“wolf-light” - twilight, dusk. French ‘Entre chien et loup’, ‘Between dog & wolf’ - the time when the familiar becomes wild. The phrase envisions the approaching dark as a time when things move from familiar to wild, or when the failing light means it’s hard to distinguish between a dog and a wolf.”
the text accompanying wolf-light exhibition at the Wiregrass Museum, December 2019
z d e n k o k r t i ć wolf-light: separating gold from gravel
The work featured in this show comprises of digitally manipulated scanographs (pixelated illusions), printed on paper and then encapsulated and augmented with “real” natural substances like tree resins, melted beeswax, microcrystalline and carnauba waxes. The central question here is: how real is real? What’s the role of illusion?
For the past dozen years or so, the artist has been experimenting with a use of a flatbed scanner that he approaches as yet another studio tool, akin to a brush, or a spatula. Resulting prints capture various mundane objects accumulated in corners of his studio as well as the changing outdoor light, as evident in the artist’s backyard. Some of the objects as well as artists encaustic mediums are displayed in the two vitrines (afterlife of things).
The artist sees an infinite creative potential built in the scanner’s technology of capturing reality – in its shallow depth of field and in the way with which it captures the images by slowly moving arm across forms, illuminating its predetermined path with built-in light. Forms that are very close to scanner’s CCD array capturing device are recorded with a great precision, and in high resolution and detail. Yet, as soon as the distance between the device and objects increases, a new, altered reality emerges (ironically, one that is still captured in high-resolution). The resulting prints feature varying degrees of these rapidly dissolving and distorting forms - from stable and familiar, to that which is harder to perceive and even comprehend. Examples are large works like wolf-light and kumquats and, in varying degrees, all the prints from nocturnals series.
These works are a study in contrasts. Contrast of that which is mundane, common, and familiar to that what is increasingly altered, misrepresented, and even fictional. The prints are either too underexposed, or they are too overexposed, out of focus and scrambled. Paradoxically, all the works belonging to nocturnals series are taken in the middle of the day, often outdoors. It is the artist’s manipulation that brings the feeling of nighttime and (for some) macabre vision.
Our civilization, oblivious to our circadian rhythms, with its brightly lit up monitors, relentless consumerism, and ubiquitous 24-hour entertainment and news cycle, has almost lost its ability to observe and appreciate these subtle and regular transitions and changes. Appreciating cycles of days and night with all their minute transitions, all living forms, their slow growth, and equally slow decay, and also the inevitable dulling of our senses and gradual loss of vision, hearing…. the work is about these moments of transitions, embracing both moments of clarity and moments of blurriness and enigma.
Brief note about methods: