HVALNICA ROKI
In Praise of Hands

ANDREJ MEDVED

Te hvalnice roke se lotevam, kakor izpolnjujemo prijateljsko dolžnost. V trenutku, ko začenjam pisati, vidim svoje roke, ki vzpodbujajo mojega duha … vlečejo ga za seboj. Tukaj so, te neutrudne družabnice, ki so tako veliko let opravljale svoje delo … ena je držala papir pri miru, druga je na belem papirju množila ta drobna, vtisnjena znamenja, temačna in dejavna … Z njimi stopi človek v stik s trajanjem misli …

H. Focillon

O risbi

Risba je sled, ki jo slikar ohrani na papirju,* in je določena, končana in edina, ker ne dopušča nič popravkov. Z njo ni mogoče varati očesa. Risba ni serijska, asociativna; nič ne vsiljuje, sugerira; nič ne prenaša ali pooblašča. Nikoli ni posredovalna, amorfna in abstraktna, ampak spontana, individualna; konkretna – čutna – kot dotik, kot zrak, ki se ujame vanjo. Ona je magični fluid: primaren, živ, utripajoč, »realen«, pa naj bo jezik risbe še tako simbolen. Ona je gola, le po-sebi; zato jo vzamejo darežljivost, strast in mrtvoudnost; in jo okuži vsaka duša. Ona je živa meja, bič, ki vodi ples ter premaguje vsak posnetek, vso mimetičnost podobe. Tako nas vrača vase, k-sebi, in omogoča prilastitev; da jo vrnemo telesu. – Risba edina zmore uveljaviti Zavest ter Skušnjo v likovnem jeziku; ker je izvorno stilska, ker je to, kar imenuje pojem Slog, slogovnost. Se pravi, da postavlja in odloča, omejuje, da je prvinska meja med realnim in abstraktnim, med racionalnim in zavednim ter tistim, kar je skrito v podzavest, v iracionalno. Nikoli ni drugotna in odvisna, podrejena: samo plodišče, le pisava, ki jo vodita neki drug namen in organizem. Ona združuje prostor, mesto, topos in snovalnost: poiesis in politeo; ki vrneta in obudita možnosti, odnose, vloge. Da moč, telo in duša niso več odsotni in prikriti, ampak so v vsej so-dobnosti – v celoti – tu: v pred-metih, v zarisani podobi. – Umetnik se obrača vase, išče izgubljeno integralnost; zato v risbi najde avtorstvo, posebnost, moč enkratnega posega. Kjer ni laži, ne goljufije, ne videzov in ne prividov. In kljub skrivnostnosti nič simbolizma.

Stopnjevanje I

Pred nami so podobe, ki jih gledamo in beremo na dva načina, v dveh pomenskih /pra/ravninah. Ta dvojnost slike pa v resnici ne podvaja našega pogleda in doživetja, ki je temeljno za vsako razumevanje umetniškega dela, temveč nasprotno združi in prilasti slikarski tekst – teksturo, tkanje – z našim lastnim v neki skupni, duhovni, likovni interferenci. Oblike, barve in naslikani dogodek so zunanji predmet doživetja; njihov pomen poiščemo v sublogični strukturi, kamor nas še posebej sili perspektiva, četudi ni takoj očitna in razvidna. Pod površino se razkrijejo odnosi, ki nam pomagajo odstreti učinke površine, tj. efekte vsiljenega smisla. Gledalec vidi, bere /le/ površino slike, ki je tako docela skrčena na list papirja, na magični ekran podobe. Njegovo razumevanje se potopi v sistem slikovne govorice in širše: zgodovinskih in umetnostnih vrednot.

Kako zato vstopiti v telo slikarstva, Hermanovega slikarstva? Kako prodreti v njegovo avtonomnost, v pristno govorico risbe? Vsekakor z ustreznim branjem, ki dešifrira njeno površino in avtorjevo sporočilo. Tradicionalno gledanje je enosmerno, dobesedno in ulovi le videz, se pravi le privid slikovnega zastora. Simbolno branje, ki ga gledalec običajno ne pozna, šele odkrije smisel risbe, ki je tuj mišljenju, ki vztraja pri očitnosti podobe. Zato je treba preskočiti, odriniti tradicionalno razumevanje slikarstva, načine gledanja, ki so vnešeni v zavest od zunaj kot neka apriorna urejenost likovnih segmentov, ki jih mora vsaka dobra slika vsebovati. Potrebna je subverzija, ki nas popelje globje v elementarnost slikanja in v odkritje mehanizmov, ki več ne temeljijo v zapovedanih, vnaprej določenih načinih poslikave, naj bodo avantgardni, visokomodernistični ali pa postmoderni.

