“Philosophy has been on a death-end for the whole centurybut refuses to die as It has not accomplished Its task. So Its farewell with Life has been painfully prolonged. Where It has not been brought to an end, It is dragging at Its last gasp in aglittering agony, in which It recalls everything It has failed to say when being alive. Brought face to face with the End, It wants to alleviate Its soul and disclose the Last secret. It acknowledges: major themes – they were only excuses andhalf-truths. All these let’s say nice trips into the heights -God, Universe, theory, practice, subject, object, body, mind, sense, nothing – all this is Nothing. These are nouns for young people, outsiders, clericalists, sociologists.
‘Words, words – nouns. They only flare up and themillennia fall off from their flight’
(Gottfried Benn, Epilog und lyrisches Ich).”
These words taken from the book of Peter Sloterdijk “Criticismof the Cynical Mind” were an impetus for a work standing in front of our eyes: ten notions written by pencil on the gallery walls and plenty of blue little balls on the floor. Notions functioning as nouns – God, Universe, theory, practice, written in Roman capitals, a script of stone monuments, a symbol of lastingness and eternity. Discreet gray lead of the pencil can be easily wiped from the white gallery walls and is in apparentdis harmony with the selected script. However, the lastingness of system and form as well as the instability of materiality co-exist on this wall. They do not clash with each other.
The work has been conceived for the space in which it was accomplished. Access to the gallery is from above and visitors catches sight of the floor firstly. Therefore it should not hareremained empty. It has been accentuated visually and from the standpoint of contents. Defining and considering the relation towards the exhibition space is one of the floor firstly. Therefore it should not hare remained empty. It has been accentuated visually and from the standpoint of contents. Defining and considering the relation towards the exhibition space is one of the constants of the Jerkovic’swork. Even when exposing his paintings he is not indifferent towards the exhibition space, he has adapted himself towards by articulating it.
In April this year a work of the similar conception was developed for the T.EST Exhibition, the performance of which was conditioned by the state come across on the spot, in a court-yard near the Cvjetni trg (Square of Flowers ) in Zagreb. The mentioned notions were written in blue letters on the thrown-off concrete elements of the urban furniture – remains of flower stands.
Using the elements of a personal, previously elaborated art system (circle, blue color, words-quotations) the author is examining some of the basic notions, which we often unconcsciously and without any actual reason – throw like littleballs. Do these notions have any future? Are they worthy of Roman capitals? Or are these the words, the time of which has passed, as Sloterdijk quotes? Have these words lost their meaning and arethey the nouns of their emptied contents?
The author will perhaps inspire us by persistent repeating and transcripting them to think about them, adopt them and fulfill them with meaning.
In his previous works Jerkovic has materialized “Abstract and Absolute” in blue monochromes, surfaces of pure color, deprived of expressive and gestual elements. The choice of a monochrome is at the same timea self-reflection, but also an opening to meditation and contemplation. As fields of pure color of basic geometrical forms (square, circle) or with a written-in text these paintings are some kind of mandalas. Determined by a pattern (as with a mandala established on a circle and a square) they are, in fact, a point of support for meditation, an art pattern of a contemplation process, which is in this case based on the foundations of the western culture (memory, universe, cosmogonies…).
The continuation of the contemplation component of his work present also in the exposed installation is supported by numerous symbolic connotations of its individual elements. Along with the symbolic of script, the symbolic of color and shape is also important.
The dictionary of symbols defines the blue color as the deepest and the most non-materialistic of all colors, the colorof mind, endlessness and wisdom. The color of sky, the purest of all colors.
Circle is a perfect form of the highest homogeneity. A shape without beginning and end, A symbol of the cosmic sky and time. For Plato the Universe is a ball. According to the Prophets, three balls are emanated by God, filling three skies. One of them being the blue ball – a ball of wisdom.
In his works “Imenice i loptice” (“Nouns and Little Balls”) the circle – image – surface arrangement becomes a body – sphere. To be more precise: a little ball which has descended from a privileged position on the gallery wall tothe floor. From the circle as a meditation object it becomes agame object.
Has contemplativity become a game?
Has a meditation mind become a cynical mind?
Markita Franulic
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Anto Jerkovic
Born 1958 in Tuzla. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb in 1983. 1983 – 1986 worked as associate in the Master Painters Workshops of Croatian Academy of Science and Arts in Zagreb. Lives and works in Zagreb.
