies the idea of a being unable to realize its full potential. This additionally compresses, or enriches, the signification of the form presented, which at the same time drastically manifests and develops its extension and, paradoxically, has to suffer the challenge of reaching its potential. The same type of productive ambivalence and two-way semantics takes place in the object exhibited in the Bačva Gallery. Vertically placed in the middle of a circular space, in accordance with the ceiling light grid, the form looks like a strand of white smoke, a spiritual substance, which sediments and rises with the tendency to penetrate through the shield of the building into the ether. This spiral “bubble“ – that visually coincides with popularly ingrained, minimal comparison with an invisible spiritual substance – can at the same time be experienced as a ‘returnee’ into the state of captivity, of being surrounded (by a building, box, cage…), its direction seen as a matter of retro-movement, as an almost pessimistic allegory.
The title of the work (The Return), suggests regression, but also tranquillity in the totality of his being. There is another, paradoxical, suggestion, that the object signifies a cocoon (the author emphasizes this semantic aspect by wrapping the white PVC balloon – commissioned by the author himself – in a transparent foil, in a subsequent intervention), as the presentation of a cocooned state, but which at the same time announces the potential transformation from something crawling, wormlike, into something flying, ethereal, fluid. Thus, this openness and diversity of experiences and interpretations, versatility of possible entities, is achieved both physically and semantically. Precisely this vastness of the perceptive potential of a minimal sign-object, in an immediate and emphasized relation with the space and its characteristics, provides this formally simple work – both in the sense of its appearance (spiral perpendicular) and in a speculative–spiritual sense – with an exceptional vibrancy and dynamics.
After all, the author very consciously emphasizes his inspiration and specific motivation, which he draws from a specific space:
With its architectural uniqueness (ground floor/bottom – shady and ‘damp’, in contrast to the high ceiling, coffered light) the Bačva Gallery has always reminded me of Plato’s archetypal story of the cave. In relation to that, I came up with the topic, as well as the name of the exhibition. Almost like a scheme, a template, the idea-attitude on the process of emanation from the One and return to the One is present in all Neoplatonic schools and all theologies. The return of any phenomenon or manifestation to its origin. The return from the multitude of forms on the periphery (in the cave) to the Essence and Unity.
Due to its simplicity and size, in line with the space where it is located, this work has a visual impact and monumentality which should in no case be equated with plain decorativeness. On the contrary, as we have determined, it has an immanent complex semantics, it encourages contemplation. Therefore, after this exhibition, it is our intention to make this work a permanent installation in a shopping mall with a similar architecture (which also enabled its production), which not only does not degrade it to a one-dimensional decorative element, but it also gives it a certain ‘subversive’ dimension. Or, so to speak – the possibility to enrich the enthusiasm of shopping experience of the shopping mall visitors with some other kind of interest. Maybe to plant a seed of the idea of the return?
Antun Maračić
