Andrea Krnetić Grbić created an unusual universe, materialized it in her drawings and graphics and shared it with us. That universe is connected to ours – we recognize some motifs, symbols and ideas. At the same time, it is different from it, because it is better, more gentle, more beautiful and more humane.
The author created her universe based on the postulates of visual aesthetics that nurtures original and primordial artistry: combining different techniques; contrasting surfaces, textures and contours captured or free hatching of different directions; balancing between simplified purity and redundant “chaos”. The relationship between the background and the “main actors” was treated dynamically. The background can be a mise-en-scène for the content (artistic and meaningful), emphasized only by a colored field (Bull, Sheep, Flowers, Watermelon, Stack) or by a pattern, design and randomly scattered segments of emphasized decorativeness, which further highlights the simplicity of the presented sign (Flower, Love, Cat, Differences). In some drawings and graphics, the background resembles a mosaic (Goats, Fish) from which concisely formulated pictograms emerge. With two-dimensionality, without any indication of perspective or any kind of mimesis, the author sometimes gives us guidelines for recognizing a certain real space (silhouettes in the moonlight on the linocut The backyard), or stimulates the imagination by visualizing a fantastic landscape (Road to the Moon and Space).
Andrea shows us how deeply representation is connected with meaning in a series of drawings and graphics with the theme of nests. On them, eggs and eggshells are tucked away and framed, but also drawn into a swirl of lines that shape the nest, expressing not only the artistic frame but also carefully differentiated layers of meaning. A similar concept of denying supremacy within a set of artistic elements, and thus the hierarchy of the content itself, was applied to the works through the complete filling of the surface with repeating forms that take away indications of direction or plan (Pods, Prints, Traces, Goats).
What inhabits this unusual universe and who are the main actors on this artistic stage? Andrea Krnetić Grbić’s fascination with animals justifies their presence in almost all of her works. They are “pieces of a perfectly fitting puzzle, infinitely tolerant of human cruelty.” They have countless faces, expressions, meanings and possibilities. They are images and signs, archetypal symbols of our collective unconsciousness, representations on the walls of caves, they are the first beings born from the “primordial soup” of inanimate matter. They are one and many, particular and general, a philosophical question and a child’s dream. Animals are travelers between worlds, along with ladders, sun, moon and rain.
In this world of symbols that is purposefully naive, simple and sincere, and at the same time somewhat hermetic in meaning and above all personal, there is still a story. The author herself announces: “every animal is a story, a universe that perfectly and quietly exists.” Her works, like thousand-year-old enigmas from the cultural history of humanity, invite us to discover, complete and retell that story.1
Dr. Ana Milošević, Art Historian
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