Geraldine Gliubislavich & Hrvoje Majer

Though its death knell has been sounded many times, painting - a peculiar and primal human instinct - appears to be as popular and omnipresent as ever, and these two painters illustrate perfectly how it continues to be relevant in a digital age. Though their work has its roots in the realist tradition, Gliubislavich and Majer are not strictly figurative artists; these new works by Gliubislavich are more emphatically abstract than earlier series, and Majer himself started out (to considerable acclaim) as an abstract expressionist. Both artists work primarily from found images, sourced variously from trawling online, flicking through fashion magazines and looting Old Masters. In Gliubislavich’s work, the images are pushed and deconstructed to such an extent that they often disintegrate into pure abstraction, the paint dissolving into dribbles and drips, its transformative powers reduced to reveal its actual materiality. It is this dissolution, from photograph to painting, from painted image to mere gesture, that Gliubislavich is examining. For her, the act or process of painting is the principal concern. In these new works, she has moved away from her earlier crowd-scenes to depict more ambiguous and disembodied spaces. In these psychologically charged images, it is the inner world of the psyche that appears to be investigated. Solitary figures haunt a strange landscape. At pains to keep the subject open, the titles are as mysterious as the images themselves. This seems like a deliberate wrong-footing of the viewer, intended to thwart our efforts to understand, to read, and to categorise.

Whilst Majer’s style is more sharply focussed, reading them is no more straightforward. Meanings are not so much hidden as multiplied. As with Gliubislavich, titles are signifiers, but no more. Layers of narrative build upon one another. Notwithstanding the warmer tone of these paintings - the earthy hues contrasting with Gliubislavich's blue/black monochromes - melancholia permeates the works. Mythology and mysticism inform Majer’s practice, but it is humanity in all its guises, and people’s inner worlds, that intrigues him. Eyes, the traditional windows to the soul, are a consistent and important feature in Majer’s work. Gazing confrontationally out at the viewer, his subjects demand us to address them, whilst simultaneously remaining impenetrable. Yet here in these new works, the subjects have closed their eyes. They have, quite literally, shut us out, and we are left to wonder what those closed eyes signify. Inner peace or darkest despair, it is not clear. What we see says much about us.

Geraldine Gliubislavich & Hrvoje Majer