Preface to the catalog
Between van Gogh’s ear and flash and blood
Ingenuity of Perdić’s painting is evident at first sight. His works inventively dissect the motifs inviting the spectator to the new ways of considering the artistic perspective. Understated, and yet complete frame leaves us lost for words and returns us to a sort of undiscovered mythological domain of imagination. Tino visually denominates instances with clearly carved transcendental features of the humane. Anonymity of the understated becomes a functional attribute of man’s existence in the world and his spirited rivalry with the new, still unknown. If he were a seaman his shipwreck would most certainly occur in the safety of a peaceful harbor, on the other side of the taunting. He is restless, and yet bold and daring, analytically unrestrained and provocative, and his painting interactive: addressing to the eye, it strikes the mind.
Stylization of motifs takes the form of critical reflection without prior observation. Tino is completely symbolic and metaphoric. Entirely devoid of accustomed rigidness of form, his liberalism rightfully carries its name. His works seem to have emerged from larger, more enfolding depictions. Torn off from the whole they strive to indicate the contemporary characteristics of man’s existence in a world without clearly elaborated purposes. The authority of clarity sacrificed to the benefits of the possible. It is astonishing to be a witness of such bold visual redesign of eternal questions of purpose of man’s life. Tino is contemporary, political, religious, actual, and incorrigibly ironic painter, striving to expose the hypocrisy of the ordinary. It is the quality of the bold to walk without fear of the brink of the banal, at the same time questioning the boundaries of the meaningful.
The humor of Tino’s original painting intention is double-faced; he plays with what is significant. By appealing to commonsense of cultural patterns he calls upon spectator’s understanding of what is commonly accepted, only to simultaneously perturb it with the unexpected effect of the irony. His painting is both decorative and contemplative. The façade of art decorates the learned patterns of generally accepted taste, and content thoughtfulness unmasks their credibility. We have before us a particularly productive painter, even thought the said productivity culturally sometimes appears contra. Tino is a critic of his time, but not through the mouth of the painting brush, but through absurdity of depiction of the symbolic value of the meaning of life; simply a painter of flesh and blood. His painting ingenuity, that significant van Gogh’s ear is not given to us for keeping, but as a visual implant through which to hear the invisible. By observing his visual depictions we are of the impression that anything is possible, and yet nothing odd or invented. Entirely logically arranged asymmetry of the (non)sense of existence ironically comments on the social order through a game of golf or abstractly presented through a technique of the seemingly figurative, pointing to a need of correct understanding of conditio humana.
Tino’s visual playfulness is not harmless; it strives to uncover the common human need of a meaningful organization of life in the spirit of time inappropriate to the moment. Aware of the inadequacy of his demand, he skillfully absorbs the techniques of the absurdity and irony as defense mechanisms and a refuge of the humane. To make the invisible visible, the absent present and to embalm the universal need of a thinking being for humaneness are all-present claims of his artistic competition with the universe.
Alen Tomić