It is not so often that one, at entering the gallery, gets blowen away
while faced by the experiences of a certain painter to the point that
one does not know which painting, he should look at first and which
one should look at longer.
Such an experience offered to the devotees of his art – as well as to
the wide audience – the artist Ozrenko Mrkic, recently in the Gallery
Praxis in Toronto.
This exhibit, as much as visually so much as an act of expression
of fine arts, represented delightful challenge to the eyes of the viewers.
Briefly it was obvious that here was not a man who paints.
Here is not someone who productively gained knowledge of this
or that painting techniques and now applies it.
Here is someone who uses his fine arts tools and experiences to
fight his own demons.
And he is not afraid of such a battle, of which he places the events
right in front of us so we too can feel the heat of our own spiritual
fights –and it is what art is about.
To the eye aiming to be little more educated in visual arts move-
ments of the 20 th century it will appear that – from those paintings
– tones of Picasso, Kandinsky, Miro as well as Dali, and others echo
attractively.
The artist neither runs away from it nor he hides it.
He openly – where someone would renounce as discovery of the
Chagall’s influence – names the one of his paintings in subtitle “In
Honor of Marc Chagall”.
But all his work is not what it reminds of.
It is all only Ozrenko Mrkic.
Whoever is more introduced to the visual art-flows and visual
research of the artists on the territory of ex -Yugoslavia will clearly
understand what am I saying when I say that Ozrenko Mrkic went to
the farthest corners of painting experiences which was re/searched
by early gone but not forgotten Vasilije Bukcev, Mica Stojiljkovic, or,
thank god, still alive and active – a persistent one – Cile Marinkovic.
Of all the paintings I will only pay a little more attention to the
one named Saint George Kills the Dragon – painting not an icon.
The artist faces us with the worn out, exhausted, old warrior not
a noble knight in a shining armour.
Even more it is an ex-warrior.
And so is the dragon, the beast appears more like tired creature
then the real deterrent monster.
Color wise everything creates atmosphere of happening on the
outskirts of certain periphery where the event repeats itself endlessly.
Whoever comes up here with the taught of caricature will make
a mistake.
Caricature distorts already existing indicative detail accenting it
with intention to provoke laughter through laughing at it.
Here is an irony which – as irony – always establishes the spirit of
reason and bravery. Picture is the cause for the picture / the painting,
as it is commanded by the entire process of the historicity of painting
works. Here we have conversation of the iconographic forms, allowed
only to the rare, exceptional originators whose visions see through
the immense force which through the forms moves totality of our
perceptive mechanism so that it awakens in us the feeling of end-
lessness. Endlessness which nothing, not even any religious concept,
should misuse.
Feeling through which, we recognize the immensity of spiral
change through which we move and exist in between the forms. And
forms are nothing less than stronger or less shaded, acts of colours.
All such and similar visual-forensic searches through the works
of Ozrenko Mrkic would intend to show the wisdom of one who does
them, so it is with me for which I apologize. The essence of this col-
ouristically rich scenes is that, in the eye of the viewer, they truly
awaken love for tragedy of human existence. As they are they recall
in us the immense force which keeps everything and all in the excep-
tional harmony and thus get that human being through all its stum-
bling’s in different vanity fares: national, religious, cultural, folklore
ones… that after all human being is recognized in all this colorite of
darkness only as human. And more important than the light of day is
to be able to enlighten darkness of our hearts, bring the light to dark
hallways of human souls, relive one of the weights of himself.
The immensity of painter’s work presented at this exhibition
comes out of a powerful individual solitude. At the top of such a pick
teams can not stand. The space at such a spot is too narrow. Ozrenko
firmly stands at the threshold of the great painters work which means
facing even greater personal suffering considering that such minds
among us never got the merit they deserve, at their time.
Meaning they are not popular, meaning they had to provide their
daily plate through the challenging work. Such persistence can only
fit under the words of Holly Scripture: “Man shall not live by bread
alone…” Only these words can give the hope to the personality of the
painter who expresses such immense format.
To poses on the wall Ozrenko’s painting presents unquestionable
mark of attendance to the highest fine arts conversation of choruses
of cultural forms. It presents hearing the visual voices of various spir-
its who, through the tragedy of their own artistic action, researched
their own personal dramas. They did it for us, for our spirit so it does
not collapse into the darkness of hopelessness, so that humans do not
lose their humanity.