The work of Pavle Maksimovic is really impressive. His painting are unusual. I like the fact that he is able to describe so much with his drawings. Palve’s world is full of mysteries, take a look for yourself.
KALTBLUT: Who are you, where are you from and what do you do?
Pavle Maksimovic: I am a painter, born in 1981. in Belgrade, Serbia
KALTBLUT: What is your artistic background?
Pavle Maksimovic: I finished the Design school in Belgrade, before I was accepted to the Art Academy of Novi Sad in 2001. After finishing my studies in 2006. I was accepted in Artist Association of Serbia (ULUS).
KALTBLUT: A lot of your paintings and drawings are series which I find really interesting. Could you try to explain us how is your working process. How do you decided how many pieces are going to be in a serie…
Pavle Maksimovic: I never created a painting and thought that there was nothing more I could do with it. Every painting is a never ending story, so I am compelled by my own demons to wrestle with the subject for quite some time. Sometimes paintings from a series, like “Witnesses X,Y”, are so intertwined, that they exist, almost as one single painting. Beside these obvious examples, every single painting, weather envisioned as a part of a taught through series, or a single peace, affect the next painting almost as a rule. Painting is a process, and as such it owes much to a steady, and often slow progress.
KALTBLUT: All of these series almost looks like storyboard..
Pavle Maksimovic: Well, in case of already mentioned “Witnesses X,Y”, the series was envisioned as a single installation. I had one painting finished for quite some time, before I noticed it again, and realised its potential. After that, it was only the matter of materializing the idea in a short period of a few months. The single minded approach to this, or similar projects, affected its aesthetic form and created, in some way a perpetual storyboard.
KALTBLUT: How long, approximatively does it takes you to created one serie?
Pavle Maksimovic: Painting, or art expression of any kind, in my opinion and experience, is a hard earned process. It is a never ending trial of climbs and falls. I was never able to relate to the romantic idea of relaxing hours of painting and enjoyment in a “free your mind with a smile” type of creativity. Wether I was doing video projects, paintings or any other form of expression, I always found my self in an almost tantalising state of mind. In that respect the time needed to create a single painting is almost impossible to predict. When the series is preconceived as a single minded installation, the time to put it together is notably shorter, and can be materialised in matter of few months. More classical way of contracting a series from individual paintings created in a given period of time, can take years.
KALTBLUT: Do you have any mentor, artist that inspires you?
Pavle Maksimovic: We are the sum of our experiences, and artists who walk through our life, whether they are long dead, or still living, are a big part of it. I never had a mentor in a classic way, but the beauty of art is, among other things, in the dialog that you create with the artist through his work.
KALTBLUT: What are you working on at the moment?
Pavle Maksimovic: Last couple of years, my attention slowly steered in direction of mechanical supplements and biorobotics. It is not the vision of the distant future that i am interested in, but the realities of today and tomorrow. It is our character and personality in respect to these changes, that interest me.
Interview by Nicolas Simoneau
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