The Brooklyn Rail

The fourth solo exhibition of works by Aleksandar Duravcevic at TOTAH, The Fold, represents another step in the restlessly evolving trajectory of ever-changing materials and methodology that serve the artist’s metaphysical project. Included here are a new series, entitled “FOLD” and more iterations of his “YOUTH” series, begun in 2023. The potential illusionism Duravcevic makes capable with the simplest of means, and the associations he summons are fully utilized in the “FOLD” series. For example, in The Fold (red diptych), (2024) a two-panel piece in oil and acrylic on linen, not only does a non-identical mirror image imply a fold, the finely rendered depiction of a partially folded surface of fabric points us to the history of Christian motifs in painting, and especially the painting and philosophy of the Baroque era (mirrored surfaces also appear in the “YOUTH” series).

In his 1988 book The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, Gilles Deleuze considers Leibniz’s concept of the monad as folds in space, movement and temporality. Such a movement, without it overdetermining the works, appears opposite to both of Duravcevic’s series. In The Fold (blue and yellow) (2024), pigments and acrylic on paper depict subtly shifting color that registers as light across or in a folded surface. The effect is like that of a negative photographic image, light under water or even a liquid itself materializing as heat or cold temperatures affect its viscosity. The shard of ultramarine blue at the lower left corner adds chromatic complexity and recalls the effects of color field painting.

In YOUTH 13 (2024–25), spectral light is represented as diagonally falling across the panel, or registering as an artifice of process—chemical or heat. This dark surface in quiet, black tones bares the trace of finely applied paint, brushed vertically so that it evokes a tactility not visible from distance. YOUTH 14 (2024–25), another work in oil and acrylic on panel, is a very different proposition with very similar elements. Now, the surface is split into two vertical sections of non-identical shades of white. To the left of center the darker tone of white is graduated, like a cast shadow. At this division and spilling into the section to the right are two flares of color, orange and yellow, that abruptly end at the hard edge of the vertical, central boundary. As the viewer scans across the painted wood panel, the darts of color stress the disappearance and appearance of the white planes.

What is the nature of these subtle pictorial apparitions? Do they potentially bring us closer to a reality rather than explain or communicate it? There is the distinct effect of evoking spiritual, non-material presence and absence: the oscillation of awareness of being in contemplation of simple but elusive phenomena. And, whilst acknowledgement of these surface or material effects might be easily done by science, their effects on us are way beyond rational accounting.