CROWNED BY TREE TOP – SHORT REVIEW ON STJEPAN PERKOVIĆ’S PAINTING SENSIBILITY
It would be wrong to say that the first opportunity of familiarizing with Stjepan Perković’s
artistic sensibility was met accidentally although summer stroll along Zagreb park Zrinjevac, under the tree tops, with a fountain view, music pavilion and pebbled lanes, was relatively short and unplanned.
During those days Zagreb tried – with the exhibition of artists from international Association of mouth and foot painters – to show briefly that it is metropolis and that the physical handicap of gifted individuals presents the opportunity for the city to show its urban spirit; to show the possibility of overcoming the prejudice that states the destiny of individual is not the destiny of the entire community. The exhibition itself was thought out as spontaneous encounter of painters and passers-by and reminded of playful pictorial promenades of big European cities; at the same time the message was deeply profound because people walking along Zagreb urban core, Lenuci’s horseshoe, were encouraged to develop greater responsibility relating to their own lives by looking at the works of people who released their gestures in an accomplished line and expressed the spirit’s folds with colour.
Meeting Stjepan Perković and his work is magical because it helps to transform ‘ordinary’ audience into the community of better people who suddenly, although shortly, dare to seek mutual delight and joy in order to express the power of spirit which lives in all of us and – by Stjepan’s words – ‘moves from within’.
With toes my legs are buried
In the ground like roots.
Rebellious
From the soil I uproot myself.
Given fragment from one of the Perković’s poems, just like floral motives in his pictorial visions (tree, tree top, interlacement) and motives of gestures in his poetry and his painting (touch, clap of the feet, voice on wings, dancing, intertwining of bodies in dancing, wind and fingers intertwinement) indicate the need of rising above inveteracy in the body itself. Flourishing of the tree top becomes a metaphor of the nature’s ‘archness’ that gives juices of growth to the plants making the counterpoint between the root chains and the lightness of the leaf trembling. Darkness of the soil and grievous ‘earthing’ of the body get their counterbalance in vivacious ascent.
Perković’s struggle with his body endeavours to replace the scene of one who suffer for people crowned by the crown of thorns with the scene of one who rejoice for people ‘crowned by tree top’. The need for tenderness – seemingly only ‘feminine’ need – results in Perković’s pursuit for Anima in the mirror and in tendency of achieving fluency and rhapsody of sweet ‘feminine’ motives. Perković writes:
In front of the mirror I behold myself
Every detail,
Every flaw and every pearl.
Ornate with everything
I say to myself…
You fool and bravo, yes!
When I look myself one time like this
There is no need to do it again
At any time
My memory
Reflects me
I stand above
The surface of the sea
Angry with myself
For not being a flyer
Like the gulls are.
Perković’s sight into the depth of his own being goes beyond the individual human story and by his own example – ‘clap of the feet’ – he awakes accidental beholders; he encourages them to find the source of joy within themselves and urges them to slowly rear, in their own ‘nests of embraces’ that single tiny voice similar to the tweet of fledglings; the voice which solely in the moments of empathic recognition is destined to win universal human wings.
Sibila Petlevski
“Grace I, acrylic on canvas, 50x43 cm”
