"My visual compositions are a documentation of the search for harmony and balance using a tool that is difficult to control: the ladle with which I apply paint to the canvas. Just like in real life, this harmony always comes with an element of chance…" – said Andro Grdinić at the opening of his exhibition "Impressions of Action" on April 8th at the Josip Račić Gallery, which was attended by a large audience.

In his opening address, Branko Franceschi, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, spoke about the concept of the exhibition. Museum advisor Željko Marciuš, who also co-authored the exhibition, gave an introduction in both Croatian and English in the accompanying catalog.

Until April 30th, the Zagreb cultural public has the opportunity to view a series of recent large-format paintings by Grdinić, created using a mixed technique, at the Josip Račić Gallery. Dynamic compositions with strong expressive charge and carefully controlled tectonic structure were made through dripping and pouring on the canvas. In addition to the visual effect of the relationship between color and gesture, they create an effective layer of paint with strong tactile qualities. Compared to previous cycles, the new works show a clear reduction and calming of the gesture, focusing on its dramatic effect. A collateral result of this approach is a more limited color palette, with a continued use of open factory-set relationships.

(...) "In Grdinić's complex technique, the paintings emerge, grow, combine, deepen, and coexist, reflecting aspects of the artist's conscious and unconscious creative process. They embody the artist's inner image, transformed into vibrant, pulsating material images. The material itself becomes energy, leaving traces of line and color within the energetic field of the canvas, adding a wild, expressive, spiky, and sharp human or beastly touch. This touch, seemingly entirely impulsive, is organized chaos, intuitive, much like the method of expressive controlled automatism, equally applicable to the poetics of surrealism, from which the term originates, as well as all types of expressionism, action painting, tachism, or abstract expressionism." (...) Željko Marciuš, from the introduction to the exhibition catalog.

The exhibition was made possible with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and the City of Zagreb Office for Culture and Civil Society. Sponsor: HP - Croatian Post Inc.

📷 Photo by Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb.