Beyond Temporality

(with the exhibition conversation of Jelena Perić and Anto Jerković)

As early as the mid-1980s, Jelena Perić and Anto Jerković embarked on a joint exhibition practice having, in the process, executed collaborative temporary works. It is therefore the intention of this event in Split to present – of course, in a completely different way and in an entirely different time – their artistic considerations and interests. For example, in the late 1980s, through the monochrome painting featuring a uniform and subdued gesture, Jelena began dealing with the theme of pictorial “taciturnity”. She does not necessarily encumber her works with any specific meaning or cloaked reading codes, but leaves them open for the observers to inscribe their own experiences and reflections. As she herself has said in one conversation, there is no intimacy in these works, no charm or special mystique, because she is actually interested in the “aesthetics of indifference”. However, over time, she complemented her painting procedure with new media art research and experience. Thus, the use of a personal archive as the starting point of her artistic process becomes increasingly discernible in Jelena’s artistic methodology, as a result of which she extracts memories of forgotten places, absent people, moments frozen in time, which are then changed and filtered through new technology and artistic prism. Anto Jerković’s creative vein, on the other hand, is expended in the application of the recognisable blue chromatic value throughout his entire oeuvre – excluding, of course, his works from the Art Informel phase and the affinity, back then, for thick, pasty application of paint – both in the case of temporary installations and monochrome “traditional” paintings. In addition, it is important to mention the conceptual impregnation supplemented, among other things, by the use of words in his artistic configurations, but also in projects intended for public space.  

These are just pithy reminders of the intriguing and prolific oeuvres of the two artists, which are, in turn, augmented by a new dialogue in the late antique space of the Kula Gallery permeated by different layers of memory and artistic experiences. Specifically, with the latest exhibition event, Jelena Perić is returning to the collaborative process, almost eighteen years after Anto’s death, but through increased emotional engagement and an intimate form. She selects Anto’s works and articulates the display guided primarily by pure aesthetic requirement, just as she once did with her husband. On the background of the Pompeian red, she sets-up various works by Anto, carefully matching the formats and colouristic solutions. The works occupy strategic positions in the room itself without saturating it with their abundance. The observer is expected to try and interpret the meaning of Jelena’s artistic curation, actually her intimate conversation, through aesthetic stimuli. An important key to this exhibition act is installed at the very beginning of the exhibition, in Jelena’s appropriation of the content of the museum label that stands at the tomb of King Philip II of Macedonia, the famous father of an even more famous son – Alexander the Great, written by Manolis Andronikos, an archaeologist and university professor who discovered the tomb in the late 1970s in the Greek town of Vergina.    

“After burning the body on a pyre, the bones were carefully collected and washed in wine; a purple cloth was laid inside the casket, which was part of the royal household treasure, the bones were then carefully arranged in order – first the legs, then the torso, and finally the skull, and covered with a purple cloth. A golden diadem was laid over everything, and the casket closed firmly inside the marble sarcophagus, which had been made in great haste. Finally, in front of the sarcophagus a wooden bed was arranged and around it weapons and other items. Then the chamber was closed with a heavy marble door and the wedge was lowered sealing them forever.”  

There are several reminiscences of this musealised site in Vergina. The Kula Gallery, like the royal crypt, is entered through a small doorway and then one descends into the gallery space that may not be large in terms of square footage, but it leaves a truly monumental impression. The red colour of the exhibition panels is also reminiscent of the richly displayed inventory of the tomb. Jelena Perić visited the archaeological site in Vergina last year, and the analogies immediately began to coincide, regardless of the fact that she already had a clearly articulated idea of what she would showcase in Split and in what manner. It may be argued that this is a personal archaeology of sorts, an encounter with the works after they have been packaged and stored for thirty years. Anto’s monochromes are out again and contribute to the solemn atmosphere of the late antique space, but they are also linked to the exhibits in Vergina (where, for example, the meeting of gold colour and red background is also pronounced). Nevertheless, they are first and foremost the products of Anto Jerković’s work and his life as a painter, and a result of distinct artistic research. Of course, the line of artistic predecessors that Anto acknowledged and inscribed in one of his blue monochromes is telling: Giotto di Bondone, Eugène Delacroix, Vincent Van Gogh, Ad Reinhardt, Ivo Gattin, Yves Klein, Anish Kapoor, Anto Jerković. All are therefore fragments of a memory, testimonies of one’s creative path.

Either way, Jelena uses the specific nature and energy of the late antique space to initiate a dialogue that is both personal and universal. The artist’s experience and her memory of the dormant heritage are transposed into the exhibition composition of the gallery in Split, which then, with its aesthetic sophistication, ushers the observer toward some other associative sequences and the question of what lies on the other side of temporality, that is, how timelessness is understood and written. Dalibor Prančević

Anto Jerković (02.05.1958 Tuzla – 16.07.2005 Zagreb). He gratuaded from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb 1983. Between 1983 and 1986 he worked as an associate in the Master Painters Workshop HAZU in Zagreb.

Jelena Perić was born on March 19th 1962. She gratuaded from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb 1984. Between 1984 and 1986 she worked as an associate in the Master Painters Workshop HAZU in Zagreb.