NMMU: Tell us something about the works presented at your solo exhibition at the Josip Račić Gallery?
PREDRAG TODOROVIĆ: The exhibition showcases larger-format works created during 2023 and 2024, so we titled the exhibition simply – Paintings 2023 - 2024, with the intention and without the need to direct the visitors’ focus, associations, and projections, (perception) in any direction or sense. In terms of formal and visual aspects, these are paintings with emphasised texture bordering on relief, so they seemingly resemble the poeticism of Art Informel, although in concept and construction, they are more Fluxus-oriented, conceptual. Specifically, as an artist, I withdraw completely from participating in the construction of the painting’s appearance; I detach it from the studio floor and frame it randomly, without looking at its front. I thus obtain unlearned and unexpected content and “excess” through the painting.
NMMU: How have you changed throughout your professional career, and consequently, your works? How do they come into being, and to what extent are you inclined towards experimentation?
PREDRAG TODOROVIĆ: As could already be inferred from the answer to the first question, multiple aesthetics, practices, media, and techniques always intertwine in my works. They are intertextual; I could call them visual bastards. In this regard – it is logical that I always experiment; I am simply wired that way. Since my final year of studies, I stopped limiting the painting by medium, techniques, or procedures. In dialogue with the work, I always find another way to help it develop in the direction it prefers. In that sense, I have also changed and arrived at some of “my own” materials and visual language.
I’ve used all sorts of materials, from cobwebs, lime, cement, plastic foils, juice straws, to objects taken from reality that I would print on different surfaces, and so on. These are mostly non-artistic materials whose use was determined by my thematic determination and curiosity.
NMMU: What inspires you? What themes have you explored, and are there any that are constantly present in your work?
PREDRAG TODOROVIĆ: Now I can confidently say that there is only one theme present throughout my entire body of work, and that is my preoccupation with experiencing the comprehensive through moments and small fragments of objective reality. The comprehensive in the slivers that we can encompass with our gaze. What is everything made of and what is at the core of it all? That has always been my theme. That’s why all illusory things like narrative discourse, colour, etc., have disappeared from my work.
The means through which I could address reality are the simple materials I discovered in my surroundings. Working with them has become my visual language and grammar. Being a tactile type, I chose the poetics of relationships, light-dark, rough-gentle, sharp-smooth, hard-soft; that is my visual language for talking about experiencing the comprehensive through fragments. I am inspired when I notice the presence of the infinite through some small, unassuming sliver.
NMMU: Who would you single out as an artistic role model?
PREDRAG TODOROVIĆ: There are many talented artists with beautiful works. Today, this is especially evident through social media and the internet. As I mentioned, aesthetically, my work is an intertext of various artistic postulates, so it doesn’t make sense for me to list visually appealing artists. I would therefore mention one who, through just a few conversations, left the most striking, profound trace on me. Not in the artistic sense, but in the existential, warm, human sense, and that is Ivan Picelj. Like a true Zen master, that man, with his wisdom and experience, set me back on my feet when I was at my lowest and when I had completely stopped working.
NMMU: Do you remember who bought your first painting?
PREDRAG TODOROVIĆ: Yes, if we exclude a few unserious purchases from childhood, then it was a university professor, not from the art academy, while I was in my first or second year.
NMMU: How much time do you spend in the studio and what can you not do without?
PREDRAG TODOROVIĆ: I usually spend 6-8 hours in the studio every day, sometimes more, sometimes less. It is not always productive work. I have a lot of downtime, simply “staring into space.”
What I cannot do without are coffee, paper, black ink...
Interviewed by: Lana Šetka
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Tanja Tevih © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb, Zagreb, 2024