The stylistic pluralism that emerged at the end of the millennium, bringing with it image-making in the new media, left Vrezec unmoved. He remained steadfast in his examining and perfecting a painterly language dedicated exclusively to expression in color and drawing – not surprisingly, the art theorist Miško Šuvaković once described Vrezec’s art as a canon of modernist stylistic principles. In his creative process, Vrezec is an avid explorer of the abstract illusion, both in the two-dimensional painting support and in the physical space of the gallery. He has established an interactive relationship with the viewers with his structured canvases or wall installations/objects, in this way tapping into the practices of the postmodern era.

His medium to small-formal works on paper, in acrylic and with minor interventions with pencil, originated at the same time as his canvases of large dimensions; nevertheless, these are not sketches or drafts or preliminary designs for the large paintings, but autonomous works, documenting in numerous series and their offshoots the artist’s artistic deliberations since 1990. Our chronologically conceived overview showcases some 650 works or, as the artist calls them, small “organisms” – this is the first time they are being presented to the public at large.

Žarko Vrezec: Documents 1990–2020

The overview exhibition gives us an insight into the work produced over the past thirty years by Žarko Vrezec, a disciplined explorer of a purified artistic language within the boundaries ...