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In moving systematically from one cycle to the next, Miroslav Sutej has reached the paradoxical possibility of a deliberate return to the beginning of his cycles. It seems as if the artist had decided, by a demiurgic gesture, to bring back all that was acquired and accumulated during his systematic work until now, and thus to reach a new beginning. He has done it in the simplest and most natural of ways: by taking stock of elements left over from various preceding stages, by mixing them and allowing them to sink deeply down and then to be re-arranged, according to the primeval rhythms of immersion and surfacing.

Some might think that this is easy and available to anyone. We do not wish to mystify or to claim that in principle it is difficult to amass and then combine previously cut out, impressed and coloured pieces of paper, but we are convinced that it can not be done by anyone. On the contrary, those who dare to undertake the liberty and risk of the purest solutions are rare, which is the reason why we re- member so well the deeds of, say, Solomon or Gordius. And Columbus' egg could have been placed on a table without a stand only by someone who had discovered nothing less than a whole new world. Gentle, playful, confident but unpretentious, Miroslav Sutej joins the insolence of the resolute and the impertinence of the brave by proposing to create in exuberantly, individual anonymity and gently ordered disorder.

From the very beginning Sutej seems to have been led by powerful, but basically opposed creative impulses. His is an erotic imagination, regarding the whole universe in its protrusions and recessions, with spasmodic penetrations and with passionate unions. On the other hand, there is an almost rational elaboration, in which geometrical simplification, constructive brevity, series and parallelisms, schemes and patterns are preferred. Since the early sixties his work has been defined as close to geometrical abstraction, “new tendencies" or op art, yet he never completely fitted the mechanical drawers of exact, cold, "avant-guarde" trends. Behind his ardent cyclycity we can always glimpse of his unbridled imagination and feel that the apparently strict organization of surfaces is nourished upon archaic psychic depths, that his balance is temporary or apparent, and that it is vitality of inspiration that is his deepest and most lasting truth.

It is true that, after his initial and somewhat programmatic "bombardment of the eye-nerve" Sutej embarked on a course of visual methodicalness and Gestalt-like concentration, but it is equally true that at the same time he activated the mechanism which would before long destroy all the premises of external order and imposed solidity. The point in question is not only the flickering and vibration of a surface, it is the actual "losing of ground" before the eyes of the observer. Even when components of his objects are grouped and placed in statically solid positions, a pungent, shrill colouristic intonation and capricious hues of his optically restless signs lead to an explosively ironic effect, in keeping with the title "Bum-bum".

Almost parallel to the "official" line of his hard-edged, non-figurative and non-associative works (mainly serigraphs) in the artist's absorption, almost obsession with motifs of organic, figurative, anthropomorphic origin. While the serigraphs do not reveal any reason or even possibility of an individual witnessing, or any direct traces of tools, medium or hand, in his drawings created at the same time pure energy of rendition is liberated, burning with resplendent emanations of his imagination. The energetic strokes of his pencil and indented blurs of Indian ink, the subtle network of short lines and tufts of tortuous ones found on shreds of paper and on the pages of his notebooks, create real complementary worlds which are sometimes explicitly opposed to the too clear logic of his representative works and large formats. Of course, this opposition is not quite complete, since the intensity of » "lower" layers flows to the upper ones through some of its capillaries. In his drawings, however, which form a basso continuo of his work, Sutej reveals his restlessness and openness which could hardly be surmised behind the facade of a coherent geometrician.

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