EX NIHILO- 2012-David Krut Projects,Cape Town

“I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.” – Philip Guston

The term ex nihilo, most commonly used in association with concepts of creation of the universe, is a Latin phrase meaning “out of nothing.” In theological and metaphysical contexts, the term comes up against opposing theories of creation ex materia (from some pre-existent, eternal matter, or chaos) and ex deo (from the being of God). Outside of these frameworks, the term is often used to describe anything – a topic of conversation, a solution to a problem – that appears to have sprung from nothing, or that seems to have no referent or antecedent, coming into existence independently. In this sense, the term is appropriate to the paintings and drawings of Maja Maljević.

Often, the temptation in a viewer of abstract work is to look for clues that can unlock the ‘meaning’ of the painting, or point to the experiences or aspects of the world that served as the source of inspiration. An inclination toward narrative leads us, as viewers, to search for objects and concepts to which we can relate. While we may be comfortable with abstract painting’s rejection of representation, and we understand that an appreciation of surface and materiality are essential in understanding abstract painting as a field, we struggle to avoid analysing shapes and lines that appear in a painting in terms of their similarity to things recognisable in this world. Perhaps if we can correctly recognise and connect a number of elements within a painting, we will have access to the intellectual process that brought the painting into being. We will know then what the artist is trying to say, what she thinks about the world.

However, in the case of Maljević’s work, these attempts are quickly frustrated because the work, ultimately, doesn’t ‘mean’ anything at all. This is not to say that the work does not have content that in some way derives from the world. The old adage, ‘no man is an island’, applies to Maljević as much to any other person and the experiences she has had, the memories she draws on, the dreams that haunt or inspire her inform particular impressions of the world she lives in. However, she is a unique filter of this material, and expression of it does not rely on intellectual processes. Rather, her act of creation is experiential and emotive, governed by aesthetic concerns and a sense of balance and proportion that is unique to her.

Although the universe that Maljević creates appears referentially disconnected from the world she inhabits, there exist common threads between the two. Investigations of the notion of beauty are carried out through faithfulness to Golden ratio proportions and balance of line and colour, for instance. The importance of symmetry, in Darwinian terms, is also revealed as a factor – what role does a search for perfection play in the production of work? Evolution itself is evident in the progression of Maljević’s work over time as new configurations are born in each body of work, fed by previous imagery, and some shapes and structures are carried over from one body to the next while others disappear.

Hence, although we think we may recognise a television test pattern, a chess board, an aeroplane or a snow man, following conventional associations with these things would ultimately lead nowhere. Maljević is not concerned that the shapes or drips or blocks of colour might resemble things in the world outside the painting – the work is a world in and of itself, appearing to have sprung up ex nihilo. 

Jacqueline Nurse

PAINTINGS

Puzzle -200x150cm,oil paint on canvas

Pink Puzzle- 200x150cm, oil paint on canvas

Inwards-80x60cm, oil paint on canvas

Very Close-80x60 cm,oil paint on canvas

Inside Out-80x60cm,oil paint on canvas

Ex Nihilo- 1, 33x28cm ,oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-2, 38x28cm, oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-3, 38x28cm, oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo- 4, 38x28cm,oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-5, 38x28cm, oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-6, 38x28cm, oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-7, 38x28cm, oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-8,38x28cm,oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-9, 38x28cm, oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-10, 38x28 cm, oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo -11, 38x28cm, oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-12, 38x28cm, oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-13, 38x28 cm, oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-14, 38x28cm, oil on canvas

Ex Nihilo-15,38x28cm, oil on canvas

DRAWINGS

One Colour is Never Enough- 58.5x41.5cm, ink on paper

Really Not Enough- 58.5x41.5cm, ink on paper

On Top of Each Other- 58.5x41.5cm, ink on paper

Kind of Like a Plane With Blob- 58.5x41.5cm, ink on paper

I Will Try to Be Very Gentle - 41.5x30cm, ink on paper

Good Balance-41.5x30cm, ink on paper

Love Yellow-23x21cm, ink on paper

Neat - 27x22cm, ink on paper

Like to Stack -28x22cm, ink on paper

Bird Head -27x22cm, ink on paper

Very Tall- 24x22cm, ink on paper

Round- 24x22cm, ink on paper

Red on Pink- 22x21cm, ink on paper

Blue on Blue - 31x20.5cm, ink on paper

One Way -29.5x20.5cm, ink on paper

All in the Same Direction -29.5x20.5cm, ink on paper

Blob- 29.5x20.5cm, ink on paper

Just too Many- 29.5x20.5cm, ink on paper

REVISITED - Nirox Projects, 2012

MAJA MALJEVIC

(and Abstraction after Manet)



In 1863, Édouard Manet painted Olympia and, in so doing, instigated the reinvention of painting. Suddenly, painting was liberated from what in the twentieth century has been referred to as the “tyranny of appearance” and the “picture-object” was born – ‘the picture as pure materiality, as simple coloured surface’[1]. Every generation of painters following in the wake of Manet were affected by his explosion of the beliefs and traditions of the canon, from Impressionism to Minimalism and beyond. In other words, the development of modern painting entailed the systematic rejection of the importance of imitating the appearance of things in favour of new methods that reveal the hidden relations between things.

