SAMUEL GRAJFONER
THE DARKNESSES OF HOLES
Gallery of Fine Arts Slovenj Gradec 2003
"... a star that was sufficiently massive and compact would
have such a strong gravitational field that light could not escape:
any light emitted from the surface of the star would be dragged back
by the star's gravitational attraction before it could get very far.
/... / Such objects are what we now call black holes, because that is
what they are: black voids in space. /... / The event horizon, the boundary
of the region of space-time from which it is not possible to escape,
acts rather like a one-way membrane around the black hole: objects ...
can fall through the event horizon into the black hole, but nothing
can ever get out of the black hole ..."
Stephen W. HAWKING, A Brief History of Time. From the Big Bang to Black
Holes, Bantam Books, New York, Toronto 1988, p. 86, 94.
In his opus, Samuel Grajfoner engaged himself mostly in classical
intaglio printing, dry point, engraving, aquatint and etching, as well
as expression in the black and white technique. Art critics like to
stress that Grajfoner's basic education is as a sculptor, though he
has practised printmaking since the beginning of his training at the
Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and later deepened this knowledge by
attending special studies in graphic art. One could probably connect
Grajfoner's sculptural experience with his expressive sense of comprehending
space and substantiality, which is reflected in the set up of his exhibitions.
In other words, he always finds new ways of moving graphic prints from
the flat wall area to the three-dimensionality of the exhibition grounds.
For Grajfoner, the matrix is a specific subject matter, to which he
nurses an intimate, somewhat erotic relation. While engraving on a zinc
plate, he likes to use a knife usually used for cutting matrices in
graphic studios. He engraves with the force of his whole body, and the
incisions are uncommonly deep, which later demands special care in applying
colour. Consequently, the prints are presented in high relief. Lately,
he has been experimenting with engraving upon linoleum and using a compressor
guided rotary cutter in working with metal matrices. He has redirected
his physical power, which until now was used for making incisions with
the knife, to working the rotary machine, which is hard to master in
contact with a smooth plate under high revolutions. Engraving attracts
him because of the matrix's resistance; usually he supplements it by
using dry point and aquatint representing the soft and fragile opposite
sides to sections that are deeply engraved. He treats the plates for
as long as he completely uses their mass with countless engravings and
etchings. He also copies the back side of the matrices' so that the
structure of accidental incisions and lesions into the composition is
included. As he experiences the matrix in all the extension of its substantiality,
the materiality of printing colour is also of great importance to Grajfoner.
The solid forcing of colour into the deep incisions change the graphic
print into a precisely structured relief, on which the plastically protruding
lines interfere with the velvet-like surfaces treated in aquatint.
For Grajfoner, the essence of graphic art doesn't lie in its reproducibility
but in the creative use of the possibilities this technology offers.
He always accentuates the difference between classical drawing that
is an independent artistic discipline and direct engraving on a plate.
The latter he experiences as a connection of spirit and subject matter.
He prints only a small number of copies from one plate, making only
one copy preferably. He is more interested in the continuous completing
of the matrix and the arranging of prints from one plate into series
that offer stories loaded in layers into our memory.
The line is Grajfoner's primary means of expression. He understands
it as a proof of energy in its extension of space and time. He likes
to say that with the lines he places in different directions he is »weaving«
shapes. The dark and heavy shapes on Grajfoner's engravings are composed
of numerous incisions that leave a relief-like protruding structure
of the print colour. The spaces between are slim lines with the colour
of uncovered surfaces, which edge and accentuate the direction of black
lines by uniting them into a spatial perception of the object.
Typical to the existing graphic opus of Samuel Grajfoner is the reinstatement
of the relation between bright and dark surfaces, though in the last
two years he has decided to express himself in the black colour that
entirely covers and satiates the surface of the graphic paper. In the
iconography of colours, black holds a special position; it is mostly
characterized as the absence of colours, absolute zero, but Malewich
with his black square an a white surface, a cult painting of the 20th
century, gave it the mysticism of absolute spiritualization making black
the highest possible expression of abstraction. Because of its sublime
character and the even more typical obscure, tragically orientated symbolism,
black has great expressive power. Some art critics even noticed that
black acts »in a macho fashion«, in terms of male sexual power. Grajfoner's
black is a substance of absolute value that reflects the comprehension
of black as seen by Richard Serra, who calls for attention to its »graphicness«
and expression of gravity due to the fact that it drags back all rays
of light. The shape of black objects is marked by margins at the juncture
with the whitenesses, whereas the richness of the black in Grajfoner's
graphic works is experienced in contrasts between glimmering and relief
structured sections and velvet soft surfaces.
On his latest engravings in linoleum, Grajfoner »has woven« the shapes
into ovals. He was inspired by the numerous oval openings on the buildings
in his native Maribor. The windows on the front of churches, agitated
campaniles' roofs and superstructures on the town's roofs are surrounded
by more or less skilfully decorated frames, from behind which dark holes
gape at us. Often the emptiness proves fictitious, through attentive
observation the contours of the roofing or trumpery separate from the
dark or the oval opening is panelled or glazed; the darkness becomes
tangible. The oval shapes are symbols of womanhood; they also remind
us of a cosmic egg representing creative power and immortality, which
again brings us close to the meaning of the black colour that was already
in antiquity regarded among other things as the state before creation,
the chaos from which a new beginning is born. Two such ovals, one engraved
and the other in aquatint, were fixed by Grajfoner on a large canvas
coated with silicon. The black and hermetic subject matter grew luxuriantly
over the canvas surface and indented into the margins of the black oval.
On the left, beneath the relief-like protruding lines, here and there
uncovered whitenesses of the paper glimmer, on the right, the velvet
soft surface entices us inevitably into the infinite depth. This time,
Samuel Grajfoner, sculptor and graphic artist, asked himself about space
and its transfusing from the foreground to the background (and vice
versa) by the means of painting.
Marjeta Ciglenečki
SAMUEL GRAJFONER was born in Maribor in 1960. In 1990 he graduated
in statuary art at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts under Professor
Lujo Vodopivec. In 1994 he specialized in graphic art under Professor
Branko Suhy. He also attended studies at the Minerva Academy in Groningen
in the Netherlands, at the Paragon Centre in London, at the Cité International
des Arts in Paris and in the Printmakers Workshop in Edinburgh. He is
a senior lecturer in graphic design at the Maribor Faculty of Education.
He has taken part in group and individual exhibitions in Slovenia and
internationally, and has received several prestigious awards for his
work. His graphic works are in several galleries, amongst others also
in the Vienna Albertina.
