MACHT KUNST – The Prize-Winners:
Keep painting: Lovro Artuković
MACHT
KUNST – In the course of this action in April, all Berlin-based artists
were invited to present one of their works for a single day in the
Deutsche Bank KunstHalle. More than 2,000 artists participated and 8 of
them received prizes. In a major series, we will now be introducing you
to the MACHT KUNST prize-winners and their works. We are starting with
popular favourite Lovro Artuković, who is one of the best-known
painters in his home country, Croatia. Achim Drucks visited him in his
studio.
Lovro Artukovic in his studio, Berlin summer 2013, Photo: Achim Drucks
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Lovro Artukovic in his studio, Berlin summer 2013, Photo Achim Drucks
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Lovro Artukovic, Zwillinge, 2007. © Courtesy of the artist
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Lovro Artukovic, Zwillingsschwestern, 2009. © Courtesy of the artist
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Lovro Artukovic, Falsche Zwillingsschwestern in der Nacht, 2013. © Courtesy of the artist
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Lovro Artukovic, Unterzeichnung der Deklaration über den Anschluss von Westherzegowina und Popovo Polje an die Republik Kroatien (Wer hat das Bier bestellt?). 2008-2011. © Courtesy of the artist
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Lovro Artukovic, Gott, wie ich Botticelli liebe, 2001. © Courtesy of the artist
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Lovro Artukovic, Waldszene mit Spinnweben, 2001. © Courtesy of the artist
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Lovro Artukovic, Als wäre es eine Sternennacht, 2007. © Courtesy of the artist
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Lovro Artukovic, Der Ort, 2008. © Courtesy of the artist
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Lovro Artukovic, Pietà umgekehrt, 2011. © Courtesy of the artist
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Lovro Artukovic, Giuliano (in einer Kreation von Manuela Pott) mit seinem Hund Vino, 2012. © Courtesy of the artist
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The two paintings showing the false twin sisters
lean alongside one another, against the studio wall. One of the
pictures shimmers in a variety of white tones. The other shows the same
motif in subdued shades of grey. The sisters in the painting are
fake, Lovro Artuković
explains, because he always used the same model for the young women and
simply doubled her image. The bright, day version of the motif was
produced in 2009 and he painted the night-version this year. There is
even a third variation in existence, which he created in 2007: there,
he projected the astral constellation Gemini onto the doubled woman.
The image of twins exists in three aggregate states, therefore: the
version with the constellation, in shades of only blue, appears
symbolically charged, the day-image more objective and sober, and the
night scene rather mysterious.
It was by sheer chance that the artist submitted the dark False Twin Sisters at Night to MACHT KUNST.
In April almost his entire oeuvre was hanging in an exhibition in
Artuković’s home country, Croatia. In the studio, apart from the twin
sisters, there was only one portrait and a painting of Marsyas. He did
not believe that the depiction of a satyr being skinned by Apollo was
particularly suitable for the 24-hour exhibition in the Deutsche Bank
KunstHalle. And so he questioned all the visitors to his studio –
the portrait or the twin sisters? The twin sisters won, and went on to
convince the public in the KunstHalle: by a clear winning margin, the
visitors to the first MACHT KUNST exhibition selected this painting as
their favorite. And so Artuković was awarded a one-year studio grant,
endowed with 500 Euros per month.
Such large-format, figurative
paintings are typical of the artist, who was born in Zagreb, Croatia in
1959 and has lived in Berlin since 2003. Their realistic painting
method, which nonetheless does not seem effortfully meticulous, makes
them reminiscent of Lucian Freud or Eric Fischl.
In his spacious studio in a business complex on the border between
Kreuzberg and Neukölln, he is currently working on two more, now almost
finished canvases. They show two people from his circle of friends in
Berlin, dancer Ari and Giuliano, who runs Artuković’s favourite
restaurant. However, these paintings should not be understood as
portraits. “I am not anxious to reveal their personalities or their
characters. These are staged images. My friends are rather like bon
vivants. I show them in a pose on a large canvas, something
traditionally reserved for “important” persons. But as I see it, who –
if not these two – has earned the right to have such a representative
painting made of him?”
The paintings lean against the wall; the
slightly stained white of this wall also appears on the canvases
themselves, for it was here that Artuković staged the scenarios for his
friends. The studio as a stage: the theatrical impression of the
paintings is underlined by the choice of costumes for those portrayed.
