Pay to Touch This Painting
When we examine a painting, it is no more than a visual fact and evidence of someone’s action – their ability to represent and visualize the known and unknown world. This world is not solely composed of forms borrowed from nature or shaped in its likeness; it can also be a visual record of human mental processes and thought. Ana Petrović’s exhibited canvases belong to the latter category. Even at first glance, one notices that something is written on them. Text is granted equal status to color and form within the canvas.
What does Petrović write? “Luxury,” “Painting,” “Pay to touch this painting,” “Pay,” “Pure,” … She visualizes words to encourage viewers to perceive her paintings as more than merely beautiful (artistic) objects, prompting them to wonder what lies “inside” and how they should respond. Her inscriptions may also be understood as silent imperatives commenting on the realm of painting, the world of visual art, art in general, and the commercial sphere. She ironizes the traditional attitude of the observer toward a painting, as well as the painting itself and its established status as a luxury object owned by either the artist or the buyer.
If culture, and therefore art, is a superstructure of human nature and humanity at large, then consuming art and possessing artworks should serve as a clear sign of the owner’s intellectual sophistication. Reality, however, shows that this is often not the case. Aware of this, Petrović uses visual commentary to play with visual art and painting through the lens of supply and demand. With intense colors that immediately capture attention, a painting orchestrated by Ana Petrović becomes a desirable object entering commercial dynamics and for which, naturally, one must pay — even just to touch it. Alongside paintings dominated by parallel lines in various colors, there are “golden” paintings whose very color signals their luxurious nature. This prompts us to ask: if touching exhibited paintings is generally discouraged (and often forbidden) in museums and galleries, why does Petrović encourage us to touch them, provided we pay for the privilege?
Petrović’s artistic practice does not focus exclusively on painting; she is known for using a wide range of media. In this case, she employs painting to confront the average observer with a fact we often forget: most people, when defining the notion of “artwork” in their everyday vocabulary, rarely go beyond the subconcepts of painting, sculpture, drawing, engraving, photography… Installation, video, performance art, and other more “lifelike” forms of presentation fall out of focus, are left undiscussed, or are negatively interpreted to discredit them as artworks. Fully aware of this, Petrović chooses to create a luxury painting for which one must pay a fair and pure price — even just to touch it with one’s eyes (“pay to touch this painting”).
Her staged inscriptions guide us toward a kind of painting in which everything begins and ends with an idea. Painting is employed quite literally as a medium, a conduit for the artist’s ideas through textual-visual or visual-textual imperatives. The conceptual foundation of her painting encourages us to embrace wholeheartedly both the conceptual and the visual in her work, for the visual does not restrict the conceptual, nor does the conceptual diminish the visual. On the contrary, in her work this symbiosis achieves its fullest momentum.
Igor Loinjak
Critic