Each of us has our own language that may or may not be understandable to others, but often not even to ourselves. It usually consists of associations, signs, symbols, empirical, conceptual, or emotional fragments and is truly individual.
Our inner monologues are unique but also something we sometimes have to decipher. Our thoughts are sometimes more like dreams, filled with strange, absurd, or, at the very least, fantastic scenes.
It may be comforting for us to observe artworks that can confirm to us that such mental images are normal; that it’s just imagination at play. That we’re not crazy.
One such collection of works, written (or rather painted) in what seems to be a foreign language, namely Lingua franca, was recently on view at the solo exhibition by artist Hrvoje Marko Peruzović at the Emanuel Vidović Gallery in Split (Croatia).
Peruzović’s language flirts with the metaphysical, historical, mythological, and real, or contemporary.
His choice of motifs and visual language is consistent, characterized by a metaphysical atmosphere in the center of which is often a female mythological figure like Daphne or a Sibyl with some elements of the present (such as sunglasses).
These mysterious female figures, prophet-cyborgs, and Peruzović’s trees of life with hypnotic ultramarine fruits and unusual, geometrized rhinoceroses are examples of the range of human imagination.
Each of Peruzović’s works is grounded in reality but built and modified to the limits of psychedelia.
Perhaps this is an example of the collective unconscious that Carl Jung spoke of?
Perhaps can find a glimpse of the familiar even in things that are extremely unusual. Perhaps, regardless of how foreign others’ thoughts may seem, we can find a lingua franca – a common language.
Written by: Lea Cvetko & Dora Derado Giljanović
Photos & video: Dora Derado Giljanović
Location: Emanuel Vidović Gallery, Split, Croatia
Time: 21. 12. 2023. – 11. 2. 2024.