As you gaze from the shore at the azure sea, the brilliant sun shines in your eyes. You squint, but through your closed eyelids, the dazzling whiteness of the day still peeks through.
Such white visions gazed back at us from the azure walls of the Studio 21 Gallery in Split. Their creator is Matko Trebotić, a prominent visual artist of international acclaim with roots in Brač.
Trebotić’s White Paintings depict landscapes reduced to abstraction, charged with emotion and symbolism. From the observer’s standpoint, associations abound, and hidden symbols multiply in proportion to the time spent studying the paintings.
The most recognizable motif consists of Glagolitic letters, hidden beneath the veil of whiteness. Nostalgics may interpret this as a memory of a cultural past slowly fading away, as supported by the words of the exhibition curator Željko Marciuš. He claims that Trebotić refers here to his early works expressing nostalgia for his homeland.
Nevertheless, we will lean towards an optimistic view of the White Paintings, in which the whiteness evokes the sun that enables new life, and the kaleidoscopic patterns represent the colored rays of light created as they pass through an optical prism.
Trebotić’s depictions can be read as fragments of the landscape of his native Mediterranean, abundant in sun, sea, and rich cultural history. The artist reduces all these elements to signs and colors— the azure of the walls as the azure of the sea, the spectral colors of sunlight translated into colors on the canvas, hidden symbols of cultural heritage subtly added to the paintings themselves.
By taking elements that constitute the essence of Mediterranean life and reducing them to signs, Trebotić creates a personal iconography of the Mediterranean world that permeates his entire body of work.
The rich cultural heritage, sea, and sun—these are things that are the lifeblood of the inhabitants of the Mediterranean, so it’s easy to see why artists like Trebotić find them an endless source of inspiration.
Written by: Lucija Ečim
Edited by: Dora Derado Giljanović
Time: 22. 1. – 22. 2. 2024.
Location: Studio 21 Gallery, Split, Croatia
