Rade Petrasevic (born 1982 in Vienna, also lives
and works there) works within a figurative pseudo-narrative. At first
glance it appears that he is generating this via motifs and indicators,
seemingly stemming from a traditional stance in painting, inviting
associations with classic modernity and at times with Japanese
traditional genre Shunga. Petrasevic’s topics have been wrung
out countless times, and it is particularly that universal amenability
that spikes his interest in wielding clichés and stereotypes – all of
this without abstaining from transformation to the point of (physical)
distortion, sex and fetish. For, it is not the intimate idylls of an
Édouard Vuillard and Nabis, it is not the intensely rich colors of Henri
Matisse or the Fauves and it also isn’t the repetitive, content-laden
sujets of Pablo Picasso, but the appropriation of their techniques,
intentions and topics, revived in a contemporary and by all means
jocular version. The artist’s numerous tattoos of the names of his
predecessors furnish evidence of the exemplary effect they have had on
him, and so does the selection of quotes that Rade Petrasevic
has gathered for this exhibition.
The characteristic style of his oil paintings though could not be
more unlike that of those forerunners: as if coarsely scrawled with fat
marker, with the potent colors shimmering before the eyes of the
beholder. Drawing clearly dominates his painting, with
each presupposing the other in dense reciprocity. His emphasis on
drawing, often degraded to being merely a draft for painting, states the
artist’s wish to increase its significance. Correspondingly, it is on
those fluidly preserved thresholds between the two media that his
paintings work. Both, canvas and polyvinyl chloride (PEVA), pose equally
as foundations for his oil. His works on synthetic material, of which
standard shower curtains are made of, are prevalent at his exhibition at
KOENIG2: a dozen of painted on sheets are hanging from steel ropes.
Their gathers deny a usually thorough and serene sighting. The staging
of the density of colors, forms and superimposed layers comes to the
fore, just as the automatic revulsion that flares up, considering the
material’s trait of cleaving to a wet body. This haptic property, the
selection and arrangement of the works in the show all omit a narrative,
for an explicit and assertive lack of stories and novellas in his body
of work. Which is only being amplified by the abstractly painted tiles,
on which form is solely addressed on account of their own square
profile.
Nonetheless, the title reveals a dormant issue: I don’t think she is a woman refers
to an Interview that Rupert Everett gave the British Times in 2016, in
which the homosexual actor and author openly spoke about his, however,
by now antiquated, childhood dream of being a woman. Simultaneously he
has brusquely stated that transgender athlete and TV-personality Caitlyn
Jenner, formerly known as William Bruce Jenner, should – just as he did
– get over it, claiming that she was “not a woman” but a
“cross-dressing man”. This is not an isolated incidence, reminding of
i.e. last year’s affair during an Interview at Piers Morgan’s Life
Stories, also involving Caitlyn Jenner. Since the affront towards the
entire LGBTQIA+ community, consisting of Morgan laughing about Jenner’s
sex change during the interview in question, Morgan is being fiercely
criticized. Bodies and nudity are unquestionably becoming
progressively important to Rade Petrasevic. His probing into issues such
as sex, homosexuality, kitsch, love, friendship and, ultimately, fetish
transport his works into the 21st century.
(Andrea Kopranovic, 2019)
