Ana Pusica

“Persian Orange” 2020

With my latest sequence of work “Persian Orange” I started a project of painting with just two kinds of formats all year long. I chose it to be one big format – 300 cm high and 190 cm wide – and one small of 60 by 50 cm. Pure exhibitionism! I started the series in 2020 and until now it contains 15 large format paintings and 60 works in the small format. Deciding about the format is very crucial for me as it is the first decision of the plenty that will follow. It is also the moment when I am beginning to understand what I want from the painting before I start with the controlled color slather and fully accidental splashes. Intuition is important for me, but not enough. My solution has to be logical as well. Normally, I chose a very careful selection of the photos that I use as a basis. This time, however, I changed my routine and made a few selfies shortly before hitting the canvas with color. You can see immediately that these works were created in “one breath”.

The 60 small-sized paintings are made on HDF Boards and are a group of self-portraits presented with pulsing pink, flashing yellow, and dripping color effects. With this series, I celebrate color and chaos in excess. For the first time, I used delicate pigments such as Magic Blue, Space Indigo, Perglanz Blue, Space Turquoise, Magic White and Space Red. What you see is maybe not a portrait necessary. Is more like when you look in the clouds and search for the shape you know. You get lost in brush moves and your eyes follow one stain to jump to another one. The work is very lively, almost humorous. Because of its size it’s easy to move and I enjoyed looking at people combining, turning and making different puzzles out of them. It’s made to be easily “recycled” and in direct communication with the space it’s in.

What is very characteristic for this sequence is the process of repeating the same motive several times. Repetition has something almost spiritual and seductive. Working on this particular series has definitely put me in a different state of mind. Working on multiple paintings at the same time, frees you from all the unnecessary factors that are interrupting the act of painting to become more instinctive and intuitive. When you are repeating one motive over and over again, the motive is transforming into energy and changing its meaning.  

The title “Persian Orange” comes from a certain color tone, which every picture of this series contains. How I search for the name is always the same. I go to the Wikipedia of Colours where you can find endless lists of colour system descriptions, their palettes and a whole universe of colour names. I like to pick the most crazy ones. However, the name should have absolutely no connection to the topic of the painting. It’s a small game I like to do with the observers. Because I am so precise in everything else, it’s just funny to see people’s skepticism.

 

About the work

In the work of Ana Pušica, the very action of painting is fundamental, it is the moment when physical impulses and visual imagination come together on the canvas. What matters most is the creative act itself.

The paintings are the expression of her subjectivity. They reflect the poetry of her inner world, with its mixture of memories, ideas and quotations from her favorite authors. Within these works, the gesture is just as important as the subject, so far as it reveals the impulses or movements that are the embodiment of the artist´s thoughts. “I am someone who lives in my own bubble. Although it seems that is very quiet, only then I can truly express myself.”

Ana Pušica’s art is a physical act, direct, intuitive and in motion. There is energy in the pictures, that’s why she likes to work on large formats, so that she can put this concentrated force into the frame at all. “I try to create a new and interesting surface from repeating one motif several times, and by using a lot of different movements, gestures and randomness. From the mixture of surfaces and layers, something like a figurative image emerges at the end.”

The idea behind is to develop through the colors a materiality and dynamic, where it allows the viewer to decide what is the story behind the figure. Sometimes, the painting surfaces are heavily worked, sometimes they are expressively fluid or made of extravagant drips of paint. They are non-abstract, but not strictly figurative either. Though containing no identifiable portraits, her pictures evoke associations: red-hot magma, cheeky pinks and oranges or cloudy color spectrums. As a result, her work exudes an ‘intense lightness’, and is making multiple layers of potential meaning.