Gvardijančičeve slike so zastrte, zamegljene; skozi zaveso vstopimo v redkih izostritvah. Slikar nas s tem prisili, da se odrečemo opazovanju površine, ki je lahko le izhodišče, začetna točka za naš vbod v njeno snovnost. Liki na papirnati osnovi seveda niso brez pomena: Kar zdaj predstavlja »šarasti«, embrionalni in fragmentirani zapis, pokaže tudi slikana podoba: na njej ni nič poudarjeno in urejeno v neki dokončni smisel. Naivnega gledalca prav takšna nepripovednost odbije. Ko naš vid predre tkanino, ki ga loči od skrivnosti sporočila, stopa gledalec v prostor, v katerem pojasnjuje in odseva rudimentarne skušnje, zavestne ali nezavedne. In prav zato so te oblike na Hermanovih risbah v resnici leče, drobnogledi in zrcala, brez pozrcaline. Pomen in vloga risbe sta v introspekciji, ki je vedno dialoška in nikoli ni obstajala zunaj vezi avtor-gledalec. V robovih tega risarskega dela se oblikuje temeljni odnos v dvogovoru, ki je naš lastni govor: odboj slikovnega in našega telesa.

Stopnjevanje II

Pri Hermani Gvardijančiču je v ospredju risba, v načelu enostavna in heteroklitna, in »uniformna« in pomnožena, enotna in enkratna in različna, in fragmentarna in celostna, »popolna«. A nikdar in nikoli razpršena in banalna. – Risba je vmesni prostor med likovno pisavo, gramatiko, strukturo, kodom, s katerim se ukvarja čista znanstvena metoda /semeiologija/, in med belino platna, kjer »zaigra« posebna »metafizika beline« /blancheur/, mitologija praznega, a ne odsotnega prostora; prostora, ki še ni dotaknjen, izpolnjen s končnim smislom, nadgrajen; kjer je še vse mogoče, kjer so vse možnosti neskončnih »prostoritev«.

Risba, ki je pisava (kakor »vložek«, se pravi »vloga« kot l’en-jeu, kot v-igra) v najrazličnejših zunanjih podobitvah, od skoraj geometričnih in strogih do skrajnosti razgibanih, baročnih. Risba, ki nosi perspektivo in likovni konstrukt, geometrijo slike in slikovno iluzijo, in dekoracijo, scenografijo. Risba je kot pisava »dvojna scena« likovne podobe in njen refleks, pozrcalina. V njej je nevarnost odtujenosti in preimembe /metonimije/, v njej je nevarnost idealizacije in teorije, ki vstopa skozi zadnja vrata v risbo, da izniči, da ubije njeno sporočilo. A v njej je tudi možnost čiste prepustitve, prostor za igro in ecrire automatique, in za telesne, čutne ter duhovne seizmografične zapise. V njej je upodobitev – likovnost –  kot Identität ali Verfremdung.

Belina platna pa je »ma«, materija kot čista snov, kot maternično mesto. Belina platna je predrojstni kraj, jazbina, prostor naselitve; prostor nastajanja in varovanja; odprta koža, usta, gnezdo; praprostor vsake prostoritve. Ali kot pravi Derrida: /Risba/ je kot »razlôka« /différance/, se pravi neko gibanje, ki ga ni več mogoče misliti iz nasprotja prisotnost-odsotnost. Razloka je sistematična igra razlik, »prostiranja«, ki spravlja elemente v medsebojni odnos. To prostiranje je obenem aktivna in pasivna produkcija /likovnih/ intervalov, brez katerih bi vsebina nič ne pomenila, brez katerih znaki in izrazi ne bi funkcionirali. To je tudi »uprostorjevanje« /devenirespace/ likovne verige, uprostorjevanje, ki edino omogoča /risbo kakor risbo/.– Belina  mehkega papirja je <ne>dotakljiva, v njej je umetnik sam s seboj, osamljen in hkrati solidaren z drugim; z drugim v sebi, z Dvojnikom, z razdvojenim v lastnem jazu.

