Igor Lekšić
DRAWINGS
July 17 -22, 2018.
PM Gallery

DRAWINGS solo exhibition of Igor Lekšić opens on Tuesday, July 17, 2018 at 8pm at the PM Gallery of the Home of the Croatian Association of Artists.

Igor Lekšić’s drawings on paper draw on the long tradition and continuity of the development of geometric abstraction in the history of visual arts, from Malevich’s Suprematism, Mondrian’s neoplasticism, Theo van Doesburg, Max Bill, Victor Vasarely, Richard Paul Lohse, all the way to Croatian artists gathered around the Exat 51 group, especially Ivan Picelj, as well as Juraj Dobrović, Julije Knifer and others.

Over the years, Lekšić has experimented with various forms of geometric abstraction; ranging from monochrome geometric solids in space to an earlier series of drawings of modular structures, of pronounced colours and smaller dimensions, from which the exhibited Drawings emerged. The exhibition features works of larger dimensions created between 2016 and 2018. The artist does not give names to individual works, but unifies them under a common name of Drawings, by which he emphasizes their nature and drawing medium. He created them by meticulously drawing horizontal and vertical line strokes using fluorescent felt tip pens (marker pens) on paper, in a precise scale and relationships, and at regular intervals, following an organized spatial-raster grid. A uniform pressure of the pen on the paper and suggestion of perfectionism of machine printing resulted in the absence of any narration, description and subjectivity in the work. Closed construction prevents any verbal involvement with the visual structure of the work, the result of which is silence. Long ago, this was defined by the American theorist Rosalind E. Krauss in her analysis of the notion of structural grid (Malevich, Mondrian).

What is important for Igor Lekšić’s geometric abstraction is the artist’s authentic methodological approach where the issue of elaboration of a visual image refers to the structural composition of the grid. The artist bases his theory of geometric abstraction on the idea of using mathematically elaborate method by which he explores the differences between the resulting permutations. Drawings arise from a pre-defined working methodology, whereas the basic idea is the existence of a non-exhaustive number of visual changes arising from a pre-defined and controlled implementation process.

There are two basic and central ideas to constructing the form. First, there is a previously elaborated, mathematically precise, rhythmically structured framework, which functions as a structural and optical unit. The exactness of Drawings arises from the predefined parameters of the grid, which are repeated from drawing to drawing like a matrix, replicating the same pattern of spatial grid. On the other hand, the optical shift is emphasized by the choice and change of colours. In terms of composition, each drawing is divided into three horizontal segments in which the parts of transparent rectangular structural grid differ in colour, luminosity and density of linear strokes. At the same time these segments are the central bearers of optical perceptive relations. When referring to his work, the artist emphasizes his concentration on performance, as well as precision that excludes spontaneity and chance, especially because “paper“ does not tolerate “mistakes and corrections“.

Nadežda Elezović

Igor Lekšić – Biography
 

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