Celestina Vičević / Svjetlosni objekti i ambijent

neo-eon

If by any chance you find yourselves in Louvre, in the section featuring French Romanticism masterpieces, you will most certainly pause in front of Eugene Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People. Allegorical character, a half-naked women-goddess is leading the people. Men, more precisely.  One could say that, when men get stuck in the middle of negotiating arrangements, women tend to lead them forward.

In the ‘50s New York, a group of artists known as the New York School produced eminent names such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Archille Gorky, Barnett Newman and Robert Motherwell. The last one became husband of Helen Frankenthaler, an artist who was one of the first representatives of the so called post-painterly abstraction. Her paintings brought a touch of airiness and elegance to a world of serious (“dramatic”) abstraction promulgated by Rhotko and Franz Kline. Using large quantities of turpentine, she diluted oil paint used on her paintings. Colours were absorbed by canvas surface and became a part of it. If Leon Golub’s thesis that combination of vehemence and control is a trademark of ingenuity is correct, it is certainly applicable in Helen Frankenthaler’s case. To say the truth, after the first wave of post-war abstraction her paintings perhaps seemed charming and gentle, with a touch of commerciality, similarly to trendy paintings hung in rich people’s apartments in Manhattan. However, it was only an assessment based on the first look. It would seem that men found themselves stuck again on this occasion, and who else to expect to lead them away from their dreary self-pity than a woman? Self-pity is not new to art history. Supposedly, sometimes, in order to avoid too much negative connotations, people described it as being melancholic, but basically it is the same thing. It seems that a younger generation printmaker from Rijeka uses her airy veils of colour (although they do not resemble organic forms, they still share some common places with Helen Frankenthaler’s style nonetheless) in order to bring people out of depression (not only men anymore, but women as well). This artist is Celestina Vičević. How does she do it? She uses the shape of circle. Of course, to talk about the symbolic of the circle would be a never-ending story, especially if one takes into account the key position of the sign in almost every religion. In addition, it would even be misleading in Celestina’s case. Overlapping and concentricity of circles is the reflection of the belief in the compositeness of the being – existence. Moreover, if we add to that a definition that says that circle can be regarded as goodness which is spread through inevitable semantic properties of colours, it is evident that we have before us an artist that will not remain motionless and shocked by the depressing events in the world but will assume the role of a leader (or a post-post-woman) and take her position in front of the Paradise Garden, illuminated by brilliant light and smile.

Let us take a risk and try to refrain from referring to art history or history in general and it will be evident that it is not necessary. How so? The reason is simple. Vičević’s artistic work is neo-eonic. This is because it comprises elements of both the last (the moment you’re reading this!) and the first (time before the beginning of the world!) time period (is not the light that artist is so occupied with older than our planet?). Such a long time period is normally called an eon and, since it is composed in a new manner, like a song of a gigantic verse, and based on its non-linearity, an image of simultaneousness, it also possesses attributes of the new so it is neo. By randomly employing known and unknown geometries, the artist takes care about the lighting in the exhibition display; standard, natural gallery lighting and the so-called black light. This type of lighting will illuminate these neo-eonic artworks, supporting the exponentiality of the artist’s intentions and her experience in printmaking that transforms these basic and fragile prints into site-specific prints. They are like sculptures during the times of early civilisations – they represent opportunities for reflection. We might paraphrase Julije Knifer and (instead of Celestina) say: “I have probably illuminated my first circles, but maybe not yet my first ones?”

Zlatko Kozina