Marijan Richter

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Karas Gallery

March 16 – 29, 2015

Opening of the exhibition on 16th of March at 7:00 pm

Karas Gallery

Praška 4, 10000 Zagreb

Working hours:

 

Tuesday to Friday 11 am – 7 pm

Saturday and Sunday 10 am – 2 pm

Monday and holidays – closed

In the last couple of years Marijan Richter has been successfully applying a unique and interesting strategy – he has been deleting his already finished, exhibited and catalogued paintings, removing from them everything without which they can function as paintings. This is the process of “de-painting and unpainting, releasing the painting from its painted content“ (Richter), which the author uses to take a clear stance, in the problematic sense, towards the important issues of present-day painting; stating that painting can no longer deal with the big problems of life, but needs to turn inward, to the constituent factors of painting itself. An important spiritual and morphological starting point in creating such form of painting is the painter’s need to deny the painting as a finished result, to deny its completeness and unchangeability again and again, to expose its sluggishness and inactivity, to deny it as a finished aesthetic object. The author peels off, dissolves and then builds onto his already exhibited images, stating that a work of art is never closed and fully elaborated system. Pushing for constant changes, modifications and transformations of the image, Richter at the same time forces the observer to abandon his/her own habits in observing the work of art and seriously re-examine the justification of the dominant aesthetic and ideological patterns. At the same time, the painter does not accept anything within the painting except the painting itself.          

In Richter’s latest paintings – exhibited in Karas Gallery – we are witnessing a new shift in constructing his paintings – these are no longer works which deal with the issue of redefining previously painted paintings; however, these achievements are also the result of the previous process of artistic denial of a priori defined and untouchable appearance of a painted image. And this is where the author explores the extent to which he can free himself from a priori painting postulates – artistic, aesthetic, iconic, symbolic, colour, etc.

From the freface by Ivica Župan

The exhibition is financially supported by the City Office for culture, Education and Sports Zagreb and by The Ministry of Culture of the Republic Croatia.