Josip Zanki and Damir Kamenar: Russian Romantic Forests, Drawings and Video, 2014
Images unfold their full potential only when seen in a cross-cultural perspective. From An Anthropology of Images, by Hans Belting
l first met the student Damir Kamenar in November 2013 when he began a Visual Art Module in Teacher Education Studies. At the beginning of his studies he introduced me to his painting of a forest created in the tradition of Russian Realism and Romanticism. In his work l found a typical problem of the European art Academy teaching system: the East European Academy is based on Academism, and students are forced from the beginning to make drawings and oil paintings in the neo classical style. The West European Academy’s teaching methods are based on an interdisciplinary program and a post modernistic paradigm of visual and cultural studies, which pushes artists into the humanistic or social science theoretical field, making a misunderstanding between art practice and theory in their works. Both traditions are based on the fake concept of individualism, where artists have to develop their own style or poetic but are completely determinate with different artistic trends of the art market. I decided to work with Damir Kamenar with an experimental concept. For developing his work l decided to use Hans Belting’s idea of cross-cultural perspectives. Kamenar would continue to paint and create drawings in the Russian Realist and Romanticism style, but l would divert his work to a different context. In May this year we started the project Russian Romantic Forests based on the tradition of Follies. Ruins and Follies in the West European romantic tradition are escapes to the hidden past and Arcadian landscapes similar to forests in the Russian Romantic concept. Together we started to create drawings of ruins and forests in different romantic landscapes. I this drawing l create composition and subject and Damir Kamenar is transforming it to original Russian style. For me such a work is extension of my anthropological research on the construction of the image in the Western tradition and the meaning of Follies. For Damir Kamenar it is a passion, and a developing of his Romantic artistic style.
Together with drawings we will create video-work commenting on our artistic relation to the dramatic landscape. I will personally make an Anthropological diary about this project, which can be observed as my artistic book. In three positions, using drawing, video and diary we attempt to redefine artistic and science process and methodology transforming it into a teaching concept.
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