2011. Sanda Stanaćev Bajzek: Water – the medium that creates art

The notion of water is linked with the idea of life. Everything comes out of it, everything goes back to it. It creates and destroys. It is more than a physical substance, it is a life space, a source of energy. No living being can survive without it. ‘There is nothing softer and more yealding, but also tougher and more powerful than water’ (Lao Tse).
It soaks in and remembers.
It possesses sixty four features, the same as 64 triple cores of our DNA; it possesses the ability to change its features and structure. Its permanent motion through states of matter makes it viable and unique. Hence its symbolic role as the source of life. Water is a part of our body, our blood, sweat and tears. It is also considered a symbol of the human soul because the latent nature of water and soul is identical. It cures, it gives life and takes it away. Water is a link to our sources, it is a part of our civilization. It is the most widely-spread matter on Earth. It is a prerequisite of culture. It was the basis of the birth and collapse of civilisations. Water is crucial in many religions and is used in rituals and ceremonies.

Water has been present in arts for centuries. It has the power of shaping the world and therefore of shaping works of art as well. Sensing its potentials Višnja and Marijan Anić discovered an unusual phenomenon while taking photos of the coastal area. Shooting segments of the sea bed exposed to various influences of light and weather conditions, i.e. the strength of waves, the colour of the sky, the configuration of the sea-bottom, they got the results which were more like abstract paintings than photographs. Naturally, they used sophisticated photographic technology with a specific exposition. The sea bed, filtered through the water as such, exposed to the interventions of natural light and streaming of the air, in their interpretation involuntarily became, not only the main motif and the content, but also the material and the painter himself.

The familiar ‘sea-scapes’ are transformed into aestheticised matter of ephemeral form. Saturated with a natural feeling for coloristic correlation their ‘pictures’ conquer new dimensions and meanings subtly interweaving various reminiscences with a concrete motif. What fascinates is the sea bottom without the flora and fauna, where a stray pine-tree needle, sea foam or a grass only witness the reality thus additionally enriching and dynamizing the picture.

The Aniches are not influenced by the conventional iconography but with an
informal orthography come close to art-informel expression created by the ‘non- painting’ material – the light and the sea. One is therefore not surprised by the title of the exhibition (and the whole project) „Painting with the Sea“ because, aided with flashes of light and circulation of the air which moves and vitalises the surface, it really creates unsurmised spectacles permanently captured (thanx to the intervention of the technology) and presented to the collective perception.

Thus, the Aniches are only mediators, the identifiers of art whose author is the sea. Their photographs are the proof that abstract art reaches deeply into the nature in search of its own archetypes and regularity.

Višnja and Marijan Anić have established new interpretative relations opening possibilities for a new dialogue between visual arts and the contemporary visual medium such as “photography”.

April, 2011