EXERCISES IN OPTIMISM
Miha Colner / Exercises in Optimism, Rajhenburg Castle, 2022
The creation of seemingly ideal forms, symmetries and visual illusions that can only spring from the human mind and hand has always been one of the challenges for different civilisations, from prehistoric times to the present day. Almost every culture, in its visual creative tradition, has held on to decorative elements whose purpose was to simply please, to render beautiful and to create an atmosphere. Throughout history, the various forms of decorative and geometric art have testified that nothing of the kind can be created by anyone other than man. Thus, a distinction has emerged in communities and civilisations between a culture that is the result of human intervention and a nature that is inexplicably spontaneous or the fruit of the divine. This distinction has played a key role in the development of societies, cultures and arts.
There is nothing in nature that is truly geometrically or symmetrically formed, not even the human body, although at first glance it is divided into two identical and harmonious halves. Nevertheless, or precisely because of this, many cultures have tried to prove their superiority over everything else – the earthly – by creating artificial forms. On the other hand, man has always been deeply fascinated by nature, even if he wanted to subjugate and dominate it. Many patterns, structures and lines have been adopted by human cultures directly from the plant and animal world, treated and stylised, thus establishing a new aesthetic canon.
In Islamic sacred art, for example, rich ornamentation was a metaphor for the divine, which was not to be represented figuratively or narratively. Stylised arabesques combining geometry and vegetative patterns were at the same time allusions to nature, although their production required the use of technical and scientific techniques or mathematical and geometrical tools such as compasses and rulers.
Similar decorative practices developed in other eras and cultures, although they were perhaps less iconoclastic. In the industrial age, too, the visual design of artificial structures often referred to natural forms, which has incidentally always remained an important component (also) of modern and contemporary design. Even today, designed products for everyday use such as tablecloths, clothing, kitchen towels, garments, wallpaper, carpets or ceramics remain indispensable. In fact, it is impossible to think of modernity and contemporaneity without this kind of everyday decoration.
In the modern and contemporary context, where the world has turned unconditionally to industrialisation and automation, geometric art often appears as a flaw in the system and a subversion. Nowadays, any symmetry or geometry is much easier and more expedient to achieve with the help of guided devices, geometric accessories, machines or computer programmes that are much more accurate than the human hand due to their mechanical properties. Today, geometric painting persists against the tide, trying in one way or another to achieve a rather strictly defined expression through the human hand. But no matter how precise and generic a brushstroke may be, a painting always has a different structure and texture than an industrially produced object or image. It is this paradox that often seems to be a key element of these forms of expression. The structures of geometric painting are only perfect at first glance, while a toying with the perception of the viewer’s gaze remains inherent within them.
In her recent art practice, Irena Romih also focuses primarily on the depiction of seemingly ideal and symmetrical structures, which always have slight flaws that deviate from a perfect geometric order. Yet this is precisely what is crucial for the artist. In her works, she seems to repeatedly refer to the paradox of stylised handcrafted structures, which, however, develop their illusionistic effect exactly through the combination of precise geometric surface planes and obvious traces of handiwork.
The painted compositions from the Exercises in Optimism cycle are in fact objects that are only brought together as a whole by their precise arrangement in the space and placement on the wall. The regularly and symmetrically cut wooden panels are divided into sections or planes of a colourful array of different hues. Some areas are treated in a single colour, others in graduated colour transitions. It is precisely because of the strong colour scale and the many contrasts within the individual pictorial elements that the compositions are extremely associative, as they can appear familiar and homely, even if they cannot usually be fully explained rationally or interpreted narratively. In their appearance, they can resemble various structures in today’s form-determined world of dominant visual culture.
The exhibited works primarily create a spatial illusion in relation to the viewer, for the apparent objects turn out to be two-dimensional surfaces upon closer inspection. The viewer then inevitably finds him- or herself playing the game of comparing shapes and ambiguously determining the convexity or concavity of the individual images of the objects. Moreover, the understanding of convexity and concavity can change with different views and their perceptions depending on the angle of view or state of mind. Just as in life. This indeterminacy and ambiguity is one of the keys to enjoying and perceiving Irena Romih’s works, which nevertheless remain semantically ambivalent. It seems that her original intention is above all to provoke and tease the perception of the viewer, who easily begins to think visually and abstractly when looking at her works.
Furthermore, Irena Romih swears by formal perfection and experimentation with pictorial approaches and techniques in the process of drafting and executing her works. In doing so, she uses classical geometric tools to create almost ideal forms within a single composite painting. Additionally, she paints the surfaces of individual elements in the archaic technique of egg tempera. In this way, she withdraws her installations from the generic nature of industrial products, even though she comes close to them in the precision of their production. The combination of even and uneven layers of paint, which create visible textures on the surface despite the extremely thin layers, gives the works that important organic part that keeps them in the realm of painting.
In the context of the present exhibition, the exhibition space itself is an extremely important element. The gallery at Rajhenburg Castle is housed in a mediaeval building that was not built according to the principles of modern architecture and with the help of industrial technology. Although the architects, stonemasons and builders of the time wanted to create a space that was as perfect and geometrically coherent as possible, they were unable to achieve this due to the technical conditions and the nature of the terrain. Despite its neat and minimal design, the exhibition space is not a classic white cube, but a slightly amorphous space full of small elements that define it.
Irena Romih’s geometric paintings create an order all of their own in this irregular space. They react to elements such as windows, lines, niches and installations and communicate with them (as well as with each other) in a lively way. The contrast between the historical structure of the space and the modernist form of the composite paintings is also one of the foundations of the current exhibition. In this way, the visual impact of the distinctly colourful works easily evokes the illusion of in-between natures and contrasts, while at the same time appearing as unique spatial decorations with a modernist feel. However, the totality of these elements and meanings easily compels the viewer to surrender to the visual sensations of the works, and perhaps also stimulates him or her to think more deeply about some of the fundamental relationships in our perceptual world.