“Blockheads” is my second solo exhibition. It is inspired by the urban environment and the visual style of street-art culture.
The core of the exhibition consists of painted wooden-beamsculptures, complemented by large-format acrylic paint-ings. Like some kind of street-art totems, these Blockheads embody the characters you meet every day in the city and in contemporary popular culture: the skater (“Sk8r”), the graffiti writer, the hacker, the drummer, the punks, the policeman, the politician, the old woman, the suspicious character, etc.
I find that the particular blend of two-dimensional drawings on a three-dimensional surface makes them quite alive and recognizable, each of them fulfilling their individual block of space in their own “mentally limited” way. In the accompanying Blockhead acrylic paintings, I approximate street-art murals inspired by urban life, where I can render larger-scale compositions with the Blockhead characters in various urban settings.
Ever since I was little, I was interested in caricature, comic books, and animation. Maybe because of their likability, their ability to make me laugh and to cheer me up, or the simplicity of their graphic solutions—creating recognizable characters with the least amount of lines and with a reduced palette of colors… In any case, I have always practiced this style of expression, both for my own sake, and for “commercial” purposes (in animation, illustration, etc.). However, our “academic” environment didn’t approve much of these types of artistic expression—at least, not when I was a student…
When I would ask for any comic books in the library of our Faculty of Fine Arts, they were amazed as if it was not an appropriate thing to ask for. I was not asking for any “Marvel” heroes in tights and on steroids, but for something by Robert Crumb or Art Spiegelman (since someone had already lent me “Maus” in high school, and I was regularly following the comic book magazine “Lift”, which had many interesting world famous “underground” comic book artists, as well as some of our domestic misunderstood and genius comic book artists). Anyhow, this style of drawing was often brewing in my notebooks, and at times, it would escape on some wall in the city… Only after I would see how other people reacted to my characters and recognize them (after having seen some of my animations or caricature drawings), I started to become aware that there is something more to this than only a quick laugh or a doodle.
The “Blockheads” happened in a completely spontaneous way: I had a piece of wooden beam lying around, so the idea came to me to create a character out of it, this time with acrylic paint instead of spray paint and markers. And the experiment was successful—this amorphous piece of wood had turned into a character with attitude and emotion, and then it would assume its place in some of the rooms, and it would always surprise my visitors in a positive way. So, from time to time, a new piece of timber would pop up, with it an idea for a new character, and little by little, more characters were assembling. I was fascinated by the way in which this minimal 3D form was able to transform itself into something completely different only by a simple 2D drawing. And it contained all the elements of everything that had influenced me, at least in the field of caricature, animation, and comic books. The idea was to find a quick solution, as one plans a graffiti—a simple sketch, some color, and an expeditive execution—to do the “damage” before an unwanted witness comes by.
When I finally decided to gather all these experiments into one cycle, I got more ideas than I could realistically have the time or money to realize for this exhibition, but the seeds have been sawn, and soon enough, more works may gather up for another series in this cycle.
These are images, scenes, and characters from our everyday city lives, by which I attempt to portray the current society we are living in—analogously to the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hieronymus Bosch, or James Ensor, who all played with the grotesque, thus offering their critical commentary about the life and people of their own time. My portraits are stylistically very different, of course, since I was brought up with video games, comic books, animation, graffiti, and street art. In this exhibition, with the application of a simple drawing and the basic visual elements and principles, the Blockhead sculptures transform the amorphous and minimal timber objects into artifacts with character, emotion, and attitude. Among the “portraits” of everyday characters, I’ve also included several “portraits” of contemporary artists whom I wanted to pay homage to: Banksy, with his subversive prank art, which simultaneously wants to criticize and make people laugh; Andy Warhol, with the banal, the consumerism, the fame, and the fashion as the main subject of his art; and Yayoi Kusama, with her obsessiveness in creating art and her persistence with her own style of expression, despite all obstacles. These three “portraits” are merely an apéritif before a larger cycle of “Celeblocks” (“Celebrity Blockheads”), which are going to follow next.
Andrej Marjanovic
June 5th, 2023