Rade Petrasevic. Don’t make waves

02.2015 - 02.2015

Grande Vista, Los Angeles / United States

Don’t Make Waves – like the 1960’s movie of the same name – is the product of Rade Petrasevic’s debut encounter with Los Angeles during a stay at the Grande Vista artists-in-residence program. Manically painted colorful forests; Rade paints what he doesn’t see. Caught between the ocean and the urban environment, he’s surprised when he occasionally comes face to face with California green. In Los Angeles, his vivid palette intensifies yet loses its rigidity as he decides to abandon acrylic and return to oil.... His paintings mimic drawings – summoning up the child-like inconsistency of colored pencils – a bit like a tongue-in-cheek trompe l’oeil. Allusions to the history of painting are abundant in this body of work, like the impressionist tendency to rely solely on color when building an image, so that the image only comes together from a certain distance. It would seem fitting to relate these works to the later paintings of David Hockney (also, as it happens, a foreigner taken by the Californian light) in their depiction of the natural environment armed with a fauvist palette. Yet Rade immerses the viewer further into color, eventually relinquishing the clarity of definition that figuration usually allows for. As the spectator, you’re placed in the very scene of the painting, almost grasping at the foliage around you. Although the work retains its landscape orientation, the image appears as predominantly abstracted. Distinct shapes are sacrificed given an overload of color, losing themselves in themselves.

[Quelle: www.grande-vista.com]