When a painter, through the selection of his paintings, wishes to clearly define his reflection on the current state of civilisation, few exhibition spaces in the world can provide a better context than the Kula Gallery. The reason is simple. The walls of the Gallery, ever since the downfall of the Roman Empire in which they were stoically erected, bear witness to the succession of social upheavals in which very little changes except for the props. Zoltan Novak is not the first, nor will he be the last exhibitor who could not resist the siren call of the millennia-old stone, transforming the option of conventional exhibition in a gallery space into a challenging commentary on everyday life. In just three swift steps, in which he clearly defined who and where the mental fathers are, and who the children are and what their spiritual framework is, he reminded us that beyond the formal aspects of artistic discipline, ethics is the foundation of all creation. If we assume this premise when it comes to the activist-oriented artists who express themselves within the current multidisciplinary creative paradigm, it is a reassuring confirmation that in the meantime traditional artistic disciplines have not lost any of their historical capacity to function as a medium of critical reflection, according to the intentions of their artists, expressed through the language of form, colour, gesture, and materials. We will reiterate the old saying: a picture, and in the case of Kažimir Hraste’s superb Cruiser,[1] a sculpture as well, is worth a thousand words for its ability to directly, intuitively, and instantly transmit meaning.

Both Novak and Hraste, each in their respective artistic discipline, have found the right measure in the relationship of their works to the compact space of the Kula Gallery. Hraste, with the monumental structure of a human head that saturates the interior of the gallery, suggesting the perils of tourist expansion in a cramped and insatiable local mental space that parasitically exists within a precious ancient Roman site. Zoltan’s three-painting narrative that maximally fills the three available gallery walls, also relies on an ambient charge that leaves no room for doubt or evasion. The eye and mind simply have no space for respite, other than to leave the gallery.

The subject-matter of the three paintings is so well-chosen that they can function as a triptych. The first one, an alarming composition that fixes the viewer’s gaze immediately upon entering is also the most expressive, rendered predominantly in red and black. Its theme is the grotesque bestiality of the adult world, the animalistic surrender to primal instincts, aggressive interaction, violence, and killing, which, if not directly experienced, is consumed in the media environment of a competitive society of spectacle, mass entertainment industry, and gaming. Since Zoltan, among other techniques, uses self-made figure stencils to execute his compositions, a black variation of the same composition is displayed on the opposite wall, featuring a depiction of five children floating in the centre, sitting on a bench at even intervals. They do not communicate with each other, but are immersed in the virtual reality emanating from the screens of their androids or iPhones. Their naive nature and concentration are marked by an aura of primary colours, and although they levitate above the carnal scene in the background, their eventual descent into an existential trap that their parents have not escaped, and which they now further reinforce by creating morbid media content, seems likely. Zoltan proves himself to be a master of typification here. His teenagers are convincingly realistic, although they are merely a summary depiction of some of the not-so-numerous typologies of their peer group. The skill of highlighting the recognisable within the typical connects this composition with the painting displayed on the central wall of the Gallery. At its centre is a motif of a typical animated boy, while three typical pensioners, three wise men, address him kindly and, we would add – unfortunately, impart life lessons to him. These four typified, yet realistic characters are also sitting on a bench. It is a scene from any park or waterfront, except that in Novak’s composition, the view of the cold, mechanistic composition developing in the background of the painting represents the enervating undercurrent of a dehumanised society that perpetuates itself. The world is already poisoned in the bud.

Although relying on typified characters in his narrative, Zoltan Novak is a completely atypical painter. It is difficult to shake off the impression that the medium of painting represents more a tool than a pleasure to him. He shares an intellectual kinship with icon painters who persevered in character typification, repeating patterns, and employing a flat pictorial space with limited depth, where aerial perspective and illusionism are foreign and unnecessary. However, while their theme is the sanctity and mysticism of paradise, Novak is oriented towards the hellishness of everyday earthly existence. Accordingly, instead of the brilliance of gold and brightness of the eye, he uses muted and sombre colour tones, while the faces in his paintings are cold and extinguished. Novak skilfully employs his brushwork and colour scheme in service of conveying content, and although at times the motifs, through repetition and accumulation, may appear independently baroque, his control over colour and gesture never wavers. Without the initial ardour and love for painting, Zoltan Novak could never have become as compelling and productive an artist that he is. However, the customarily assumed pleasure of creation on his canvases never spills over into self-sufficient life of colour, material, or gesture, even in the conditionally abstract parts of his paintings or the early abstract compositions that I know off.

Novak’s distinct variation of figuration in his drawings owes much to the graphic style of comics and illustration, with a modulation reminiscent of street art. We can therefore say that in the portrayal of the visible world, he is more inclined towards reduction and highlighting of general characteristics, than descriptive drawing and individuality. Novak is not a representative of Realism; his creative habitus is oriented towards art as a message and the creation of a strong symbolic charge. In terms of content, he can be considered close to existentialists, while in form and a tendency towards grotesque, he aligns with Expressionism. However, despite the points of contact with these artistic tendencies, Zoltan Novak’s oeuvre is highly individual and has no similar counterpart on the Croatian art scene or even beyond. Novak belongs to a generation of painters who, notwithstanding the prevalent discourse concerning the “death of painting” at the turn of the millennium, have shown that the potentials of easel painting are not and cannot be exhausted. He has developed a distinct position and recognisable style on the Croatian art scene, introducing the figure of the walker as his sign and a kind of alter ego that defines the artist as an observer and chronicler of neuralgic civilisational problems. With his new cycle of paintings, which he premiered in 2019 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Novak demonstrated the ability to expand his poetics into complex group compositions, thus exponentially enhancing the transmission of his gloomy perception of reality. At this moment, in terms of depicting the human figure, Novak is focused on typological representations that, compared to the notorious walker, have gone a step further in developing the content of the painting and fostering the observer’s empathy.

The phrase “monkey business,” which we have chosen as the exhibition title, colloquially encompasses the foolishness and trivialities that largely, if not completely, define the influential media image of reality. As we can see, artists like Zoltan Novak still manage to maintain the necessary distance that allows for a critical view of reality and express it through one of the numerous artistic possibilities at their disposal today. Easel painting – including Novak’s tendency to execute his current cycle and display it mounted directly on the wall – retains its status as the most prominent visual medium, thanks to its rich history and artists who succeed in conveying contemporary content while aligning the form with the spirit of the times. And it should remain so, staying away from the “monkey business” dictated by the market-driven perception of artistic value. This exhibition and its painter serve as a vivid example of how to act in accordance with this principle. Branko Franceschi

Zoltan Novak was born on March 19, 1963, in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated on Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1997. He is a member of HDLU (Association of Croatian artist). Zoltan Novak had number of individual and collective exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. He won several prizes. His work can be found in many private and public collection (museums) in Croatia.