Stopnjevanje III

Hermanova roka je obdarjena s svobodomiselno, energično fiziognomijo: »obličje« brez oči in brez glasu, ki pa v resnici vidijo in govorijo … Pretanjenost otipa, ki ob dotiku roke razbere na papirju like, ki so odtisnjeni v neskončno drobno debelino lista. Zasnova videzov – fluidnih, razvezanih, duhovnih – dejavnih v nedejavnosti, v alegoriji prišepnjenih predmetov in odnosov … Komaj zaznavna sestavljenka organov in organizmov. Sledimo dlani roke, ki predstavlja vidna in simbolna stanja … spomine našega življenja. Nekakšna dediščina iz preteklosti v sedanjost in iz sedanjosti v prihodnost: stremena živčevja, razpetega pod kožo. Pokrajina z osrednjo depresijo, razpokana, prekinjena in prepletena pretanjena pisava. Nič nekoristnih kretenj … kot v kakšnem snu, ki zarisuje možnosti in bitja v igri potez, ki ne posnemajo ničesar.

Povzdignjena v vetru, razvejana in ločena kot veje, kot vejevje. Pretanjena in pomnožena površina lista, ki preizkuša avtorjevo in subjektovo veselje … skozi tokove in sledi brez teže, ki jih oko ne vidi, a jih v resnici slutimo v vsaki Hermanovi risbi. Gostota in <pa> prostornina niso optični pojavi, umetnik ju spoznava s prsti, v jamicah dlani, s prostorom, ki se ne meri s pogledom, ampak s svojo roko in korakom. Dotik zapolni vso skrivnostnost sil, ki se pojavijo v zrcalu slike, v lahkotni, plitvi in minljivi risbi …

Nekakšna osamitev v širokem zvočnem sinkretizmu in ritmizirana menjava več glasov in ritmov. Roka in glas se združita v Dogodek, ki je na koncu eden, le Eden in edinstven. Magnetno valovanje črt, kot pri žuželkah in pri pticah, »iznajdenje« sveta, ki ga še ne poznamo. Soglasje in napredujoča prilastitev sta speta v vzajemnost živega – neživega sveta. Prilagodljivost, spoštovanje do stvari, občutenje neznanega in izumiteljska duhovnost, ki se izteka v notranji <ne>mir …

A tudi trda črta, tudi mehka črta, topel in izdolben ton preveva Gvardijančičev slovar kot doživeta iluzija, čutni relijef in prostornina plemenite teže, v tekmi s Časom … da, pustolovščina snovi in preoblikovanje, kadence, stopnjevanje in umiritev na skoraj vsaki risbi … Herman Gvardijančič je artizan in alkimist v odkrivanju in v iznajdevanju stvari: neskončna krajina nekakšnih čudežnih skrivnosti, ki je »oropana« mimetičnosti, vedno v svoji lastni igri, v ponavljanju intiutivnih bliskov in skozi sence, ki (v nas) nikoli ne umrejo. Oko brez roke, roka z očesom, z minljivo, skrajšano potezo, kot madež na papirju … a madež, ki je v resnici govoreči duh in duša. Umetnik – čarodej, ki uresniči svoje sanje in izkoristi vse napake in pomanjkljivosti potez, da jih na koncu sprejme kot svojo … nemočno in vsemogočno moč. Madež – skrivnostna spaka, ki vstopa iz umetnikove roke v svet, v »skrivenčeno« obličje slike.

Nič ni žarečih in nepomirjenih kontrastov, samo osnovni predmet upodabljanja, z natančnostjo zarisa, ki zdaj pred nas ustvari videnje, s svojim notranjim telesom in perspektivo. Roka, ki išče in izumlja in venomer izkuša svojo moč, nemoč in možnosti in skoke … Nekakšno oblačilo – plašč – z gubami, ki nelagodje zamenjujejo z ugodjem in malodušje z veseljem. Kot absolutna polnost, ki je hkrati tudi že praznina, ki nas zapelje in očara. Elastičnost in gibkost risbe in uročenost roke (z roko) je torej tista, ki v nas ne loči stvarnega telesa od duha: vesolje, ki prav povsod dopušča svojo Sled … in svoj človeški in umetniški od-tis.

* Ali na vsakršni podlagi, »subjektilu«.

 

ANDREJ MEDVED

“I undertake this essay in praise of hands as if in fulfilment of a duty to a friend. Even as I begin to write, I see my own hands calling out to my mind and inciting it. Here, facing me, are these tireless companions who for so many years have served me well, one holding the paper steady, the other peopling the white page with hurried, dark, active little marks. Through his hands man establishes contact with the austerity of thought.”

