Procreation 2016

Nemanja Vučković made this diptych, ‘Procreation’, and you can see the act of painting is a real back-and-forth – a shifting, searching thing. The colors are all mixed and muddied, reds and yellows over blues, with dark scribbles on top. You can see how the artist is working through something, wiping out some marks and leaving others, building up layers and layers of paint. It’s kind of exciting to imagine him in the studio, trying things out, changing his mind, going with the flow. The paint looks thin, watery, like the artist has enjoyed letting the colours run into each other. There’s one dark, scribbled spiral on the right panel that just grabs your attention, a real focal point, pulling you into the painting. It reminds me of other painters who aren’t afraid to get messy, like Twombly, or even de Kooning, who pushed the boundaries of what painting could be. Vučković is part of this ongoing conversation between artists, inspiring and challenging each other across time. It’s all about embracing the unknown, and that’s what makes painting so alive.