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Zoran Gavrić

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From Constructive to Concrete in Saša Pančić Art

In his essay dealing with the relation between modern and postmodern art, which points to numerous difficulties in differentiating between various art practices comprised under these concepts, Gotttfries Boehm underlines that minimalist and conceptual art have been defined as the final stage that indirectly opened the door to postmodern art, basically as the most radical reductions, after which art was almost impossible to imagine. (G. B. »Die unvollendete Vernunft. Moderne Versus Postmoderne, Dietmar Kamper und Willem van Reijen (Hrsg.): Frankfurt am main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1987, pp. 223 – 239) The new painting with its regional dialects, as this author says, primarily bearing in mind the Italian »transavantgarde« and German »new wild« entirely proved to be a phenomenon of the European and American discussion. Perceived as a discussion, and put under the concept of »postmodern art«, this painting put forward » a diagnosis of a deep crisis of modern are »in toto«, turning its critical edge exactly towards minimalism and conceptualism, finding that it had rendered art, and above all paintings to utter emptiness. However, according to the findings of Gottfried Boehm, the crisis of artistic modern can be discussed not only since the 70s, when artistic concepts changed , but much earlier, back since the 30s, as given that diachronic and sinchronic processes of differentiating between opposing concepts clearly marked the development of modern. Giving the central place to the consistecny and self-foundation of critique coming from the new painting, Goetfried Boehm points out that this critique perceives both diahro and processes as a proces of narrowing, by which this critique itself, now as a practice, oversaw and excluded from the process of thinking many aspects and possibilities that offered themselves within these processes. Thus, for instance, while the idea of an abstract painting was introduced as a perception of reality, which also was missed in reflections, positivism or tautologilac identity of minimalist objects … expressed a » » which lacks its subject and content… »What you see is what you see« asStella pointed out in 1964.

However, Max Imdahl drew the attention to the possibility of making such distinction by a subtitle (“Abstraktion und Konkretion”) of his debate from 1966 and later through systematic study of modern artworks, which he called »conrete art«, pointing out that this distinction results form the conflict between the line and colour. In thiss conflict, as the author showed, these basic elements of painting became more and more independent were gven an increasing degree of independency. As implied in his thesis that » the picture… more directly than ever before became the last stage in perceiving perception in general, he cited the art of Robert Delanunay as a paradigm of transgressing from an older colorism to a specifically modern colorims, in whose work the composition becomes identical to the logic of the color, and as a paradigm of the proces of independ of the line the structural constellations. Yet, the fact that these constituents only make the extreme poles of the conflicty, between which various solutions are possible, is according to very persuasive explanations of this theoretician is best shown by the fact that, for instance, the picture by Jasper Johns titled »Is this a flag?« can and must be understood as »concrete art«, just as is the case with the pictures of Andy Warhole. How is this possible? Simply because in all the above said cases, it is the picture that initiates an experience of itself and nothing but itself. This own being of »concrete art«, perceived as eikon is determined by crucial concepts of »simoultaneous« and presence« which are to prove this experience of the picture as the structure of existence. Thus, for instance, the sturcture of plastic of Richard Serraa, which consists of heavy, soft lead plates, he perceives indentifies mutual supporting of these plates in their inclination to foling down as an essential feature. Therefore, as he concludes, seraa's plastic is not a picture (eikon) but a real case of an existential structure, where »an attitude si reflelcted through the constellation of elements, which interdependently prevent their modification or even their collapse«.

Thus, we have approached the nature of the eikon understood as a creation which conceive their own experience. NO matter how, at first sight, they may offer themselves as the articulation of constructivist elements, the pictures of Sasa Pancic present the experience as the structural existence of the very work of art. Furthermore, despite on first impression, they seem to have been made through the use of »non-art« appliances, measuring instruments etc, their existence is the outcome of artistic work in the strict sense. Primarily, like pure pigment and eggs, or technology known as classical method of icon painting, the final texture facture is obtained through painting creating multiple layers of colour. As a rule, the result is a concrete being of the picture, where its author is insisting not on a balance of forms, bur of surfaces, especially by not present experience where every reflection is objectivised. In his annulment of the form, in a paradoxic manner, Sasa Pancic assigns the dominant role to the line. This line, as the author himself points out, he doesn't associate with relate to what has been known as contour, or gesture, the deed of the hand, but with its own breathing. Thus, through this new additional annulment, the annulment of the linear, the relation of these surfaces is pushed further into the dimension of depth. »The line identified with its own being« says Sasa Pancic loses the meaning of the horizon and assumes the role of a spacial center / inherent to the unity of two lights. The rhytm of mutual pulsation becomes an opening. While the color is, the line »is« and »is not«. In his perception of color and their application, the author departs from the of Eduardo Chillida, who used to say for himself that, due to the influences he felt coming from the literature of the German, Indian and Oriental mystics, he is the of the black light«. Sasa Pancic, on the other hand, perceives white as »the earth's specter« and black as minus space. Quite obviously, by juxtaposing these two values, a new annulment comes into the play, not only as the result of the conflict between former as »a sum of values« and the latter as »a negative fraction« , but drawing from the depth, which is proved by its very texture. And owing exactly to these successive annulments, the being of that eikon keeps returning to itself, keeps persuading to an awareness of its pictorial presence, depriving the viewer of any possibility to associate it with already known experience, but making some space in the consciousness for a new structural presence, which is in these particular painting becomes actual as an annulment of contradiction.