Two brothers, two visual poetics, two worlds, are together for the first time in one place, in Bar - the artists Zdravko and Zoran Krulj from Podgorica exhibited their works together, at the Castle of King Nicholas where the public can see them for the next ten days. Zdravko exhibited paintings produced in the cycle “Krug” (Circle), Zoran his works from the cycle "Oridjinali": and the paintings and authors have their own peculiar and unusual stories.
Zoran Krulj, who has hitherto exhibited in Montenegro only in Herceg Novi, has depicted part of his creative microcosm, whose heroes are his closest members of the family. Each of them on these small-format covers proudly wears their wrinkles and years - Zoran did not put any make-up on them.
"There are no art cosmetics, they are all the people I'm connected to, and I know them well, and there was no problem to paint them because I know them from cheerful and all other situations. The Mediterranean, in my opinion, is cheerful by itself because it has a lot of sunshine, and I always link it to that sunny side of life. I try to make all the people around me look positive, and those who look at my paintings to leave my exhibition with a smile," says Zoran. The Mediterranean radiates from these paintings, and in the palette of applied colors and in the art story that Zoran has been insisting on from the very beginning. And at the first and second impression of the observer, these are the works that have Fellini’s charm. "What is the world I paint? Well, just like that – like Fellini’s, the world of the ordinary man in the Mediterranean. My heroes on paintings, I always put one medal of their shirts, because that average man deserves it with his way of life, relaxed and positive opinions, even though he does not live in good conditions or a rich country. Regardless of all these hardships, he remains smiling and deserves it," continues Zoran. In addition to the medal, his sailors are adorned with a mustache, as a pattern.
"My view of boat trips and, in general, sailors, was always associated with a sailor who wears a navy cap and a mustache! I cannot imagine a captain and a sailor otherwise. For all of my characters, including myself, I make a mustache, and I often draw a pipe, because it's their characteristic, to complete the image, a mustache is like the stamp of the sailor," Zoran continues.
Boka is the central motif in his paintings, with direct references to the master Vojo Stanic, for whom Zoran cherishes publicly. In a commentary on his relationship with the old master, Zoran tells her that he has been linked to Herceg Novi since he was five-years-old and that he was a cartoonist as a child, and as a high school student he drew comic books, and when he first tried to paint a cartoon, "it turned into a painting ".
"Simply, I asked my brother to take me to the Academy to show my paintings to a professor. Professor Karadzic, as soon as he saw them, said, "This is like Vojo made them." I was then a footballer; I played for "Buducnost" and I had no idea then who Vojo Stanic was. I was interested, went to Budva to visit his exhibition and as soon as I got in, I was blown away. I had the feeling that I painted these pictures! This is a match between the region and the painting style. When I was exhibiting in Herceg Novi in 1998, Vojo came, hugged me, praised me in front of everyone and told me, "I want to you to come to my house tomorrow." Since then, we have been close friends, and he is also a model for me of creativity and life. If I learned something from anyone in art, it is Vojo Stanic. I am always at his place, I have the extraordinary honor and pleasure to be able to enter the studio when he is working, and that only a few people can do. There, I have seen the pictures that are in the drawings, those he's started, that he's painted, that is half finished, that are not painted. I always asked him, and he has always answered all my questions and I consider him my teacher. It's been a long time, and our relationship has not changed one bit. People think of him as a genius, and when you go to him and when you listen to him, then you really understand that you are dealing with a real living genius. I am extremely grateful to him," said Zoran Krulj.
The artwork of Zdravko Krulj is different in aesthetics and philosophy, and it can be said that they have a different geographic root. They are in one-way mirrors, but you see only one, very big eye, Zdravko’s thematic “Krug” (“Circle”).
"I provoke you as spectators, to share your story with me with these my paintings. That famous story of the empty pot says it's the most useful part is the void in which tea is being poured. Such is our eye, the most useful is the pupil that is empty and dark and the light comes into it, and you, observers, are the light that needs to enter and tell your story," says Zdravko.
To the comment that this is the eastern approach to life and painting, Zdravko confirms that it is Zen.
"In the eighties and nineties, I was a member of the famous generation of the karate club "Buducnost", we won all those great medals, and with karate I adopted this philosophy close to Zen, together with my brother, we adopted it in a way close to Balkan life, and I later accepted it in all other spheres, beginning with nutrition," Zdravko continues.
For my work, I say that everything "is concentrated in one", as Professor Gligorijevic said when he came to his studio, "the first thing he thought was that there was something eastern about them".
"It is this concentration in one, life is a cycle from beginning to the end, energy just goes from one form to another, so our creation goes through that circle, from research to realization, and then turns the circle into a spiral, so we go further, our whole life is opening and closing. For a while, I was very active in short films while I was in Macedonia. Since 2001 I have been in Banja Luka and I have been painting, and recently I have returned to the modern video expression, a kind of performance. These paintings are just a fraction of the project called "Krug or Krulj", because that is what is meant in the philosophy of my whole story, that all this repeat, Zdravko concluded.
They had exhibitions in Europe
Zdravko (55), member of ULUCG and ULUBIH, is a graduate of the Academy in Cetinje, and has until now had 20 independent exhibitions in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Bulgaria. Zoran (62), member of ULUS and ULUPUDS, graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Nis, has been a freelance artist since 2001 and had 36 solo exhibitions in Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Greece and Macedonia.
Text by Radomir Petric, on June 17th, 2019, read more at Vijesti
