Creating one after another painting through past years I became aware that I was painting what they imposed to me. In order to break free from this conditioned state, I started to place my paintings into different situations, thus creating new states for them. The space of the painting started to absorb the outside elements. In further work I do not need defined limits between painting and outside elements, but instead I want to create their interaction, aiming to break the established priorities and to create a new whole.
STATES OF PAINTINGS: “Independent form” and “Linking” 2000.; “My paintings threat me most”, “Decoration”, “Still life” 2001.; “Training paintings for beautiful spaces” and “Paintings for everyday use” 2002.
“Independent form” has, as the first “state of painting”, announced everything that concerns me today. In this state my preoccupations cease to be only aesthetic and visual and outer elements emerge. The white square of “Independent form” spread as a virus over the paintings created in previous three years (1997/98/99). After I got rid of the personal painting heritage, I moved on open and relieved.
“Linking” has marked the state of easy and quick work that confirmed relations in specific space. I have emphasized the grasped relationships in a specific space. There is nothing incompatible in reality, it appears only in personal conceptions.
“My paintings threat me most” is the state of changing relations between outer elements and space of the painting. I shift the emphasis on the execution of circumstantial relationship, differing from previous interest in direct relationship. I treat my paintings as a set designer, sometimes they become mere symbols of my ironic attitude towards personal fears caused by the cycles I have created.
“Decoration” is the state achieved in my own room. I created the uttermost decorative situation/ambiance and allowed paintings to enjoy it completely.
“Still life”. Although I have never imagined myself in the role of a painter who arranges objects into a composition in order to paint it, I have included my paintings into that procedure. Finally, using food of animal origin, hedonistic “explosion of colours” and paintings even I have created a composition with no purpose.
“Training paintings for beautiful spaces” is characterized by the procedure similar to “Linking”. I have used the same stippling roller to create both ambiance and painting. Leveling their visual content, I have brought them to the state of mimicry.
“Paintings for everyday use” is the first state of paintings that I create in a public space (gallery) as distinguished from previous work in the intimacy of my own room. Although I build the relationship between ambiance and painting, the paintings are those who repeat the decorative motif of the ambiance. The doubled motif of the painting is in function of its internal dialog and the decoration of the wall becomes virtually aggressive. The ambiance in its whole brings a previously known state to the different level of meaning
David Maljkovic
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Every now and then the noise of the public space of the reception apparatus articulates itself in a name that echoes from all directions. In those moment art critics, media, public and market form an ideal consent and the star is born. The artist is going to become the object of phenomenological analysis, mere talks and expert polemics and his body of work will have to stand up to the role of welcome topic if influences or generation succession are going to be discussed.
Lets start with our contribution to the vivisection of David Maljković or why the young painter from the regional center, shortly after his graduation from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, reached such status that mere mention of his one-man show entices comments like “Aah, David Maljković! Interesting…” or how his work is at the same time praised by the critics and allows the artist to earn his living.
In order to help me with this introduction, Maljković composed the genesis of his work from 2000. up to the present (see pages 2 and 3). The genesis declares the artist’s opinion on – for production essential – equality of “internal” and “external” sphere of the painting related to its physical body. By internal I consider his personal aesthetic exploration of the discipline and medium, the development of his own iconographic system of motifs and themes as well as technique. By external sphere of painting I consider his unique way of transposing the personal experience of social context of art through visual expression into integral part of artistic work. The painting as a physical object is becoming too small for this concept, therefore he is expanding it in the space, first in his atelier/room and then gallery, creating an ambiental painting. Integrating both areas into a united piece of work, on symbolic level Maljkovićexpresses his witty, true and painful experience of production and reception patterns of painting at the time when it is definitely not an indisputable ruler of visual world.
