The Excitement of Many Layers
One of the painting colleagues said about Maruša Šuštar to have »grown very fast«. That is true, at least in our circumstances, and also the moment when that happened could be precisely determined – in the middle of the last decade, when she started working on the cycle The Chosen. The most obvious newity of the cycle were figures of gymnasts, placed in queues (horizontally or vertically), which is the main reason why spectators named the paintings »The Gymnasts« – at least for some older people the reference on the numerous performances in different celebrations had been inevitable.
»This kind of development leads to the newest artificial works, from which all figures are completely vanished and the main role is passed on to more and more colour-saturated surfaces of the paintings.«
Why so many words about paintings which cannot be seen in Equrna? There are mainly two reasons. Firstly: as said before, there were human figures introduced in the cycle The Chosen, which were made significantly smaller by the artist on her paintings of the next cycle Overview, but also multiplied by the same time and have played the key or at least very important role ever since in her works. The second reason is seen in the content misunderstanding: Maruša Šuštar’s paintings always have many layers; it depends on the spectator’s knowledge and his beliefs on which of the layers he will pay attention – consciously or subconsciously. In addition, her works are generally critical; therefore the political associations and reactions are not too surprising.
One of the first elements, which alerted on the critical emphasis of works, was the web, which appeared for the first time again in The Chosen. The web had double role: it emphasised the entrapment of figures in symbolical sense, and the two-dimensional painting surface in artistic sense. The emphasis was sharp in both senses; therefore the artist had to give it up, just like the big figures: it has been replaced by motifs of maps, on which the parallels and meridians are still emphasised. Also these have vanished from the newer works (e. g. Un/holy Land). The traditional cartographic view had been replaced by Google Earth type of view, moving the symbolical balance of paintings towards the critical side again, to the more emphasized topic of constant control: among all the topics the artist chooses, this one is the most typical.
The same development can be observed also in her figures, which didn’t only get smaller, but at the same time became more picturesque. The Chosen were stiff, symbolically conventional; the later figures were more and more dynamic, only rarely truly vivid, and the contours have started – with the distinctive exception of symbolical characters – vanishing. At the stage as some of the previous year’s paintings show (above all X-Topia, 2010), many of them aren’t shaped by a line anymore, but by pressing down with paintbrush which had been soaked in colour – creativity that is in the art of painting found far too rarely, perhaps even the most glimmering in works of Raphael, in works of an artist, who is (unjustified) know as non-playful.
This kind of development leads to the newest artificial works, from which all figures are completely vanished and the main role is passed on to more and more colour-saturated surfaces of the paintings. (The interesting thing here is that also the usual painting format has changed, the horizontal format had been replaced by the vertical one – The measures of The Un/Holy Land for example are 240 x 135 cm, just the opposite to the 2010 painting The Black NY, otherwise one of the few artist’s – again in all senses – »dark« works.) Such an approach to the problem of paintings reminds of the stage, which some Slovenian artists, Emerik Bernard for example, reached in the 70’s. But of course it is impossible to give an answer to the question, if the artist will continue in this direction. It is only certain that it will be worth keeping an eye on her, regardless of which path she chooses.
Pogledi 10, May 11, 2011