A selection of paintings from Ivica Malčić’s new cycles is a result of his ongoing activity and painterly transformation of daily life. It is also part of Malčić’s long-time artistic concept – his attempt to make at least a hundred new paintings every year.
Malčić has long replaced expensive canvases and frames with planks, chipboard, plywood residues and similar materials he upcycles. On the one hand, this seems only logical considering how many paintings he ‘produces’, and on the other it represents a personal rebellion against privileged artistic giants, painterly academism and formulaic approaches to creativity.
He has the nerve to ironize both the world and himself; for example, he humorously comments on his relationship with collectors using the motif of a ram and a sheep. At the same time, he pays tribute to the artists he deems important for his artistic development, such as Croatian exponents of conceptual art. Malčić’s persistence in developing an idiosyncratic approach to figuration and skilful combining of aphoristic first-person textual forms are the starting points he applies to consistently challenge institutional canons, his own artistic identity and position in the contemporary world.
Ivica Malčić is the winner of the Museum of Contemporary Art Award at the 6th Painting Biennale 2021
Exhibition curator: Kristina Bonjeković Stojković
