NIPPON, 2014 Painting

Painting of three Japanese in a lush garden... PAINTINGS 2014 Q: Painting has been declared dead many times since the rise of photography, but it seems that it didn't have its last say yet. A: As much as I have followed, since the rise of photography painting has been declared dead every ten years. But for me, the most interesting time in painting was the 20th century, when by definition it should have been dead already a long time. It renews itself periodically. There is no progress in art so painting does not move towards something. If painting and art should become something else, somebody must tell me what that 'something else' is supposed to be. No one has come forward so far. I think even that at some point machines will become very intelligent, they will paint like humans or even better. Homo sapiens will go extinct. Nothing horrible really, we will progress into something else as species. Like in the past it was from homo erectus to homo sapiens… And in this case art will continue through some other, mechanic species. Interview in Primorske Novice daily newspaper, end of September 2014. The way Jurečič produces his images gives an impression and appearance that separate him from 'clean' or usual painting in that he pours and expands his figurative form and the script of the painting into layered parts and paragraphs into layered imaginarium, which is both hidden and obvious. 'Background' layers, leaves in forms of spears, mossy forms that cover the surface of the canvas intensify this duality of hidden-obvious…Some kind of murky, watery magma pours from the faces and human forms, some kind of acidulous liquid, that cocoons states and forms of the painting. Transparent and slippery net, network, envelope, label for the eye, that provides internal-external buoyancy for the tissue of the painting…that gives the painting new authentic meaning. All of this with a unique, original gesture, that grinds, melts, breaks and brings together the images into singular experience. Andrej Medved, curator of the show at Monfort Gallery/Coastal Galleries, end of September 2014 »After we have established that sonic parallels to Warhol, Koons, Hirst are Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga respectively, we have to ask the important question: how did it come to this confusion. Why do some deem Hirst & Co. great artists, others 'kitsch merchants' and there are no in between positions. The answer is simple: in the same way they have been adding production to the trivial music of the 20th century, in the same way they have been adding text to the trivial visual arts of the 20th century. This means that you can add text to Hirst's art claiming him to be contemporary Rembrandt, whereas you cannot produce Lady Gaga over into contemporary Beethoven.«