To have an idea of how painting has developed from Manet through the twentieth century is meaningful when considering painting now, and especially abstract painting, because with the birth of the picture-object a new kind of viewer has emerged, whose responsibility it is to create meaning, as opposed to meaning being dictated by the artist. To view a painting in relation to others and in relation to movements that may have influenced its creation can often provide the viewer with a legend by which to begin reading it. When considering the work of Maja Maljevic, the grand overarching narrative becomes even more significant because her own relationship with painting has followed a very similar plot.

Maja Maljevic was born in Belgrade, the capital of what today is Serbia, in 1973. She began to consider herself an artist from as early as high school, when she decided to study within the design department in preparation for tertiary studies in the arts. Acceptance into the University of Arts Belgrade depended on producing a portfolio of sufficient quality to meet the stringent demands of the faculty. Once accepted, a gruelling seven years of training followed, of which the first few years consisted purely of academic and classical arts education – drawing and painting from life, the nude, portraiture, still life and the attendant classical theory. Once this solid traditional foundation had been laid, the fledgling artists were set free to discover for themselves what kind of practitioners they wanted to be. For Maljevic, like so many artists post-1863, this meant unlearning how to draw – as Picasso famously quipped, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

Maljevic cites the German Expressionists as a major early influence, and has also drawn inspiration from the work of more recent artists such as Philip Guston, Cy Twombly and Jean-Michel Basquiat. She relates that in her first few years at university she loved more than anything to draw the sculptures of Michelangelo, smitten with the bold and monumental perfection of his work, which was simultaneously so real and unreal. Alongside the visual arts she has often expressed the impact on her work of growing up with the sounds of new wave, punk, rock and roll and then later grunge music, which formed a big part of her everyday life. All these things, in the life of an abstract painter, contribute to the pictures she paints, painting being a procedure involving the ‘excavation of memory and taste’[2]. However, although she works intuitively, her concerns are predominantly formal. Her interest, for instance, in the relationship between two shapes within a composition is informed primarily by an interest in the shapes themselves rather than the arrangement’s capacity to be symbolic of an experience or representative of an essential emotional state. In as much as Maljevic unravelled her traditional training in order to find her own voice, her grounding in the academic and the classical allowed her to bloom through abstraction, engaged in an act of creation that sidesteps diegesis.

Maljevic’s particular style, in which she has been training herself since then, begins with the “dirtying” of the canvas with a layer of bright paint that breaks the baldness of the white surface and opens up the space for Maljevic’s intuitive jigsaw endeavour. Onto this ground, Maljevic builds up surfaces with drips, blocks, bands and waves of colour, searching for harmony between colour and form, line and shape, expansive surface and small detail. For Maljevic, physical movement is an important part of the process – never can she be found sitting at an easel. Through her own version of gestural abstraction, Maljevic prevents the composition from becoming staid and self-indulgent, as she has puts it, and allows action and conflict to occur between the different elements with which she is engaged. Sometimes Maljevic incorporates fragments of the world as it is happening around her while she paints, but without dictating their significance to the viewer. Maljevic’s description of her own process recalls Kandinsky, the synesthetic predecessor who sought to create visual music: ‘When I combine objects, it is not a play on their meaning and what they should represent, but rather how they clash, feed from each other, create chaos and from that chaos a perfect sound is made, like too many notes that end up forming harmony. You take one out and everything collapses.’


Text by Jacqueline Nurse, April 2012

[1] Nicolas Bourriaud in ‘Michel Foucault: Manet and the Birth of the Viewer’, an introduction to Michel Foucault’s Manet and the Object of Painting. Tate, 2009.
[2] Thomas Nozkowski describing his own creative process in an interview with Francine Prose, published in BOMB 65/Fall 1998

Paintings 

Digestion-280x120cm,oil on canvas

Identity-240x150cm,oil on canvas

Smell-240x150cm,oil on canvas

Touch-240x150cm,oil on canvas

Watch-122x91cm,oil on canvas

Focus-101x81cm,oil on canvas

Ride-101x81cm,oil on canvas

Walk-195x130cm,oil on canvas

Run-76x61cm,oil on canvas

Be-92x61cm,oil on canvas

Fly-81x61cm,oil on canvas

46x36cm,oil on canvas

46x46cm,oil on canvas

46x46cm,oil on canvas

46x46cm,oil on canvas

46x46cm,oil on canvas

46x36cm,oil on canvas

46x46cm,oil on canvas

46x46cm,oil on canvas

Tickle-81x61cm,oil on canvas

Drawings

9- 75x45cm, ink on paper

7- 75x45cm, ink on paper

12- 72x50, ink on paper

11- 77x32cm, ink on paper

10- 76x32cm, ink on paper

8- 77x32cm, ink on paper

3- 76x56cm,ink on paper

5- 76x45cm, ink on paper

6- 76x38cm, ink on paper

13- 72x50cm, ink on paper

4- 76x21cm ,ink on paper

1- 120x90cm, ink on paper

2- 120x90cm, ink on paper

Prints

Woodcuts

"FLOWER"

Red on green

Red on yellow

Green on grey

Grey on green

Blue on green

Blue on grey

Blue on pink

Blue on yellow

Red on grey

Red on pink