To the same extent she also insists on the counterpoint of the conditional and post-modernist understanding of the treatment of realistically painted faces, that is, portraits of the nameless female models taken out of the worn-out fashion catalogues, to the abstract background that the portrait leans on and which is done entirely in mild gradations of one and the same hue.



The most prominent of features of these plastic, specific, and formulated portraits are the hollow parts: the eye burrows, the mouth and the nostrils that open up to the view of the monotonous hue of the background manage to evoke even morbid feelings in the observer, by attributing to the portrait the air of a living human mask.

What, indeed, is hidden behind the faces of these beautiful ladies, jumping out from all sorts of media and offering us so seductive promises?

Those ladies' faces do smile, but their smile is cold, often showing linearly drawn teeth. And as they are smiling, at the same time they transmit the feelings of anxiety and being lost, and of the inner confusion caused by quivering of the emotions that are emitted from the painting in the universal air of thanatos – the instinct of death that lurks within the portraits, which indeed are no other than burial masks.



Petra Grozaj interconnects the space, the zeitgeist, and the matter through the solid and the transient, which is at the same time fragile and robust. Using the bold contrasts in the displayed images, the author visually and by means of the content underlines the unity of the differences, which is clearly visible in the whole of the exhibition content as well as in the gradual variations of what is seen and displayed. The fashion catalogue which the author has used to choose her models from is also on display at the “Josip Račić“ Studio, so that the visitors can make their own comparisons between the photographs and the author's artistic endeavors that these photographs have provided a base for.


translation: Ivana Režek