Critics - Sonja Jankov: Myths in/about modernity

Georg Redžek’s paintings are characterized by allegory, reference to the works of Bosch, Brueghel and Dürer, as well as by self-awareness about the problems of the new-millennial digital age. Seemingly incompatible, these three characteristics meet in Redžek’s works thanks to his combination of classical motifs and representative signs of the modern, contemporary age. In the latest series of works created during 2020 and 2021, the classical motifs are a labyrinth, a white rabbit (as a symbol of resurrection, reincarnation and revitalization), Last Supper and pigs in front of which “pearls had been thrown”. Redžek sets these classical motifs in compositions with representatives of modern and contemporary times, such as displays, bar codes, cables, the Coca-Cola logo, in order to re-examine and display the time in which we live.

The labyrinth is an allegorical motif that has fascinated people since the ancient days, becoming a symbol of human perseverance, resourcefulness, skills, but also of complete loss and inability to get out of a given situation. It is therefore associated with feelings of anxiety, alienation, separation from others, fear of complete helplessness, but it also becomes a symbol of contemporaneity for which it is not known in which direction it develops (degrades) and how it can end. To these features of the labyrinth, Redžek adds new values, showing that the labyrinth is more than an adequate symbol to represent the global events that have taken place over the past two years. In one painting, the labyrinth is an allegory of a completely desolate city, seemingly mythical or dystopian, but in fact extremely realistic, because the cities were completely empty during recent lockdowns and restrictive measures. Without a single person, the labyrinth loses its meaning – without a man lost in it, the labyrinth in itself represents nothing, which shows that a city without people on the streets is no longer a city.

In the second painting, the motif of labyrinth becomes a set of multiplied walls as a still applied system of separation and segregation. By reducing labyrinth to walls, Redžek introduces a novelty in his work in a sense that he does not create reminisce about Bosch, Bruegel or Dürer, but he quotes works of the contemporary artist Banksy, namely his art of resistance, ie the art of graffiti and murals on public walls. The introduction of the Coca-Cola logo, which is metaphorically said to have torn down the Berlin Wall, indicates that there are currently many similar walls on the borders that no longer divide the world into East and West, but create much more diverse and drastic divisions. In the third painting, the labyrinth becomes a specific fortress, that is, a defence mechanism that preserves the greenery in urban areas as no one can find a way through the labyrinth so no one can reach and destroy the greenery.

Besides the motif of the labyrinth, in Redžek’s latest paintings we also see motifs of white rabbits and pigs, both within the context of the newest technologies. The rabbit as a symbol of renewal of life/resurrection and it appears in the allegorical depiction of life as a series of few happy moments that we renew in memory with the help of various audio-visual technologies. The rabbit also appears within the allegory about conception, in the context of newest technologies for artificial insemination, but also within the allegory of escape from Paradise, that is, about the extreme manoeuvre of modern civilization into cyberspace. The motif of pigs appears together with the motifs of displays and screens, as a symbol of life thrown away on infinite material on the Internet, material on which only time is wasted and nothing can be gained in return. In addition, there is also the motif of the Last Supper, which in this modern version loses its sublime and biblical aspects, becoming a secret dinner of criminals. This indicates that gathering of criminals is older than the Bible, but this motif also describes the current misbalance of the wealth in the world, as well as one constancy in the civilization.

By choosing mythical, and even biblical, motives and themes for presenting and problematizing the contemporaneity, Georg Redžek points out that the events that took place during the past two years are continuum of history and myths from ancient times. As such, they are not completely “cut off” from the history of mankind, which gives a specific consolation in a sense that we can recognise how unpredictability, stress and alienation were the features of normalcy that characterised earlier periods, not just the modern times.

Sonja Jankov