Regarding the Exhibition by Ivan Radman St Francis monastery in Zadar, August the 17th, 2002
No one ever has, and no one ever will, forge a definition of art that would satisfy all points of view and aspects. Neither shall I, but regarding this exhibition I would like to track the view towards these two things:
First: Artist should not be a sort of a chronicler only.
And second: Artist should evoke human feelings.
This, of course, calls for help of the word Maturity, because man travels through wisdom, and has a certain art expression and view from the heights of his age. Some artist, thought, goes beyond himself, work of his eyes strides in front of the sense of the task itself. They meat in the light as a bare snip of life, as a temperament that decides the final maturity till it's full frame. They meat in the motif as it's own review of it's own task. Through that motif artist lights up his own building power, changes the states and feelings, by his own rhythm opens the eyes of another, wakes up in him the might of judgment.
What for this introduction?
Primarily for it is leaned on the work in front of us, onto the young artist that nearly ripe travels into ripening. And yet what: The motif Ivan Radman finds is blankly bizarre - the stone and a little view of the sea. And where is that where he sets up his task? His stone is a stone, his sea is a sea, but other as well, the poem a bit different than the poet himself!
His stone is an erection, not just some boulders that juts and frightens, that only takes the space. His stone is nicely polished, architectural clean signal and call. His stone is clean and shines! Blocked in by charcoal it remains without it's wrinkles and bulges, becomes the sign of stability, challenging like a lad in a cleaned lawn or in a calm sea.
His sea, however, is the most unusual in art I have ever seen. It appears in front of us that we see some algebraic sequence, illegible musical notes rolled up in a lace, or just a slightly shrunken lines of Gothic script under the hazy glass. So that it makes you want to watch and stare! And the picture is for the purpose of that! The painter yet, by the soft lyric of his visions, sings a song about the beauty of nature and the might of it's Creator. That is the way Radman has petrified the sea, pacified it, taken away it's waves and threats, storms and voracity, and stopped it as a common, calm upright sign in light, apart from one drawing, where he has owerplowed it and greasily overshadowed it, leaving it simplified as a dark hunch or an apology for the act of his mischievous youth.
here have been met upon this time, in 36 images, the stone, the sea and the light with one painter and architect as well, to make an exhibition where a young man through his lyrical thrills solves the task and the great riddle called nice, in the nature build by the mighty architect himself, Creator of all, the one who has young man presented with a gift, a gift that one responds by the gift back again. And this is the way he anticipates his future.
The man does not appear in the picture. But he paints him self there as creator.
professor Marko Vasilj
Croatian State Radio
Zadar, 2002 |
