The exhibition “Yes, movie” presents the most recent photographs by Rino Efendić densely installed in the gallery, almost without gaps, if not for a thin white margin. The artist has for the first time created a cycle organized as a film, incomparably more story-telling than his other works which were almost “tong-tied” in the narrative sense. The dense film grid is formally set by contrasts: black and white alternate color photographs, groups of images with and without human figures…
This “film” story may be divided into four separate sub-stories, all of them with urban themes. However, the major part of motifs that traditionally represent and establish the urban character is lacking. The first cycle is formed by the images of the Greenpeace demonstrations in Frankfurt: the activists, carrying black crosses, direct attention to the fact that in the world today there are countless neuralgic and threatening spots like Chernobyl. The other cycle shows the flea market scenes, while the third is a chronicle of the celebration of St. Domnius in Split, here presented with scenes of the traditional bingo when everybody goes out to the waterfront of the city. The fourth cycle contains images that undoubtedly express the abandonment: path in neglected park or dreary courtyard, swing in courtyard as well as in zoo, phone booth in some forlorn place, abandoned wooden pony that once was a toy…
What do these cycles have in common? On the motif level it seems that they share the isolation and detachment of the motif from the rest of its milieu. The social activism of Greenpeace, even when combined with the other similar organizations, is a marginal social lever, insufficient to awake the sleeping sense and conscience of the resigned humankind. The skyline of Frankfurt, megalopolis created by the unscrupulous, flourishing business, underlines its isolation. The skyline predominantly overcasts the demonstrators as well as the cluster of US flags, hanging out of a consular office or mission, while we know (especially after the September 11, 2001) who really rules the world. The visit to the flea market is a regular Sunday activity of urban outsiders and poor people who try to make miserable earnings as well as those who in such places satisfy their esoteric passion for collecting rejected objects. The image of one visitor, leaning on his bicycle, his outfit showing a touching originality of “style”, brilliantly underlines their marginal status. On Sunday, while the other people sleep, the passionate collectors of memories or useless things (even the chimney-sweeper’s wire is part of the offer!) crawl out of their beds and start the search for the objects of value that often only they know. The celebration of St. Domnius, local feast and custom even in Croatia, not to mention the global proportions, is an event when merchants, trying to make additional profit, reinforce their offer as photographed in the shopwindow of the legendary local delicatessen “Bonačić” The spaces as city gardens and courtyards, meant for multitudes, for certain reasons (that Efendić doesn’t comment) are transformed in huge storages of silence. The scenes such as the gloomy bust of the former owner of city residence (or maybe some historical figure?), over which an equally forgotten three-pronged flagstaff swaggers or even more touching image of the rejected wooden pony are the images where, as Sandi Vidulić once wrote, the artist “listens to the silence and emptiness of these silent spaces, discovering little by little the fragile and crumbling aesthetics of abandonment”. For their emphasized semantic value these images don’t need that kind of interpretation.
Hence, the artist’s image of the world can be unraveled from this plastic imposition, although Efendić as the brilliant, wise, experienced and introvert artist in his, above all intimate, decent and cold works neither interprets the theme radically nor imposes a narrative drama, but presents the motif discreetly, without pathos and sweetishness. He neither emphasizes nor denies his own presence and participation in the world as it is. On the contrary, it seems that he “signs” as his beliefs and his milieu everything that he as a photographer attributes to isolated and hidden places, margins and periphery of the world. His feeling of being hurled into the world corresponds with such a “particular” belief.
From the formal point of view (apart from the genuine unpretentiousness) panoramic views, perspective and horizon are equally alien to his artistic efforts… Everything is more or less jammed and claustrophobic here. These seemingly divergent cycles are characterized by the artist’s side-view (motif is not directly focused) while Efendić is all but a “trustworthy narrator” Regardless of the motif it may be approaching, it seems that the artist’s introvert camera sneaks quietly and unobtrusively, without voyeurism or curiosity, like an unwelcome intruder. If anything captures the artist’s attention it would be the grotesque detail like the Greenpeace activists’ green cart carrying the clumsily attached cluster of megaphones, looking more as a catafalque or ice-cream cart than the equipment for heated social activism.
The human figure, even where it appears, is so unfocused and blurred that the personal identity of the photographically immortalized figure is unrecognizable. Efendić is not interested in any of the classic values of portrait photography. With portraitist’s motivation Efendić wants to fathom into the figure’s background, into the second plan of his piece, while simultaneously, but somewhat more discreetly, intensifies the impression of isolation, independence, autonomy and detachment from the background of the frame. Consequently, the real motif, the micro-indicator, is anticipated behind the portrait, often even at the margin of the photograph. Frequently it is something isolated, but also something that marks the identity of the milieu, like a palm on the waterfront in Split, a cypress, huge clusters of balloons, house corners… As always in Efendić’s oeuvre, there are also secretive corners in Split, abandonment and entropy of everything given into care. They present the typical negligence for the architectural inheritance in Split and therefore intensify the originality, isolation and detachment of this environment from the rest of the world.
Efendić’s works are interesting for their plastic values. More often than not he takes his photographs after the bathing season, in autumn when scirocco blows. Hence there is no sun, the strong light characteristic for the Mediterranean artists. There is no intertwining play of light and shadow characteristic for the older Croatian photographers. In that way Efendić creates the gray, gloomy or sad atmosphere, melancholic and sometimes sickly sfumato that strengthens his pessimistic photographic messages and existential spleen.
Ivica Župan
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Rino Efendić was born in 1961 in Sinj. He completed the School of Visual Arts in Split. From 1981 to 1983 he studied camera at the Academy of Film, Theatre and Television in Zagreb. From 1983 to 1988 he studied history of art and ethnology at the Faculty of Arts in Zagreb. He worked in the BEPO Zenit design studio in Sinj (1988 – 1990) and taught at the School of Visual Arts in Split (1990 – 1995). Since 1999 he has been leading the Little School of Photography in OPUS and in the Otok Club in Dubrovnik.
