Bogdan Borčić: Simple Things

11. Exhibition in the Graphic Cabinet of Bogdan Borčić

This latest show brings us chronologically to the last major cycles to have characterised the graphic opus of Bogdan Borčić. The selection of exhibited works has been made up from the series Preproste reči/Simple Things and AZPB (Alat za popravku brodova/Toolkit for Repairing Ships). Although this involves a logical continuation of Borčić’s creative opus, these two cycles are at first glance entirely different. They are both characterised mainly by the whiteness of the blank sheet and the intensive use of colour. Everyone who is familiar with Borčić’s work has been somewhat surprised by this enhanced whiteness, for we know that the artist has also avoided white in his paintings, and before he gets to work he usually applies a black background to the canvas. This of course is no coincidence, but a carefully considered and analytical organic development of his artistic creativity, which gradually started revealing itself in earlier works (as illustrated clearly in the 7th installation), especially in the cycle where he recycled old graphic plates and once transformed, he printed them off in various combinations. There the emphasis was on providing additional harmonic enhancement to the geometrically determined and balanced compositional structure using the whiteness of the sheet. Meanwhile a fairly thorough analysis of Borčić’s graphic opus in recent years increasingly confirms for me personally the following view, which will still need to be underpinned in theory with examples. Throughout the opus of Bogdan Borčić we have indeed been able to observe his close ties with issues of an existentialist and humanist nature. Even in works – be they drawings, paintings or prints – where the painted field is constructed with a sequence of countless artistic signs in stark contrast to the whiteness of the sheet, we never have any uncomfortable sense of crowding. Perhaps this is true in part owing to the strictly geometric order that he faithfully uses.

Curator: Goran Milovanović