vabimo vas na ogled razstave sodobnega likovnega umetnika Predraga Todorovića z naslovom Pod površjem / Ispod površine, ki bo v torek, 25. oktobra ob 19. uri v Atelje Galeriji na Gallusovem nabrežju 29 v Ljubljani.
Predrag Todorović made his debut on the Croatian art scene with his works as a student in the late 1980s. Already by the early 1990s, this was intensively followed by his solo exhibitions, as well as by his participation in several regionally relevant group exhibitions. Both were well received by critics from the start. Since then, until the present day, both in Croatia and abroad, Todorović has continued to exhibit with continuous and consistent variation, upgrading or questioning his own artistic expression. He has done this through both painting and reliefs, as well as other types of sculptures and environmental installations. Moreover, a kind of media nomadism, with an emphasis on consistent and awakened problematization – that is, relativization of rigid formal and academic divisions into two-dimensional and three-dimensional visual art disciplines – has grown into one of Todorović’s more prominent artistic determinants. Viewed as a whole, the artistic output of this artist could be characterized as heterogeneously coherent. In fact, his entire artistic output so far, in a purely formal sense, could be reminiscent of two apparently completely opposed concepts established during high modernism: art informel and its kindred phenomena, on the one hand, and the entire ensemble of artistic practices, which theory most often unites under the term art of constructive approach, on the other.
In this sense, Todorović's creative actions are a striking example of postmodernist flexibility, where it is crucial to emphasize that a possibly formal closeness to the mentioned modernist phenomena does not in any way denote their literal adoption. He has a problem-oriented and depersonalized approach to surfaces through the deposition of matter, often taken from surrounding reality (the cycle Impressions/Impressed) or through carving lines into sheet metal. Due to change in the viewing angle and the play of light and shadow, they assume seemingly mobile characteristics (the cycle Field), testifying to an awakened artistic practice that masterfully transposes the initial formal differences into an authentic expressive synergy resulting from kindred creative actions such as deposition or cloning of patterns.
Predrag Todorović's exhibition in Ljubljana's Atelje Galerija brings together and places in a visual dialogue works from the cycles Impressions/Impressed and Field, which the artist has been systematically working on for several years, but until now has generally presented separately. They are executed in different materials, in which the cycle Impressions/Impressed affirms raw matter, whereas the cycle Field asserts condensed linearity. In both cases, these are emphatically dynamic structures that are compatible in their basic idea. Both cycles are a kind of visual arts equivalent – that is, visualizations of abstract categories and structures such as thoughts and emotions. In this case, in Beneath the Surface, we will not find apparitions, but primarily our own thoughts and emotions derived from originally material and physical aspects of manifestation. This exhibition is therefore a definitive confirmation of Todorović as an artist with a heterogeneously coherent oeuvre.
Vanja Babić
Translation: Branka Svetlin