Dragomir Misina
Dragomir Misina
Bath, BANES, United Kingdom
About Dragomir Misina
Artist statement I use the process of painting to document physical and psychological presence, investigating the communicative function of colour and form as a reaction. The starting point of each painting is based on some form of narrative, which inevitably informs the course of painting. However, in the process of painting, it is not a question of making ever more references to the narrative, but a deliberate attempt to escape from it. Therefore the paintings may be observed for what they are rather than what they should mean Bio “Dragomir was born and grew up in Croatia, living in the countryside, surrounded by blue mountains. Roaming around the hills and exploring, days seemed endless during long hot summers. This notion of utopia runs through his work, intertwined with the complexity of our existence. His expansive paintings are an exploration of colour, texture, mark making and the process of painting itself. Concerned with the delicate balance of chaos and order, they combine deliberation and chance, functioning as a diagram of layers, marks and colours creating gateways into make-believe worlds. After leaving Croatia, Dragomir graduated in 2012 with a First in Fine Art Painting from Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University. Since then he has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. In early 2014 Dragomir was selected from 6,440 entries to show work for the Saatchi Art exhibition in London 'In Glorious Colour’. His work is also part of the ongoing Saatchi Gallery Screen project. In the 2016 edition, Dragomir’s work was extensively published in The New Collectors Book; a New York based Annual Art Publication. Dragomir was the winner of the prestigious Evolver Wessex Artist Award at RWA’s 161st Annual Open Exhibition in Bristol and he was selected as one of the top 10 finalists for the Bridgeman Studio Award 2018. His most recent installation is in Aldgate House in London. Also, some of Dragomir’s paintings have featured in the Channel 4 TV series, George Clark’s Old House New Home, Series 4; averaging viewing figures of around 1.8 million. Dragomir has paintings in private collections in Europe, Asia, North America (including Agnes Gund Collection) and South America. Dragomir’s work has been purchased by Bath Spa University and is now part of their permanent collection.”
Education:
BA (Hons) Fine Art Painting at Bath School of Art & Design, Bath Spa University 2009 - 2012
Events:
Published interview in the Evolver Wessex art and culture magazine
Dragomir Mišina is a painter whose exuberant, vibrant swirls of pigment, looping thin lines and hastily scribbled text proclaim an artist for whom improvisation is a way of life. As a child, growing up in Croatia, he was always making things: toys, basketball hoops, tricycles out of scrap metal, getting help from older friends with welding equipment. Given his passion for manipulating materials it is perhaps surprising that he has ended up painting rather than making sculpture. However his work has a strong sense of structure and his working method, layering, building up and breaking down surfaces and texture are akin to sculptural processes despite their application on a two-dimensional surface.
Arriving in the UK in 1989 he initially studied photography but his yearning for a more physical and immediate approach to expressing his ideas moved him towards painting. His work is abstract though based on the visual. Things seen in his day-to-day life, signs, objects, popular culture but also fairy stories and children’s books like Alice in Wonderland. He will take a visual idea, an element of a story and use this as a starting point for one of his large paintings. However once the repetitive processes of applying paint, allowing it to dry, sanding and contemplating it, have begun, the narrative of the painting becomes self-referential, responding to the marks, materials, colours and the element of chance associated with the process of deliberate destruction.
Dragomir’s working method and his materials: acrylic, coloured pencil, graphite, permanent markers, are closely aligned to the subject of his paintings. When working on ideas of decay he built elements of decay into the work in progress. In his Alice in Wonderland series it was the colours suggested by the actual story, which he built up into the finished composition. In his Fairy Tales series, loosely based on stories like Rapunzel and the Princess and the Pea, he sets the memory of the time in which the tales were written within the context of the present, using marks and colours suggested by the narrative. In other paintings and more specifically where there is a lot of drawing he records the passage of time in lines and marks and this recording of the passage of time becomes a crucial element of how the work develops.
Dragomir’s influences are eclectic, Turner, Jackson Pollock, Rothko, Cy Twombly, Anselm Keifer etc. and understandable, given his expressionist tendencies and the freedom with which he applies paint. His admiration for Julie Mehretu is perhaps less immediately obvious until he explains, that he is, “ interested in the relationship between gestural painting and drawing in Mehretu’s work”. It was this marriage of painting and drawing in Mišina’s painting, Dust to Dust 3,
which led to it being awarded the Evolver Feature prize at the Royal West of England Academy Autumn Exhibition in 2013. Based on his researches into Dead Star phenomena and visually referencing images of the universe, its size, 200 cm wide by 120 cm high fulfilled his aim of “immersing and engaging the viewer”. Its web of fine interlocking lines replicate the passage of time through the repeated building up and subsequent destruction of layers during the process of making. It is the combining of vibrantly coloured gestural marks with a geometric framework which makes Mišina’s work arresting. The wildness in the handling of materials and subject matter is deceptive and far from indicating a lack of control is in fact carefully considered and orchestrated and further balanced by the restraint of an occasional hard edged line.
