Exhibition Gordana Špoljar Andrašić

About the exhibition

Neither philosophy, nor religion, is interested in certain aspects of reality but the integrity of reality and the place of a man in it. For both philosophy and religion seek to fully explain the whole universe from the basis of reality and there lies the core of their fundamentality and universality. On the other hand, the spiritual (religious) in art is expressed through the sensual. By communicating the meaning, art illuminates existence. Therefore, art as well as philosophy, mediating the meaning tends to be announced and expressed. According to Hegel, subjectivity is a key characteristic of the spirit that stands out from the outside world, as well as from the unity that it makes with the material, with the body. The interior must, however, be understood as a reflection in itself that can be depicted only in the objective reality of nature and the existence of spirit in the body. In the context of painting, Hegel cites religion as an important theme of this art because he thinks that the divine in painting appears as a spiritual subject that allows each individual to interact with it and that such artworks become “immortal” because of the depth of thought they express - are the greatest achievements of the mind and soul. New artwork of Koprivnica artist Gordana Špoljar Andrasic are based on these propositions, the poetic visual artist who seeks the essence of existence, turning invisible worlds into visible ones; the worlds in time, removed from the spatial attachment for material, making her idyllic world of angelic figures become “material for the immortal interior of the spirit and the soul.”

Gordana Špoljar Andrasic is a painter who explores and creates without limitation. This is the result of many years of work, but also her personality traced through the brisk search for new and undiscovered features and capabilities, captured in vast landscape of visual arts, on the prowl for the challenge, both on canvas and in space. The artist’s rich opus in the continuum of creation, from the wide spectrum of depicting angels and angelic faces on canvas, but also through installations of wire-made angel figures trapped in space, they all show the intensity of artist’s inner charge beyond the boundary beyond the canon of nearly-established forms. From the figurative to the abstract: impressively, expressively and constructively, the artist’s psychological impulse reacts to multidimensional - calm but also playful at the same time captured in expression, gesture, form and color. In her pursuits, the artist created the cycle of paintings called the Ambassadors of Peace, in which she dissolves the space of cosmic aspirations filled with romantic scenes of heavenly and divine creatures - angels in their relationship to nature (the heavens they belong), but also to one another. Through Gordana’s ambassadors of peace we feel the flow of time, its unstoppableness and our momentum - our transiency - her angels are ambassadors, representatives and mediators between the heaven and the earth, the symbols of peace for whose immortality gives these artworks a firm, eternal existence - in the past, in the present and in the future, creating a circle of form that is firm and steady.

The painting of Gordana Spoljar Andrasic could be called “romantic painting” because the artist, with her subtle approach to canvas carries her own inner vision of the world at a high sensory level. Her images simply possess the power to energize the observer and draw him inside her art. Each image is different: each a flickering image, a dialogue with nature and celestial beings within and outside themselves; each carrying a different arrangement of harmonized colors, a different structure and a composition view.

The compositions reflect pure Zen peace while the artist is inclined to expressive gesture and reduction of detail entering the sphere of abstracted form. Composite strings mostly reduced to the representation of one angel, always from a different angle of view, never reaching for the edges and staying compressed in the center of the canvas. Bright figures of pastel colors, in which the whites still occupy most of the space, are traced through open surfaces with fine color that disappears in the play of light and shadow, building powerful voluminous effects that extend to the very figures (densely arranged curls of hair and wide, white angel wings in synergy with fluffy clouds dominating the light blue sky). By transforming the structure of divine figures, the artist stops at the essence because the white does not remain entirely white, absorbing an exquisitely colored spectrum of pastel colors of a poetic fairy tale. With a touch of surreal sequences and symbolist accents, the entire cycle goes on in accord with opposition: the freshness and vividness of the forefront and the metaphysical mystery of the “background”. Throughout the second part of the cycle, wire-made figures of angels are affirmed as installations of conceptual nature. The configuration of these installations holds an anthropomorphic measure, as it provokes the completion of the motifs that the artist uses in different pieces throughout the years of intense work - thus making her celestial figures imprinted into an earthly domain. The overall impression of paintings and mobiles carries a fluid airiness and simplicity regardless of the dominance of achromatic and chromatic tones.

Gordana Spoljar Andrasic is an artist of a deep, gentle soul and a powerful spirit of creation. Through her unique thoughts and feelings, she creates works of art that plunge deeply into the subconscious, in order to give her inner imaging of the world and unique understanding of life. Her angels are the metamorphosis of the miraculous and divine transfiguration of the human person, bearing the message of peace, hope and salvation. This is why this art cycle, with their lyrical improvisations, inspires the interest of the public and allows them a spiritual participation in art creation and a journey to one’s unique depth. With this kind of multidimensional interweaving in visual arts Gordana Spoljar Andrasic established herself as a contemporary Croatian artist of inexhaustible imagination, spontaneity and emotionality living in her angels!

Andrea Batinić Ivanković

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