Reviews

The creativeness of Maja Perić, an artist who intentionally intuitively indulges, again and again, in new challenges in artistic techniques, looks like walking on the edge of eclecticism; her disciplined consistency is visible in one aspect only: the persistent continuity of her creative work and search for Novelty.

Acquiring and mastering skills to a level allowing for freedom of expression in different media, different techniques, from applied arts and design to experiments and research on canvas, run through her biography

An initially eclectic approach ends up primarily with highly non-eclectic results; in a search for her own way in each media and material, but without transposing ideas and design principles from one media to another – which also allows for consistent originality within her own opus.

One of Maja Perić’s dominant artistic categories is certainly jewelry, which is precisely the field in which she demonstrates the highest level of maturity and creativity. The sculptural design is characterized by powerful shapes, which fully satisfy their primary function and suitability for the end customer, the person who actually wears the jewelry, and also function as independent spatial objects even outside of the context of their field of application. In this context, the designer has conceived a very distinctive enhancement.

The creation of these pieces of jewelry has been coupled with the creation of their accompanying paintings, which correspond to the jewelry in an artistic sense, following the principle of complementarity of colors and forms – combining two artistic techniques results thereby in the creation of a new value.

The painting gets thereby a new function and becomes a piece of applied art, which is entirely justified; it becomes a jewelry stand, it obtains relief, and it provides enhancement in texture and material.

As a result of such an approach, the end customer may also take part himself in the creation of this artistic set by adding or removing enhancements - jewels. The somewhat robust sculptural forms are practically the result of a filigree work: by twisting colorless or multicolor threads into a very flexible spring.

Bringing the springs together creates a translucent structure, which is further emphasized by the inserted contrasting gem forms in colors matching the interlaced object base. The inserted shapes generate the internal rhythm of each particular piece of jewelry, like notes on a musical partition.

The paintings of the artist are characterized by an abstract composition of colors and shapes, both in independent works and in works combining applied arts. And while shapes range from organic to geometric, there is a continuous line of combination in the color spectrum, which Maja Perić is particularly eager to test: she uses very often both purple and green together in her paintings, either to create a relation between the background and the central pattern or to get equally contrasted patterns.

Observers will not be left indifferent, because their complementarity is almost questionable. These two secondary colors constitute the wrong pair in coloristic terms, a shift in the balance of complementarity, which causes confusion for the eyes and prompts to an introspection, to searching for balance, to observing in greater detail. The artist brings further unrest in such a dynamic composition by introducing another element, crossing thereby over to the field of applied arts once again: the paintings are given a relief enhancement with a new powerful visual element – light. The canvas structure has a built-in lighting fixture shaded by a relief structure, which functions like a shade.

In addition to the dynamics of colors, warm and cold, the composition is now further boosted by a play of light and shadow directed by a three-dimensional shade structure, but also by a thick and almost relief layer of paint. This renders the visual story increasingly more complex and presents a greater challenge to the observer.

The visual language of the artist, which also plays with the graphical representation of her own name, turning her signature into the partially inverse version WAYA, is diversified, bold and almost uncompromising when referring to the finesse of the finishing. This is not surprising in view of the obvious insistence in her artistic biography on the knowledge of the properties of materials, the on-going further development in the practical use of the tools and the elements that she shapes.

This helps her to ensure more maneuvering space for her artistic expression. Regardless of the institutionalized forms of artistic education, she has applied experience-based methods to master the techniques to shape a large number of materials having visual potential. Her interest for pure art is an exploratory undertaking, from which she frequently returns to applied arts. However, the multitude of interests of Maja Perić does not trigger dispersion; exploration and questioning are precisely her main assets, which, carefully integrated into her works of art, give them vitality, which is such an important category.

Ksenija Foretić Art Historian