ALTA BEZ MIRA (eng. Alta without Mira) - Limited Edition 2 of 30 Print

ALTA BEZ MIRA an graphic-poety map by Krunoslav Dundović(Prints) and Anđelko Mrkonjić (Visual poetry) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJG3EvzPvMs AN ENCOUNTERED BLACK AND WHITE ART WRITING The letter hunts the picture because the picture started first. Hence, in the beginning there was a sign, and as we were trying to define its meaning we were seizing the word, and then we nailed the word to the base using letters. Then some letters gained independent value, were released from the obligations of the imposed transmission of a default meaning, relinquished to subserve the agreed meaning, becoming a figure (not jet necesserily an image). Then again it was necessary to start from the beginning, this embodiment of the letter, basically deprived of uniformity, needed to be burdoned with connotations in another way, and then connect these different meanings to a system and enclose and surround this system with letters… We are spinning in a vicious circle, a wheel, biting our own tail of endless semiosis. For who knows how many times are we facing ourselves with parallel casing of art and poetic works, trying to find connections and affinities between heterogeneous disciplines, or, at least, some reasons for their established companionship. In each individual case the motives can be completely disparant: the authors’ personal friendship, the generational and programmatical manifestations or the sense of psychological or worldview similarity, what would be manifesting itself in the textual flow of the lyricism and the compositional determination of the visual cadre. In the case of Krunoslav Dundović’s and Anđelko Mrkonjić’s graphic and poetic map we do not see any principled similarities neither on the estetic or „stylish“ level nor the typological level, nor in the generational closeness; the connection is primary established by belonging to the Osijek Cultural Circle and the appropriate mutual curiosity towards texts and experiences of hardworking companions. Not entering the merits of the decision about the initiation of this cooperation that results in joint emanations on paper, immediately we have to mention that Mrkonjić, as an elder and already validly confirmed author, has a certain advantage of amphibious parallel motion between art and literary practising, while the younger Krunoslav Dundović just is at the beginning of a justified affirmation according to high refinement and consistent purification of his graphic sheets. For decades Anđelko Mrkonjić has been moving through the domains of poetry and art. At first he endeavored to fix his youthful rebellious experiences with rhymes and form an expression based on archaic, regional and lapidary expressive premise. He captured the archetypal sightings in painting and framed them with geometrical and minimalist solutions. Step by step he switched to the synthesis of painting and graphical lettristic characteristics, and based his poetic texts on the oneiric citationality or the surprising transformation of the almost bureaucratic template. A further step was the parallelism of the textual flow and its erasure, the negation, and the creation of a completely new ideographic calligraphy. The Cycle „Alta and Mira“ offers individualized hieroglyphs (based on own initials A and M), triangle combinatorics with line-writing what starts from Klee’s stylizations and Morgenstern’s stanzaic associations, in order to achieve animalistic figuration and radical autonomy of print, traces.Working on the ruts of neo avant-garde sensibility Anđelko deserves not to be covered by the shadow of the better-known similarly oriented Mrkonjić – Zvonimir, but to be recognized by his individual parcel of unique concretism and conceptualism. Krunoslav Dundović’s first steps have already shown a quite exceptional metier qualification, on one hand, and an openness towards new media and possibilities of artistic opinion and expansion of environment on the other hand. However, we do not want to reduce our approach to laudations at his expressive technical skills, but to state how he manages to present his complex and deep spatial experience even within the frames of traditional graphic sheets. In the subtile game of light and shade, edges and nuance, assimilation and breaks we sense the dimension of temporality and secrecy, the strangeness and separation. As if Dundović’s „Hidden Spaces“ confabulate with the esotery of ancient cultures in their own way, but with the frequency of triangle or pyramidal facets as if they are touching themselves in their own way cryptically with Mrkonjič’s assosiative hieroglyphics alphabet. The happy meeting of those two black and white masters might have not been completely by accident but is by any means significant. Tonko Maroević

Printmaking:Aquatint on Paper

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:30

Size:20.6 W x 18 H x 0.7 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.