HOMAGE TO TISNIKAR AND PIVK'S IMAGES OF PREMONITION

The painter Jože Tisnikar (1928-1998) belongs to the circle of awakened expressionism. He painted his first oil painting (Autopsy) with the motif of a prosection room ambience in 1955. His artistic credo was shaped by the environment of the Slovenj Gradec hospital and the traumatic climate of the prosection room in particular; this credo made him one of the most specific and recognisable painters in Slovenia, as well as in the international space. He died tragically in the midst of his creative drive of the 1990s, thus bringing his opus to an end. Tisnikar's work is deemed exceptional, and the Koroška Gallery of Fine Arts in Slovenj Gradec holds the definitive collection of his works. As we wish to present the collection in a special way, in a dialogue with the works of other artists showing the distinctive poetics of Tisnikarian existential suspense, the collection has been named Homage to Jože Tisnikar.
In 2001, the works of Jože Tisnikar were confronted with sculptures of Mirsad Begič, and next with works of Zdenko Huzjan. Later, Valentin Oman and Zoran Mušič also established exceptional dialogues with Tisnikar. Parallel to this kind of dialogue we also sought conversations in other directions and kept discovering new perspectives. The approach of photographer Dragiša Modrinjak was unique from the standpoint of documentary photography: the painter and the photographer established a particular relationship, which lasted for several decades.
Tisnikar was dedicated to sincere elementariness; Begič employs intellectual perception to record states of human existence; and in Huzjan we observe the reflection of metaphysics in the body of painting. Oman creates images drawn by philanthropy; Mušič's works breathe the fragility of existence of all the living: as a memory and a reminder, for instance, shown in his We Are Not the Last cycle, in which he depicts his memories of Dachau in stunning fine art language. For Bogdan Borčić, likewise, it was only after sixty years that he was able to face his experiences as a concentration camp detainee and respond to them as a painter, allowing us to gradually detect the depths of his memories through a reduced world of objects.
Distinctions and approaches of artists in the framework of Tisnikarian ambience have been laced with a rich register of formal, mythological, philosophical and other differences. The exhibitions have been aimed at art-historical interpretations through an analytic approach and taking account of time differences between the individual artists. All these artists, however, demonstrate a common sensation of anxiety, or an existential spasm, which stimulates them to discover and unravel the intricate dimensions of life and the awareness of passing in their creative work. The anxiety and nothingness are interdependent, and even fate represents the unity of necessity and chance. To accept anxiety and the threat of nothingness is a very special feeling. The artist becomes a catalyst of anxiety and the fear of passing. To create in such a way means to incise into one's own substance, to pour a part of oneself into every creation and to offer oneself - for the texture of the world is woven into the artist, and he is invested with cognitive experience.
Tisnikar aroused the interest of many creators, not solely in the domain of the visual arts, but also in film and theatre. His creativity became an inspiration, even if sometimes on the unconscious plane. On the basis of similar poetics he could be related to a number of artists. And there have also been creators who sincerely admit that discovering Tisnikar's world led to a change in their own creative credo. The sensitivity to existential and meaningful expression is timeless and always topical, also for the younger generation of artists.
Herman Pivk "discovered" and established genuine contact with Tisnikar as far back as in his student years. This contact first showed in his BA thesis on the theme of the portrait, using photography as a medium. Later, this medium increasingly began to assume an air of painting, since Pivk invented a manner in which the values of light were based on the stroke, on "colour" values and other rules of painting, while the dynamic and sequence approached filmic expression. Thus were created Pivk's images of premonition. This term could be used to define the ambience in these images, be it depictions of recognisable figures placed in an indefinable space, or traces of certain creatures, objects and nature. Each image refers to the previous one, and every next image bears germs of both the previous one and the one that can only be anticipated. The progression of time plays no important role; this is enabled by the character of the medium. Pivk had to discover a way to grasp the medium and make the premonition present. In this sense Pivk is an explorer. He created a co-sun and its reflections in the impressions of the viewer. It is not important whether these are depictions of humans, animals, plants or landscapes; the materiality of their existence is irrelevant. More important is an intuitive perception of beings, nature and our existential experience. Both the creator and the viewer-observer are left to their own invention, which leads not only to the experience of aesthetic fine art sensation as well as the feeling of anxiety and the awareness of passing, but also of beauty and the joy of living.
The poet Dane Zajc, with whom Pivk also established a special creative relationship in their joint project I'd Swim Into Whiteness, wrote:
I'd swim into whiteness.
Into the pure. With no bottom.
With no horizon.
Would I return?
White in the whiteness.
Melted into white.
Bodiless.
Would I still come back?