H. Focillon

About the drawing

A drawing is a trace that an artist preserves on paper, it is defined, completed and unique therefore it does not allow any corrections. It cannot deceive the eye. A drawing is not serial, associative; it does not impose or suggest anything, it does not transfer or empower anything. It is never mediatory, amphoral or abstract, it is spontaneous, individual, concrete and sensual – like a touch, like the air caught in it. A drawing is a magical fluid: primal, alive and beating, and realistic, no matter how symbolic its language is. A drawing is naked/nude that is why it is overcome by generosity, passion and stillness and infected by every soul. It is a hedge, a whip that leads the dance and overcomes any copy or mimicry of images. It makes us return inside, to ourselves, and allows to be possessed/owned; to be returned to the body. Only a drawing is capable of introducing Consciousness and Experience in the language of visual art; there where it is originally stylistic, where there is what we call Style, stylishness. That means that a drawing positions, determines and limits, that it is a primal border between the realistic and the abstract, between the rational, the conscious and the things hiding in the sub consciousness, the irrational. It is never secondary or dependant, subordinate, it is only a place for procreation, only a writing guided by some other purpose and organism. It joins space, place, topos and creativity: poiesis and politeo; that return and evoke possibilities, relationships, roles. Strength, body and soul are no longer absent and concealed, they are here, in the present: in objects, in images drawn. The artist turns to himself, he seeks his lost whole; in the drawing he finds authorship, uniqueness, the power to intervene. Where there are no lies, no fraud, no appearance and no illusions. And despite all the mysteriousness, there is no symbolism.

Gradation I

We are faced with images that we see and read in two ways, in two meaningful primeval levels. Nevertheless this duplicity does not duplicate our view and experience, which is vital for every understanding of an artwork, on the contrary it joins and seizes the painting’s text – texture, surface –  with our own, in some joint, spiritual, visual art interference. Shapes, colours and the depicted event are an outer object of experience; their meaning can be found in the sub-logical structure, where we are taken by the perspective, although at first it might not be obvious and clear. Under the surface relationships reveal themselves, they help us unveil the effects of the surface, namely the effects of the imposed meaning. The viewer sees, reads /only/ the painting’s surface, which is reduced onto a piece of paper, onto a magical screen of images. The viewer’s understanding is immersed into the system of visual art language and wider: into the system of historical and art values.
How can we therefore enter the body of painting, Herman’s painting? How can we break through into his autonomy, into the drawing’s genuine language? Definitely by reading correctly and thus deciphering the drawing’s surface and the author’s message. Traditional observing goes only one way, it is literal and it only catches the appearance, the illusion of the painting’s curtain. Only symbolic reading, usually unknown to viewers, can reveal the drawing’s real sense, which does not correspond to the thinking that relies on the image’s obviousness. That is why we need to skip, push away the traditional understanding of the art of painting and the ways of viewing that were brought into our consciousness from outside like some a priori arrangement of visual art segments that every good painting should consist of. We need a subversion that can take us deeper into the elementariness of painting and into the discovery of mechanisms that are no longer based on prescribed and predetermined ways of painting, whether they are avant-garde, highly modernistic or postmodern.
The paintings of Herman Gvardjančič are veiled, foggy, only rarely he lets us see through the curtain. The painter makes us renounce the observing of the surface which is merely a base, a starting point for our penetration into the painting’s materiality. Figures and shapes on a paper base are in no way meaningless. What is depicted as a piebald, embryonal and fragmented writing is also portrayed by the painted image: nothing on the painting is stressed or organised into some final sense. Such lack of narration usually repels naive viewers. However as soon as our sight penetrates through the veil covering the mysterious message, the viewer enters a place which explains and reflects rudimentary experience, the conscious and subconscious. The shapes on Herman’s drawings are therefore really lenses, magnifiers and mirrors without reflection. The meaning and the role of the drawing is in introspection which is always dialogic and does not exist outside the author – viewer relationship. Within the edges of this artwork the basic relationship in the dialogue is formed, namely our own speech: a reflection of the painting and our own body.

