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DAVOR KRELJA
Davor Krelja: Postnaturalism In Krelja's postnaturalistic universe, as every spectator will soon see, no newspapers are published. If they happened to be published, and if the residents and the populace woud read them at all, the big headline which would draw their attention would say ''Krelja is coming home''. A bit bombastic , but still not sensationalist, therefore – journalistically classic. The haeadline would of course be referring to this exhibition, if we, with a certain overstrain of imagination, pictured that in the postnaturalistic world they would write about that same world as an exhibition of paintings by its creator. However, the postnaturalistic world is not entirely without publishing. As the evidence of this we have the Book of patterns, but in it a potential reader will not find bombastic headlines or statements. He will find somewhat bombastic written messages on the paintings Soon over babaluma, Ege bamyasi and Bloody throne, just as he will also find quotations without graphic characters in a few more paintings.
The idea that Krelja is coming home with this cycle of paintings is not as naive as it may seem at first glance if we would interpret it on a level of a mere phrase in the reviewer's jargon. The key was given to us by the author himself in the name of the cycle. So if the post = meta, and natura = fizis, houellebecq's tart postnaturalism, in the sense that it would be something between pornography and science fiction, is built upon by Krelja's newfound melancholy brightness of metaphysical maturity. The metaphysical is after all always a return (home) beyond nature, and Krelja himself gives us the answer to the question how he became a postnaturalist here, on the physical level of being. ''In an Istrian village, in the august of 2008, during the eclipse of the moon I had an akward flight from a roof and fell into an eight-day coma. The awakening and the slow recovery accompanied my work of a maker of paintings and scenes on Golden Mouth, the book of questions and answers. In 2009 an exibition of paintings awaited me in the Ring of the HDLU Retro conceptions from 1988 to 2008. The world does not belong to me anymore nor do I belong to myself.'' (from the diary that accompanies paintings from the Good night and good day cycle, which ''describes'' the long recovery from a coma after the accident).
This non-belonging to the world or to himself also permuted to the newest cycle of paintings. In a space seemingly devoid of any commonsensical coordination by metaphysical mutation of characters a scene opens, as any hawkeyed critic would say, leaving us, with premeditation, without a qualification of that scene. That is because any qualification is at odds with the ancient wisdom that any going away is coming back, and coming back is going away. One of the eighteen pictures from the cycle directly bears witness to that. Gold Mouth and the beyonder in a characteristic ''vehicle'' fly over the complex constellation of spheres (conspheration) and come back to going away, knowing that they are going away to coming back.
Nenad Perković |
