ARTIST ALEKSANDAR BEZINOVIC
Aleksandar
Bezinovic
b. 1975 Split · Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts · Croatian Conservation Institute · Full-time artist from 2020
The figure of the circle constitutes the starting point of the artistic process — going from the known to the unknown. Simple, geometric, ancestral shapes punctuated with a palette rich in contrasts and erosion, where the vibrations of time are expressed with modernity.
Tell us about yourself.
"I was born 1975 in Split, a beautiful city on the coast of Croatia that was developed inside and around an ancient Roman palace. After Croatia became independent from Yugoslavia there was lots of war-damaged cultural heritage, so from 1998–2006 I worked on Baroque and Renaissance church altar restoration at the Croatian Conservation Institute in Zagreb."
"At the end of 2019, after 7 months as Head Painter on 'Strike Back 8', I decided to strike back myself — and quit scenic jobs to focus on my personal work and figure out how to live from it. From 2020 I decided to be a full-time artist. At that time I had 20 solo exhibitions and 30 group exhibitions behind me, and still felt like a complete art world outsider."
- Anywhere Out of This World after Baudelaire
- Moon and Steel after Mishima
- Sundogs Empires & technology of death
- Forgotten Passwords 2020
Your greatest inspirations or influences?
"I never dig too deep theoretically into my inspirations because as I go deeper, I find how less I know — and it makes me insecure. I need to save space for creativity and a little bit of mystery."
"My influences range widely: from the history of architecture, calligraphy, ancient Greek vase painting and Islamic pattern design to geometric modernism and typographic design."
"It is easy to start simple, but to keep simplicity through a long-lasting process is hard."
"What I find in Black colour is suppressed, incubating energy that is liberated through contrast with white or yellowish textured surfaces. Blackness — or Nigredo as the alchemists saw it — is the beginning of the great work."
"That is what I find inspiring: the feeling that I am always at the beginning, starting from unknown."
Tell us about your creative process.
"Transition from my figurative earlier work to black geometric forms came from the need to express my ideas faster. I intentionally limited my palette and my process to one geometric shape inside a coordinate system, so I could create the subject with the apparition of secret, hidden reality."
"Placing circle drawings into the set format and their connections to form new as well as recurring forms reminds me of a process of decoding some unfamiliar and magical system. It's like I'm coding and decoding one work from the same basic element — the circle — and I'm repeating it until it exhausts me."
"It is a dialectical process where every finished layer is destroyed and used as a base for a new one. It ends in the reconstruction of a basic drawing that I carve with a screwdriver or other sharp tool — revealing the process of its own making in a black painted form."
"I'm coding and decoding one work from the same basic element — the circle — and I'm repeating it until it exhausts me."
How has this changed your creativity and how you see the art industry moving forward?
"For almost 20 years I worked second jobs to afford 2–3 months a year of effective painting. Until 2020 I sold just a few paintings mostly to my friends, and overpainted most of my canvases. With the pandemic I had to paint full time. With some luck and lots of hard work it worked for me. I never had a chance before to exhaust myself with painting so continuously."
"Art industry used to depend on information placed at the right place in the right time by the right people. What I think is moving forward: every time is right — and information is so easy to find and share online. An artist without representation in good galleries can be visible, participate in the market and contribute to the art world in a real-time process."
"In a way I purified my work from the unnecessary — and gained some confidence from the people that support and follow my work."
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And for the personal rants, opinions you didn't ask for, and the occasional existential spiral: follow me on Substack.
I'm always at the beginning. Starting from unknown. ✦
