Pavle Pavlović / Safe risks

“In ancient times, people stared at the stars and saw heroes in constellations. In these modern times, we do more or less the same, but our heroes of blood and flesh, “said President Nixon on the occasion of Apollo 11 landing on the moon in July 1969. The conquest of the Moon, an event of possible historical significance and iconic scenes that it produced, were engraved in the collective memory of the twentieth century.

The landing that this speech celebrates, however, has never happened. It is not about many conspiracy theories that challenge the event from the very beginning and attribute impressive scenes to Stanley Kubrick, among others. This is included in President Nixon’s speech in the event of a mission failure. The parallel emergency protocol includes a personal phone call to widowed wives, a brief and dignified addressing to the nation, and the ritual termination of the relationship with stranded astronauts. In the absence of a more appropriate priest approach, a priest will follow this maritime metaphor and recommend their souls “to the deepest of the deep”.

Pavle’s heroes also come from the depth, the less or more documented areas of the information cosmos, and the nightmares of the network of all networks. He creates a repository, a landfill of scenes, images, and memes gathered on social networks, digital channels, and obscure and dark internet corners. In the further painting process he is the one who re-prints their stories. Digital tides often bring bizarre motives, deprived of any background stories, and the only thing we have is the parallel protocol, which will eventually overwrite the constituent parts and convince us of the truth of the scene that is being played in our eyes.

Bizarre is the completely arbitrary category of questionable quality. Just as the determination of reality and realism, it largely depends on a given social determinant of the norm, one that has control over the narrative and his / her regard to the possible Other and Different. Undoubtedly, many of his protagonists started their careers in front of the camera unconscious of their own awkwardness and their own very low positions on the general social scale – if not acceptable, at least a dignified conduct. In Pavle’s works, there is no such thing as norms or definitions of the normal and he freely relegates and incorporates these social losers into a completely new and convincing world.
In the archives of Gorgona in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb there is one of the most beautiful and at the same time most memorable letters I have ever had a chance to read. Radoslav Putar, Gorgona member, art historian and critic describes a slow and inexorable surge of illness that will tear his memories apart and twist the images “because it is more than just an ordinary omission … It is probably the expense of the soul that was exhausted in nonsense and redundant, unnecessary endeavors; illusions “.

The rough and unstoppable process of losing control over one’s own narrative has been emphasized in many ways in today’s digital image era. Pavle’s method of downloading motifs and pictures from the Internet and their collaging is also a method of memory tearing. However, he continues where the lost memory stops, fills the resulting gaps and his cycles are filling a common universe that has its own rules and legitimacy. This consistency gives persuasiveness to his scenes and from abandoned documents of redundant and nonsense, he creates new flesh and blood heroes.

Vladimir Čajkovac