Koroška Art Gallery, Slovenj Gradec, 8th June to 31st July 2012

The exhibition creates a dialogue between these two great European masters from the second half of the 20th century, the two exquisite painters of poetic convergence and divergence: Vladimir Veličković, who has been living and working in cosmopolitan Paris since the 1960s and who paints apocalyptic states of life, and Jože Tisnikar, who has lived his entire life in the Mislinja valley and for whom the cultural climate of the local environment became his creative charge, and the working environment his art form, as is clearly seen in his specific art language.

Their works of exceptional expressive strength are true masterpieces of the European figurative modernistic tradition that emphasise the ethical principles and humanistic endeavours of artists and the role of art as a means of catharsis. Only the human mind is capable of catharsis. Regardless whether we achieve catharsis through true torment or indirectly through art (already Aristotle emphasised the cathartic effect of art), this is a spice of life that enables revival and brings new strength to life. Artists who are capable of triggering the feeling of catharsis in people, or even more, are capable of creating its visualisation, become the mediators and witnesses of mankind’s search for meaning. It is people like this who truly own the intermediate spaces between the real and the imagined.

Today, when it seems that the values that recognised art as a means of catharsis in the search for new perspectives and positive futuristic utopias are disappearing, it is becoming harder and harder to present opuses of artists with moral visions. Observing and understanding such visualisations seems similar to the symbolism in the Christian Stations of the Cross, that the contemporary man, who is used to the 'instant culture' of today, can no longer truly follow.
 
Vladimir Veličković analyses life by visually addressing painting metaphors; he knows how to express power and helplessness, life and death, eternity and transience, aggression and the state that follows cataclysm, he paints more than silence and the state of nirvana, movement and stillness, monochromaticity and colourfulness: he paints the duality of every being and its end. His soil and soul landscapes include life and death, the moment and eternity, darkness and lightness on the horizon of rebirth and purification. The glowing sublimation of the catharsis is shown as fire, as absolute light and as the potion of life. Veličković has a high ethical stance, and carries the entire pathos of life and death with the moral vision and grandeur of a prophet; he is a seismograph of all human drives, including the most powerful of them all – the drive of death.

Jože Tisnikar was marked by his life story, which also formed his dark modernist style. The hospital environment - especially the traumatic autopsy room - formed his creative manner of expressive figurative art. He was dedicated to honest elementariness and subconscious archetypes that give life value through transience. His sensitive humanity leads us through the cycle of life and death; we realise that life is a fragile existence and that every moment is valuable. We feel how time is escaping from us, but we also feel the eternity of every moment.