Invitation 4

ink on paper
10 × 15 cm

It happened that, after certain printed materials had appeared about my exhibitions, I got into the recycling of my own exhibition invitations.

This was how the series “Invitations” (2005, 2006, 2007) was created; on the front side an oil painting on canvas was reproduced (“Tess”, 2004; the painting was inspired by a sentence of Raymond Carver, and it is a dedication to his work and his love for Tess Gallagher and to her love, devotion and her tireless efforts for the sake of his literary estate), and on the “post office” side of the invitation are lines for writing out the address, a field for the stamp and terse information about the gallery, date of the opening, telephone numbers of the salon and other things – both sides possess a structure determined by function, and also have their own aesthetic determinants.

I then intervene in this kind of form – with drawing and collaging – to show the various devices, tools, machines, springs, weights, vehicles and wheels – sometimes close to reality, sometimes not even close to it, and yet abstracted practically down to Zero. Only the imagination, mine and the viewer’s, can awaken them from their slumber and set them in motion.

(2008; from the catalogue of the exhibition “4th Croatian Triennial of Drawings”, edited and reprinted in the book “Pogled iznutra. Čitati s razumijevanjem” / “View from Inside. Close Reading”, Zagreb 2017)