Graphic inferno of Davor Vrankic, The

Graphis, Nov/Dec 2001 by Danchin, Laurent

The Graphic Inferno of Davor Vrankic By Laurent Danchin

Qualified by Ingres-the last of the pre-photographic painters-as "the probity of art," pure drawing was the biggest loser in the wave of aesthetic revolutions spurred by the industrial revolution. Until recent times, some contemporary art circles tended to scorn this basic technique as an academic, or even reactionary activity not even worthy of surviving in secrecy. Painting, condemned to death by ideologists at the end of the 20th century, has long since followed its own path. Meanwhile, masterful draftsmanship has found itself relegated to the narrower realm of illustrators, satirical cartoonists, cartoon animators, computer graphics artists and comic strip authors. That is to say, to the specialists in what has come to be considered the subordinate realm of the applied arts.

Yet Davor Vrankic's genius and virtuosity, his obsession-ridden and wild compositions are living proof of the contrary: drawing is not yet dead. Indeed, it is making a major comeback and, at the outset of the 21st century, has much to offer in the way of unexplored possibilities. The new generation to which Vrankic belongs has been freed of any taboos on figuration and become immersed in a new and highly original visual melting pot. Its sources of inspiration run the gamut of eras and traditions-from children's pictorials, photography, film, animated cartoons, computer games and videos, to masterpieces in the great museum tradition. Vrankic belongs to what I call a post-- contemporary and hyper-surrealistic generation, subjected to a vast intermixing of cultures, symbols and all things, muddled together and reaching a point of overdose and chaos.

Born in 1965 and raised in Osijek, Croatia, during the last throes of the communist regime, Vrankic went on to study, first, at the Fine Arts School of Sarajevo and then at the Fine Arts School of Zagreb. In 1991, he settled in Paris. His youth was spent ideologically imprisoned within the confines of a society high in contrasts where, as Vrankic explains to his Western friends, life tends to be "bloodier than it is here." It was only upon his arrival in Paris, after having been "stuffed" with old films from the '30s, and with illustrated magazine and television images, that he first had the shock of encountering a universal artistic tradition. So it comes as no surprise that his works feature a generalized jumble of miscellaneous references, what the artist himself terms a "visual ratatouille"-where deliberate mockery enables the likes of Mickey, Pinocchio or Marsupilami (of the eponymous comic strip "Spirou") to mix comfortably with figures of Flemish inspiration, and against backgrounds reminiscent of great church paintings or classical compositions.

Teeming with figures and nourished to the point of suffocation with motifs of an inexhaustible repression, Vrankic's universe is a New Age theater of the absurd, crammed as fully as the latter was emptied. It is a variation on the penal settlement, the Dantesque circles of Hell, or the imaginary prisons of Piranesi as revised by a modern-day Bruegel trained at Disneyland. A playful, almost joyful torture chamber where, in their joint delirium, torturers and victims are conscientiously shredding each other to pieces.

The religious connotation of Vrankic's large-scale drawings/paintings stares one in the face, with their ever-present Christian themes of martyrdom and the Cross, blended with references to Dutch painting-Rembrandt in particular. Examples include his Descent from the Cross, The Last Supper, Vivisection of a Dog, The Anatomy Lesson, Toy Story, and the like, or the spectacular interactive triptych The Arrival of the Magician. Are we meant to infer a vague nostalgia for the sacred, long since smothered by our trivial, materialist concerns? Or, rather, should we see his work as a convenient symbol for representing the poet's overly-sensitive position threatened by an insane Inquisition imposed by the misunderstanding of a collectivity?

Each of Vrankic's large drawings is like a film that has been compacted into a single image, every one with a tale to tell, yet hard to make out because of its "crammed full" composition. Vrankic himself declares that he likes such busy surfaces, it is an "accumulation of energy and emotion," he says. In a more concrete vein, the artist admits that his work is a way of pondering imagery, the visual codes of painting and all the magic spells and lies contained in the art of representation.

The metaphoric dimension of the artist's work comes through in one of his recurrent themes: the nail. Depicted with the stiff contours of a mass-produced industrial product, the nails stand out like UFOs amid the Flemish or Renaissance decors; they are to be found in every hand, piercing palms, thighs, false noses. It is almost as if they were being worshiped, venerated in the fashion of a host. Vrankic does not deny their religious symbolism, he thinks of them as "an exchange token, a model of dialogue," a way of expressing the violence-of which we are all guilty-that we carry out daily