Statement
My style is formally abstract, yet fundamentally nature-oriented and inspired. My interests lie in exploring the thin line between known and unknown, figurative and abstract, associative and the lack thereof. Although unintended, the motives are not instantly familiar, it is the title of the work that turns them back to the associative field. I find beauty in strangeness as well as in commonly accepted beauty ideals.
A drawing exists as a strong contour that builds and defines the structure of my pieces. It is always present and strong, and it varies from parallelism to a free, almost baroque structure of thick organic lines. I'm using repetition to create a vivacious linear shadow play, which adds to the overall dynamic of the works. The lines range from very long to very short, almost comma-like, and I use them to edit the chaos and establish order in the composition.
My works are often unpressured by the “weight” of narrative but exist in the world defined by the fundamental rules and essential means of drawing. Their inter-medial nature (being painted objects achieved by the means of drawing) is the only trait that clearly defines them. The form, color, line, and shape are the rudimentary elements used to achieve this and complete the work.
Drawing is the backbone and takes a central part of my process. Careful layering and multiplying of a complex colourful network of lines has a contemplative as well as artistic purpose. Drawing is self-sufficient and it derives from previously experienced, yet abstracted and coded personal language.
Interpretation of the work is free and it is meant to be experienced and deciphered by the viewer. With this approach, it allows free and personal communication between the work and its viewer.
Vladimir Radujkov
AiR (artist in residence Botanical garden Kralingen)
Exhibition text
"Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it."
Bertold Brecht
Having a very close and personal relationship with the natural world, predominantly its botanical branch, made me find the source of my inspiration somewhere between the fallen leaves on the ground, the gentle swaying branches, and the sky.
All changes in movement, hues, rhythms and light became both the fuel and the task itself. Development of every new painting took this study approach as a base around which my creative process revolved and came to be.
These gentle variations were also very suitable for my visual style: seemingly disorganized yet orderly. Line upon line pulled out of memory to mark the excitement of every new observing moment. Restlessness, one of my work's main characteristics, also became my scrutiny's main focus. The absence of symmetry, the tamed disorder and the ever-changing patterns proved hard to capture but trapping these aspects turned into the main task for over a year, which resulted in twelve paintings, each dedicated to a chosen moment out of every month of the calendar year. All the resulting artworks are paintings, but their linear character without painted surfaces qualifies them also as drawings.
My approach consisted of harvesting my personal experiences (mainly visual but also encompassing all the other senses) using natural elements and then translating them into expressive pictorial language while avoiding mimicking nature directly. The triangular bind between nature, myself and art became the very core of the residency and its meditative process helped me understand the capacity and quality of my labor. Neither abstract nor figurative, it stands in both worlds as its own entity and conveys empathy for all natural creation.
Vladimir Radujkov
Pin cushions
Exhibition text
“It’s a very close and difficult thing to know why some paint comes across directly onto the nervous system
and other paint tells you the story in a long diatribe through the brain.”
(Francis Bacon, excerpt from an interview with David Sylvester for the Sunday Time Magazine, 14 July 1963)
With a soft, stuffed belly and a spine full of metal needles, pin cushions are a good example of dichotomy.
As a household item often associated with the labour of mothers and grandmothers,
its inherent deceiving tenderness is a quality hardly matched by any other object explored during childhood.
Being a child and carried off by instinct and eagerness, it is very common that when the opportunity comes to seize the pin cushion and squeeze it in with the fingers, it becomes a moment of instant regret: long-lost needles quickly emerge through the soft fabric to poke the skin with their sharp tooth. Not deep enough to cause terrible pain all at once, but surely prickly enough to associate this distressing sensation with the glory of feeling the stuffing fold under the slow pressure.
This sort of pleasurable contradiction is the distinguishing quality that makes Vladimir’s paintings so deeply interesting and alluring. The elemental shapes that are the subjects of his creations drift organically within the canvas, resembling the array that metal needles take when arranging themselves in an orderly manner along the lines of a magnetic field. They are dictated by the nature of the creator to follow a specific form and structure.
The hues of the palette that Vladimir employs and the silent charming ache that the paintings emanate, may also remind us of the specific taste of the work of Francis Bacon. The skilful ability to turn pinks, magentas, and yellows into screaming colors, going directly opposite their daily connotations, by flinging them against a dark and ominous background is something worthy of remark. So is the talent of conveying to the viewer what Bacon used to call a direct expression of the nervous system and everything that affected it, both physically and emotionally, a “deeply ordered chaos” that is crucial to each artwork.
In the same way, Vladimir’s figures generate a very unique microcosm around them, drawing the viewer in, right at the centre of their colorful and unyielding thorny nest.
The emotional trance that the paintings evoke is to be experienced wholly and without restraint: that is their ultimate purpose, to deliver the sharpest of feelings right into the softest spot of the mind.
Marth Fon Loeben
curator