Spontaneous remaining within the painting vocation and lacking any, now already notorious, flirtation with technology, differs Maljković from other artists of his, as well as older generations interested in artistic creation without exploiting the appropriated patterns. As his particularity Maljković introduces the stitching of canvas, the method not that new if we remember for example works of Ko`arićor Ru`i}, without any reflection on gender determination of the act of embroidering. In big compositions the embroidery is equal element in execution of motif and colour construction of the painting. In tectonic sense, in painting on canvas it substitutes the nails that he used to delineate the contours of motifs on firm surfaces of prized Transplantations. On smaller paintings Maljkovićuses threads to sew up the cuts through the canvas as the negation of decorative-decadent Fontanian cuts through the surface of painting that announced loss of belief in its supremacy. This moment, although only incidental, is maybe the best indicator of Maljković’s aspiration to restore the painting within poetic-technical pluralism of contemporary visual arts. Decisive for the whole aesthetic discernment is the present Maljkovi}’s attitude that demonstration of personal skill in métier is not necessary at all. In 2000. Maljković covered his early paintings with white squares in the act of deliverance. After that his variant of figurative painting became distinctly reduced. Carefully positioned schematic figures float in completely undefined or scenographic, decoratively executed space of the painting. The colours are expressionless, dull in tone, but therefore delicately harmonized.
Considering the fact that Maljković sells his paintings, after such an unattractive description it is interesting to find out what makes them attractive to the purchasers. After almost two decades of focusing on the extent of usage of new technology in visual arts it became clear to all that the traditional painting cannot be replaced, but that at the same time, in spite of strong volition of everybody involved (artists-critics-public), there were no new events on the horizon. Relying on the principles of conceptual art Maljković builds his poetics and his career on exploitation and critic of the nostalgia for traditional painting, this paradigm of ceaseless need for possessing the art piece=painting and artists’ existential ambition to achieve commercial success. According to this, Maljković will flirt with kitsch using banal or by use banalized motifs, applying fluffy warm or glittery materials and finally he will use a tool that sublimates the bourgeois visual taste: the stippling roller. How Maljković turned this sweetish mixture into the sly, but radical critic of current apotheosis of bourgeois society is evident in its, so far, most radical variant, the exhibition “Paintings for everyday use”.
Reminding the readers on previous explication of Maljković’s painting procedure from which this exhibition also originates, I will point out that he thought necessary to stress the usual choice of overexploited themes (room with fireplace, moonshine in tropics, guardian angel) by isolating and then doubling the motif. The refined and precise applications of embroidery, in their composition and tone, strongly evoke the kitsch atmosphere of middle-class room, that shrine of bourgeois materialism. At his previous public appearance, group show “Walls and space” in the Mali salon in Rijeka, Maljkovićhas scratched into the wall the enlarged floral motif taken from the stippling roller. I perceived this piece as his leveling of bourgeois room with the gallery, being parts of the same order of social values. Gallery is the purgatory, vestibule where the work of art gains the value before the fulfillment of its final purpose: the main adornment in the paradise of bourgeois room. This metaphor is now radicalized virtually to the physical danger. The floral, decoratively articulated motif of the painting of guardian angel is enlarged over the gallery walls with fragments of broken glass. Under the mask of decorative beauty Maljković discloses greedy, sharp, snarling teeth of the supposedly neutral white cube of the gallery.
Is Maljković plainly attacking the feeding hand and the system in which he is so well acquiesced? Does the consumption in civil society today fear the criticism while it can be neutralized by the consuming? Is Maljkovićdeluding himself thinking that the art itself is not a whore after all, but a neutral practice prostituted by those others, partners by tacit social agreement? Maljković’s radicalism has precisely defined and practical limits: painting discipline, gallery walls, ultimately his studio space. In the end it should be said that Maljkovićis not a cynic – he pays for his radicalism by getting the gallery into the neutral state as it was before his exhibition. I hope that his warm packages of rebellion will continue to find places for everyday use in middle-class rooms.
Branko Franceschi
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DAVID MALJKOVIĆ
Born in Rijeka, Croatia
Faculty of Arts (visual arts)
1996-01. Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia (Painting departemant) 1998-99. Departemant of Multimedia at the Academy of the Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia
Exhibits from 1996.
