Under the Seductive Arches of Poetics

With perseverance and a noble talent, Dunjić advocates expressive figuration in times of trouble, when fine arts are thoughtlessly pushed to the margins of our culture. Knowing what he exposes himself to in this way, he thoughtfully and perseveringly develops his poetics. Aware of what the spirit of tradition means for an environment caught in the tragic whirlwind of modern-day barbarity, this artist has seen through the reasons why incontestable values are neglected today. Without hesitation, he accepted the challenge, entering into a dispute with those herostratic aspirations.
Following a brief experience with conceptualism and analytical comics within the framework of "Studies for New Comics" in his youth, Dunjić quickly and definitively opted for a type of figuration, aware that, in principle, it confirms the very spirit of painting, remaining faithful to picturality as the expression of an experience of the world. Since then, under the seductive arches of poetics, he has been creating a magical world of intertwined pictures. More a world of ideas than of phenomena, this painting of shifting generality conjures up a virtual reality, without anecdotes, without decorative stories and without local colouring.
In terms of its inner harmonisation, the spirit of this painting is close to the spirit of mathematics and music. It was Baudelaire who claimed, early on, that "the art of a colourist is obviously in a sense similar to mathematics and music". Expressing himself primarily by way of symbolic figures, Dunjić places stock primarily in punctuality and discipline. He thoughtfully picks forms, precisely adjusts scales, harmonises tomes in a measured way and establishes chromatic relations. The details within the framework of a composition have their purpose and form a network of signs, the essential order that Balthus called internal mathematics. Thus every picture transposes an obsession through its own concept.
In order to express the feeling of apprehension of loners in modern cities, Dunjić emphasises, by means of borealic lighting, the angular roof junctures, the sharpened contours of facades, the cramped interiors or the soulless atmosphere or waiting rooms, offices or factories. In doing so, he manages to elevate a banal sight to the level of a symbol and to sublimate the raw materials of everyday life into a pictural meaning. Going beyond the subject matter of painting and entering the sphere of pure speculation, he indirectly poses the question about purpose. Then the picture looks back at its observer, returning the image to him/her, establishing a double view – of the visible and the external, but also of the invisible and the internal.
Musical and transparent, the form assumes the hardened density of amber. The inkarnat has been thinned like mica, whereas the complexion is reminiscent of parchment. Cautious in his method, painstaking and subtle, Dunjić almost caresses some surfaces, clothing them with a misty azure. The actual structure of the canvas is occasionally woven into the azure colouration through its fibres. The tones are sharpened to the level of aural transparency. Owing to these qualities, this painter resembles old Japanese masters, who were able to strike the final chord with dazzling purity.
Finally, we may say, with good reason, that Dunjić’s poetics is characterised by what the Russian formalists theoretically defined as estrangement. Therefore, owing to a rare skill, the painter manages to turn ordinariness into extraordinariness, elevating it to the level of the surreal and hallucinatory. In his pictures there is not much that is strange, and yet they surprise, leaving one with an impression of enchantment and shift. Most often, they are made up of everyday sights, almost on the verge of banality. In spite of this, in the final analysis nothing is ordinary but is revealed to be oniric and fairy tale-like. The painter has essentially shifted something out of joint, moved it out of focus and removed it from the sphere of logic. The impression of estrangement does not stem from the forms, bizarre in their details only; the overall estrangement effect is due to the fact that the author gradually shifts them to a bizarre, that is, surreal order.
By shifting or even turning upside-down the apparently enduring givens from the visible world, Dunjić’s painting, deprived of positivist scruples, does not aspire towards some objective credibility. In return, by intuitively diving into the dark backdrop of the visible, it aims to establish its own credibility.