My written texts have to be distinguished from my painted texts. In the “Letterocracy” project, I bring them together. The result is that the text is no longer subordinated to the pictorial elements. Now it sends its express and clear communicational messages.
“Letterocracy” [“Slovokracija”] is the title of an exhibition but also of a painting that is a marking place in the exhibition. The painting is a pastiche of an encyclopaedia entry, the content of which is ironical and dystopian, fantastic.
For the impressive dimensions (oil on canvas, 150 × 150 cm) I thought up a word and prepared for it an absurd, dystopian and satirical pastiche of a world, of a non-existent political system in which letters are rulers, tyrants, sages, humanists, utopianists and anarchists… To compose the text I drew on dystopian reading (Franz Kafka, George Orwell), Terry Gilliam’s film “Brazil” and other things.
The layout of the text and the typography suggest the seriousness of the encyclopaedic contents the authority of which is not called into question. Letters take over the territory of the exhibition space and organise their rule. Some letters are little dictators, some are rebels, some true altruists, some of them fight to retain the democratic rights they have attained, some of have come out of Orwell’s box and endeavour to control the deadest spot in the gallery whole. Closest to my heart are the Braille characters that communicate with people with impaired sight. They have organised themselves in two manners. On a small bronze plaque and on a 356 cm-long paper “Interpreter”. In “My World” they do their best for the blind and I to become acquainted. In “Interpreter” they try to conjure up the exhibition for those who cannot see it.
(2022; from an interview, DuList, Dubrovnik, December 21, 2022)
P.S. I have been engaging with the elasticity of the visual and linguistic concept of the painting since graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts. In this project I touch on the space of public communication; by registering some points in the area of architecture, urban planning and visual arts that the profession and the civil community have recognised – in order to test out the correctness of decisions that have characterised social settings in the last few years.
(2022; from the catalogue of the exhibition “Slovokracija” / “Letterocracy”, Zagreb 2022/2023; corrected)