Art Exhibition Review

Art Exhibition Review

Artist:  MAJA MALJEVIC

Bubble & Leak

David Krut Art Resource & Projects Space presents ‘Bubble & Leak’ exhibition by Maja Maljevic which will be up from the 10^th February to the 11^th March 2011 in 140 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood.

 Maja, Yugoslavian born artist, is a symbol of how contemporary abstract art has shifted throughout its invention. She has brought into the South African visual art arena a vibrant and energetic surprise. Her works are intuitive and are slightly informed by the name of a popular British dish called ‘Bubble & Squeak’. However the dish is not a central subject matter to this body of work. She has an outstanding ability of creating art and has a unique way in which she composes her interpretation of the dish on the canvas. It is emotive that the audience she is trying to builds seems to be interested in collecting what she has produced.

It is not a surprise that a few of her works were sold even before the opening of the show. Her choice of colour, scale, patterns and medium is exuberant. Maljevic’s paintings and monotypes continue to fight their way to the audience with their unsophisticated character, humour and peaceful mood. Her abstract paintings create a background which forms a sharp contrast to language and friendliness which utterly pushes the viewer into studying the language she has invented. She works on a variety of scales which makes her art more appealing to different collectors.

Her artworks are decorative, both paintings and monoprints. The body of work reflects humour which she invites in her effectual process, freedom of creation, often encapsulating intentional mistakes and the pleasure of allowing messy marks such the dripping of paints to grace the canvas. This springs from her self-confident personality. Her abstracts are very simple and collectable as they can be easily related to.

Patterns, texts and choices of colour are the most important elements of her creative process. There is something very human about them, but they are composites: suggestions of people in the bottle-like figures and patterns built from layer after layer giving the artwork more life and movement. The text brings more information in an abstract formation, scattered like patches all over the surface of the canvas for the viewer to translate. Her choice of colour offers no distraction to the observer because of the obvious richness, freshness and subtleness. The colours are perplexed by the shifting reflection and suggestion of tone that marks them.

In this exhibition, conversation plays a significant role. In it, the viewer finds vigorous conversations which exist between Maja and the canvas. She then put it across to her audience for them to relate. It can be said that Maja is an abstract storyteller and shares the challenges and absurdity she experiences with her audience on the canvas.

Review by: Khehla Chepape Makgato

2011/02/10