MIROSLAV SUTEJ

THE EXTASY OF SUTEJ'S "CHAOS"
by Tonko Maroevic
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IV
Sutej's latest cycle can be seen as a review of his experience accumulated so far, or even as a summa of ways and short-cuts leading in all directions. First it was directly preceded by his explorations in the field of television design and computer graphics, which have inevitably strengthened the artist's reflexes and accustomed him to almost infinite ramifications and bifurcations. Secondly, there have been methodical elaborations in the field of heraldry where he has explored the narrow boundaries of the accepted task, from which he could evasively depart only to the dimension of infinity. Furthermore, there is also a recently outlined part of his cycle entitled "Aura" which has drawn him again, after a long fast, into the orbit of human figure and mimetic references.

And when everyone thought, perhaps, that Sutej would adopt the stimulation and referentiality of recognizable figures, and possibly even enter the postmodernist game of riddling and unriddling, he has resolutely departed from narration and concrete suggestion, even from corporeal emanation and concentric radiation implied in ,Aura". In a further challenge to the extreme, he has relinquished even the elegant, recherché monochromy of his preceding cycle, abandoning himself to a radical colouristic euphoria and to an invasion of colour coming from all corners and all layers.

"Chaos" is the painter's instinctive answer to the pressure of any stylistic-morphological imperative, it is the inner tension in its pure state from which formative inspiration is born. If, like a capricious boy, Sutej refused to join followers of Vasarely or adopt a directed composition of "Exata", as a matura player he is even less prone to share mere collective moods or respond to the usual expectations of the moment. On the contrary, he has found his own inner reserves, without accepting either the challenges of anachronism or the temptation of winking at history.

Nomadism, as far as it has existed at all, has been reduced to reconsideration, thumbing through, going round the earlier stations. His own work has been revealed as a specific mare magnum, or even magma, if you wish, into which things can be immersed and from which hot, vivid and pulsating components are pulled out. Having convinced himself of the fruitfulness of such an inversions for diversion, with regard to evolutionism), Sutej draws us into vortices and lines of magnetic force of his electrified fields. What could otherwise be the purpose of so many circles and spirals, screws and snail shells if they did not lead the eve and the spirit into un- known depths, in an invitation to wander through ecstatic expanses?

We should not compare Sutej's happiness to that of Camus' Sisyphus. He is certainly happy in his work, both when it is dominated by glowing red shades or apparently melancholic blue, both when the whole is more ,inclined,, to the yellow and when it resounds with greenish harmonies. The happiness of the artist is in his undiminished enthusiasm for a figure or a form, for the surface and depth of delineated space. The happiness of this artist is not the happiness of those who search, but of those who find, so that three decades of "digging" have not exhausted his inventive vein. In his happiness the artist can even bear to look at »Chaos", for even Chaos can be tamed and made observable through his individual filter, and we are happy to be able to share this experiences.


Translated by Lelija Socanac

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