© Fiona Robinson 2014
Exhibitions:
Solo Exhibitions
2020
Gift of Summer Days, 44AD artspace,Bath
2019
Hide and Seek, Aldgate House, London
2017
Smokescreen, 44AD artspace, Bath
2016
Line of Colour, 44AD artspace, Bath
2015
at first glance, The Pound Arts Centre, Cosham
2014
Alice, 44AD artspace, Bath
2013
Last Supper, 44AD artspace, Bath
2012
Ring a Ring o’ Roses, 44AD artspace, Bath
Fairy Tales, Bath School of Art & Design, Bath
Selected Group Exhibitions
2020
The Art of Communication, 44AD artspace, Bath
No Name, El Museo Nacional de Arte de México, Mexico City
2019
Old House New Home with George Clarke, Channel 4 production, Margate
Poster, 44AD artspace, 4 Abbey Street, Bath
Alter Ego, 44AD artspace, 4 Abbey Street, Bath
2018
No Name, San Carlos Museum. Mexico City
Source, 44AD artspace, 4 Abbey Street, Bath
Balance, 44AD artspace, 4 Abbey Street, Bath
A Letter in Mind, Oxo Tower Gallery, London
True Stories, 44AD artspace, 4 Abbey Street, Bath
Live, FaB, Walcot Chapel, Bath
The Launch, Deviation Street Magazine,44AD artspace, 4 Abbey Street, Bath
2017
Exchange, 44AD artspace, Bath
A Letter in Mind, Oxo Tower Gallery, London
Studio, 44AD artspace, Bath
Pay & Display Prize, Centrespace Gallery, Bristol
2016
No Name, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City
These Rose Tinted Glasses Have Never Let Me Down, 44AD artspace, Bath
A Letter in Mind, Oxo Tower Gallery, London
Pay & Display Prize,Centrespace Gallery, Bristol
The Waiting Room, 44AD artspace, Bath
2015
The Apartment, Subject Gallery, New York City
The Pound Arts Open, The Pound Arts Centre, Cosham
Exchange, 44AD artspace, Bath
2014
162nd Annual Open Exhibition, RWA, Bristol
A Letter in Mind, Oxo Tower Gallery, London
Saatchi Screen Project, Saatchi Gallery, London
I Claudius, 44AD artspace, Bath
Evolver Prize, Atkinson Gallery, Street
‘Underland’, O3 Gallery, Oxford
In Glorious Colour, Saatchi Art Showdown, Griffin Gallery, London
2013
161st Annual Open Exhibition, RWA, Bristol
State of Play, Southgate Street, Bath
Transfer, FaB, Southgate Street, Bath
Out of the Dark, 44AD artspace, Bath
Drawn, RWA, Bristol
Forget who you are & everything you know, The Searchers contemporary, Bristol
2012
Please Do Not Bang Or Open The Cages, 44AD artspace, Bath
tenplusone, 44AD artspace, Bath
Free Range, Site Unseen, The Old Truman Brewery, London
Bath School of Art and Design Degree Show, Bath
2011
159th Autumn Exhibition, RWA, Bristol
Collections
Bath Spa University
Private Collections including Agnes Gund Collection
Publications/Awards
2020
Shortlisted for the Bridgeman Studio Award
2019
Published work in the A5 Magazine, industry focused art zine
2018
Selected as one of the top 10 finalists for the Bridgeman Studio Award
Published interview in the Deviation Street Magazine
Published work in the A5 Magazine, industry focused art zine.
2016
The New Collectors Book, a NY based Annual Art Publication
Hotbook, Mexican magazine
LAB zine, a USA, visual artists and media makers journal
2014
Selected by Saatchi Art for Collection Best of 2014
Finalist, the Saatchi Art Showdown 'In Glorious Colour’
Published interview in the Evolver Wessex art and culture magazine
Selected by Saatchi Online for Collection Made In Britain
Won the Evolver Wessex Artist Award at RWA’s 161st Annual Open Exhibition
2013
Selected by Saatchi Online for Collection White Hot
Selected by Saatchi Online for Collection Abstract Paintings
Aesthetica, The Art & Culture Magazine
Selected by Saatchi Online for Collection Rule Britannia; A spotlight on British Arts
Selected by Saatchi Online for Collection Primary Colors
Selected by Saatchi Online for Collection Bold Statement Works
The Clifton Life Magazine
Selected by Saatchi Online for Collection New This Week 04-29-2013
Cover image on home page Saatchi Online for Collection New This Week 03-18-2013
Selected by Saatchi Online for Collection The Bright Fantastic
Selected by Saatchi Online for Collection London Calling: Art From the UK
an magazine