Artist

Danijela Purešević

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Binary Constructivism

What certainly is the pivotal point of the discourse of Sasa Pancic is the fact that he translates a very noble, utopian code from the beginning of the 20th century, namely, constructivism and the related schools of thought and successors, through a very specific camouflage strategy, into a modern communication code – binary code that is the fundamental premise of the postindustrial epoch. Into an already largely dehumanized civilization of the 21st century, into what is called the society of surveillance and control and labeled as neo-liberal capitalism or globalization, Pancic transplants what once were very radical and from today’s point of view rooted in the sphere of the exact, rather utopian fantasies of a past era.

The series ‘Borders” comprises a set o black and white two-layer drawings, all identical in size (65 x60cm), produced in 2008 on a 600-gram paper by a wide brush and ink and then cut with the scalpel. For many years, the principal tool of the discourse of Sasa Pancic has been the line, in his case one created by primarily traditional means, such as the brush, and now and then defined with the scalpel; a line that is this time enriched with a stitching line incorporated in the body of the drawing. The line in Pancic’s artwork may be perceived as a plane, while keeping in mind that it is a line – one that is highly individualized and of specific sensibility. These works may also be seen as some kind of binary palimpsests whose hidden layers may be uncovered by simply turning the leaves, and the dialogue between the layers, i.e. leaves, making one drawing is carefully articulated.

Pancic’s artist credo is founded on dualities, contrasts and paradoxes – full and empty, black and white, light and dark, visible and invisible, dehumanized and individualized, etc. However, the stress is not on the conflict between the opposed elements, but rather on a unity. It is also apparent and characteristic that drawings from the series “Borders”, created in such language, although founded on oppositions, do not emanate tension and strain. This is perhaps where the story of noble limits may be read into/input, a utopian vision of an upcoming understanding of the necessity of existence and cultivating of difference, both at individual level and global-local relation.

With the exception of simplified bimorph shapes from his beginnings which soon lead him into the area of the associative and then of the abstract, the works of Sasa Pancic do not contain any objective indications or pictograms or signs or symbols. What one can identify are pure forms, pure lines as elements deprived of any associative prefix and suggested meaning, and it is exactly this void of meaning that makes an extremely convenient background for various content/subject matter. Sometimes, the title reveals move towards the associative.

No doubt, the line is spiritus movens of the entire creative universe of Sasa Pancic. The line is his travel route through space. His is a line of intense energy, a line that whether in a drawing, painting or sculpture, always originates from the third dimension – space, be it suggested, indicated or real. This is not a rigid line, but rather one of discoverer’s joy. It is a line that does not choose means of materialisation - ranging from constructivism to op-art and minimal art. The starting point and point of reference is invariably two-dimensional space, and all art products developed from this point of reference – drawings, paintings and sculptures, should be treated as objects.

To sketch the intellectual and artist portrait of Sasa Pancic, it is inevitable to mention his creative dialogues with the overall art heritage, with special focuses on ancient Egypt, Iranian drawing, Holbein, Rembrandt, of course Malevich, Mondrian, El Lisicki, Brancusi, Eduardo Chillida – the master of full and empty space, to Vazarelli, Escher. Finally there is the holographic paradigm that is for Pancic an extremely important interpretation of the world and whose principles he is using to build his own art, as well as the Dark Light, often emphasized by artist himself: “Launched by Dark Light, the Line opens the plane of the Picture from inside and exposes it to the unknown, extraxxxxxxxxxx space…”

Last but not least, it should be noted that Sasa Pancic belongs to the last Yugoslav/Serbian generation that enjoyed the benefits of creative and contemplative leisure during the last decade of the 20th century that was wiped out by the tsunami of communication ecstasy that in the case of Serbia was intensified with the war galimatias. This was a time before the screen addiction when leisure time had ludic-poetic-philosophical-bohemian variations that bred many imaginations, utopias, follies, but also reality projects some of which we are living today. Also, Pancic belongs to the last Yugoslav generation that walked the planet and contemplated in the Bodlerian sense of the term ‘flaneur’. Many of said civilization atavisms are unobtrusively translated into a contemporary communication code in Pancic’s work.

Danijela Puresevic