Loco-levels of consciousness
In this exhibition of paintings and performance/installation, Sharmila Nezovic's canvasses display a painterliness characteristic of mid-twentieth century abstract expressionism, however her concerns go beyond those of paint and surface. In these works, luscious wide marks, buttery fields of sensual colour, incisive scratches and undulating lines push, pull and shift, evoking recollections of dance and body movement as well as forgotten skies, wet roads and spacious landscapes. Opaque layers are built up on the paintings' surfaces, alluding to things partly revealed and partly hidden. Although eclipsed by these flowing marks, the underlying structure seems to have geometric allusions which, once, may have been recognisable. Now, in some works, they dictate the shape of the upper surface—in the same way in which a grid of backyards still emerges no matter how overgrown they become. It seems the artist is urging her viewers away from the familiar, into an arena of more primal dynamics.
It is difficult, in a highly verbal culture such as ours, to communicate in abstract marks which are totally devoid of reference or of relief in the form of recognisable images. Likewise it is difficult to explain the painterly mark with other than descriptive language alluding to sensual experiences or emotions. Unless of course one complements and extends the abstract visual language of the painted works with an even more elemental and abstract language which is universally understood: body-language and sound.
"Loco is madness; Loco is movement; Loco is also levels of consciousness". With these Dadaesque phrases Nezovic introduced her exhibition/performance and led her spectators away from consensual reality to a pre-linguistic space, the domain of the Freudian Id, of unacculturated perception—perhaps 'madness' in a cultural sense