Giuliano is presented in a jeans-ensemble and open shirt designed
especially for the occasion, revealing the anchor tattooed on his neck.
Initially, Ari’s dress may suggest an opulent robe, but it actually
consists of bubble-wrap. Artuković draped a sample of the material over
a frame in order to study better the light reflexes on the padded
plastic and so transfer them onto the canvas. “This has always
interested me: the tension between the artificiality of painting and
the efforts that are made to reproduce something in reality, to
represent the real, to pack a piece of reality you have been working on
into this square.”
The artist links the genre of the classical
representative portrait to contemporary Berlin. And his biggest
painting to date also refers to patterns from art history. To produce
it he crossed a history painting with a scene of the last supper.
The Signing of the Declaration on the Unification of Western
Herzegovina and Popvo Polje with the Republic of Croatia (Wer hat das
Bier bestellt?) is the title of this canvas measuring almost 15
square metres. The painting produced between 2008 and 2011 is conceived
as a parody – oriented on the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement,
which ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995. Here, 22 of the
artist’s friends play history: Bosnians, Croats and Serbs slip into the
roles of state presidents, international observers, or UN negotiators.
They discuss, smoke, and examine documents and maps. A local Berlin pub
provides the setting. “Artists from the Balkan region are expected to
thematize the political developments and conflicts there or examine the
process of reconciliation. I wanted to counteract this in some way.”
The pub scene is not only an ironic response to heroic history
paintings and their nationalist tone, but also to the expectancies of
the western public.
Lovro Artuković is the oldest by far of the
eight MACHT KUNST prize winners. While the others are still at the
beginning of their careers, he can look back with quiet self-confidence
at a longer career. He is regarded as one of Croatia’s most important
representational painters. Parallel to his work as an artist he also
taught for nine years at the Academy of the Arts in Zagreb, where he
was a student himself from 1979-83. A retrospective of his paintings
could be seen in the Museu da Água, Lisbon following venues in Split
and Dubrovnik in 2002.
However, these 24 paintings were lost and
remain so: on the journey from Lisbon back to Croatia the vehicle in
which they were being transported was stolen. A year later Artuković
moved from Zagreb to Berlin – a city where he knew no one. How did
these two experiences influence his art? “I don’t know whether those
events were really as fateful as they sound or whether my painting has
simply changed as a result of a completely normal development process.
The move to Berlin was important, of course. The scene in Zagreb is
extremely diverse, I know, but it is also easy to survey. When you
belong to a specific scene, you also make compromises. You want to be
accepted. You know how that scene ticks and you can use it to further
your own work. On the other hand, the group to which you belong gives
you a sense of security. As far as the art scene is concerned, I was
and remain an outsider here in Berlin. The scene here is impossible to
survey, anyway. In this way, I have been able to do what interests me
in peace and quiet – without taking into account how one ought, should
or is allowed to paint. The fact that my paintings disappeared was not
such a bad thing in the long run – to a certain extent it has
unburdened me.”
Comparing the older paintings with those that
were produced in Berlin, it is certainly noticeable that the latter are
focusing more and more on people and the space that directly surrounds
them. Berlin as a city is not a topic here. Artuković restricts himself
to friends, staging images in his studio. In the series Platz/The Place
he even goes one step further and shows only walls, plastic foils, an
old sofa. He shows the interplay of light and structures, gold-shining
plastic, matt, dull leather. And also emphasizes that painting is only
illusion: sometimes it is possible to see projections on the painted
walls. Only the wooden floor to be seen under the turquoise water or
the red-smouldering lava at the picture’s edge points to an image
within the image. Earlier on, he painted in a more complicated way, the
artist explains, but now his paintings have less to narrate. And this
simplicity is good for them.
As a painter Artuković continues
determinedly along his own path. Even in his academy days, he was
relatively alone with his figurative painting. “At that time, the way
in which I painted was already considered not exactly modern. Many of
my co-students were experimenting with videos. My teacher came from Op
Art. But abstraction was always alien to me. I need interaction and
debate with the model and with space.” The time in Berlin has not
always been easy for Artuković. It is difficult to find one’s
feet here with such an attitude to painting. Once, he tells me with a
laconic smile, he played host to a group of wealthy collectors from the
USA in his studio. “One woman leafed rapidly through my portfolio. She
didn’t buy anything, sure, but she did say: ‘Keep painting.’ And that’s
what I have done.”
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