Gradation II

Herman Gvardjančič puts the drawing in the foreground. In principle his drawings are simple and diverse, “uniform” and multiplied, unified, unique and different, fragmental and comprehensive, and “perfect”.  But never ever dispersed and banal. A drawing is a space between visual art writing, grammar, structure and code, which is studied by the purely scientific method called semiology, and between the whiteness of the canvas, where there is a special “metaphysics of whiteness” /blancheur/, a mythology of an empty but not absent space; a space yet untouched, filled with a final sense and upgraded; a place where everything is still possible, where spatial options are infinite.
A drawing is like handwriting (like a “stake”, like l’en-jeu) in various external interpretations, from almost geometric and very rigorous to extremely diverse and baroque. A drawing carries perspective and visual art construction, the painting’s geometry and its illusion, decoration and scenography. A drawing is like handwriting, like a “double scene” of artistic image and its reflex or reflection. It represents a danger of alienation and metonymy, a danger of idealisation and theory, a danger that enters into the drawing through the back door with an aim to kill its message.  However in a drawing there is also a possibility of pure surrender, a place for playing and ecrire automatique and for physical, sensual and spiritual seismographic records. It contains a depiction – art – like Identität or Verfremdung.

The whiteness of the canvass is “ma”, matter as a pure substance, as the womb’s place. The whiteness of the canvass is the place before birth, a lair, a place of settlement; a place of creation and protection; an open skin, mouth, nest; a preplace of every placing. Or as Derrida says: /Drawing/ is like a “diaeresis” /differance/, namely a movement that cannot be thought from the presence – absence contrast. Diaeresis is a systematic game of differences, a spreading that puts the elements in different relations. Spreading is an active and at the same time passive production of /visual art/ intervals, without which the contents would be meaningless and signs and expressions would not function.  This is also the “spacing” /devenirespace/ of visual art chain, the spacing that enables a drawing as a drawing. The whiteness of a soft paper is ?un?touchable, in it the artist is alone with himself, lonely but at the same time sympathetic towards the other; the other within himself, his Double, towards the divided in his own self.

Gradation III

Herman’s hand is gifted with freethinking, energetic physiognomy: like “a face” with no eyes and no voice that can see and speak… The subtleness of touch that, when touched by the hand, can see figures on paper imprinted into the infinitely tiny thickness of the paper. The design of different looks – fluid, loose, spiritual – active in inactivity, in allegory of whispered objects and relations… A barely perceptible puzzle of organs and organisms. We follow the palm of the hand, which presents visual and symbolic states … memories of our life. Like some sort of inheritance from the past to the present and from the present to the future: netwoks of nerves spread under the skin. A landscape with central depression, chapped, interrupted subtle writing. No useless gestures … like a kind of dream that draws possibilities and living beings in a game of moves that do not copy anything.
Elevated in the wind, spread and separated like branches. Subtle and multiplied surface of paper that tests the author’s and the subject’s pleasure … through the currents and weightless traces that are invisible to the eye but can be sensed in Herman’s every drawing. Density and volume are not optic phenomena, the artist gets to know them with his fingers, with his palms, with space that is not measured with sight but with one’s own hand and step. A touch fills all the mysteriousness of forces that appear in the mirror of a painting, in a light, shallow and transient drawing…
A kind of isolation in a wide sound syncretism and a rhythmical changing of several voices and rhythms. Hand and voice join together in a single Event, only One and unique. Magnetic undulation of lines, like insects and birds, “invention” of the world yet unknown. Concordance and progressing acceptance are joined together into the reciprocity of animate and inanimate. Flexibility, respect, the feeling of the unknown and inventive spirituality that flows into the inner ?un?rest…
However a hard line as well as a soft line and a warm elaborate tone overwhelms Herman’s dictionary like an undergone illusion, a sensual relief and a volume of noble weight in a race against Time … yes, the adventure of substance and design, cadence, graduation and subsiding in almost every drawing… Herman Gvardjančič is an artisan and an alchemist when it comes to discovering and inventing things: an infinite landscape of strange mysteries “robbed of mimicry”, always in its own game, in repetition of intuitive flashes through the shadows that never die (in us). The eye without the hand, the hand with the eye, with a  passing, shortened move, like a stain on paper … a stain that is actually a talking spirit and a soul. The artist – a magician who fulfils his dreams and takes advantage of all mistakes and deficiencies of his moves, so that in the end he accepts them as his own … helpless and almighty power. The stain – a mysterious creature that passes from the artist’s hand into the world, into the “twisted” face of a painting.
There are no bright and unsettled contrasts, only the basic object of depiction, with a precise drawing that creates a vision before us with its inner body and perspective. The hand that searches and invents and continuously tests its strength, weakness and possibilities and leaps… A sort of garment – a coat – with pleats that replace discomfort with comfort and misery with joy. Like absolute fullness which is at the same time also emptiness that seduces and fascinates us. The elasticity and limberness of the drawing and the enchantment of the hand (with the hand) is therefore the one that does not separate the body from the spirit in us: the outer space that leaves its trace everywhere … and its human and artistic im-print.