Pavle Pavlović
Starburst
21/03 — 14/05/2025
The Starburst painting series integrates fragments of art history, avant-garde experiments, and contemporary digital excess into new visual spaces. Drawing from late Gothic and early Renaissance artists like Duccio, Dürer, and Cranach the Elder—alongside early 20th-century collage experiments and the modernist montage techniques of Yugoslav Black Wave cinema—Pavle Pavlović dismantles these references, uprooting them from their traditional contexts. What emerges through his painterly process are layered, uncharacteristic constructions—at times illogical and disjointed, yet always rich in associations.
The paintings don’t follow a single perspective or narrative—think of them as a collection of dioramas, blending theatre sets, ancient shadow play, and digital interfaces. Pavlović structures his paintings like dispersed stage sets or windows into peculiarly curated worlds, with figures and various discarded visuals suspended in time and action, teetering on the edge of reason. His hyperactive universe is populated by a variety of internet debris, where memes, GIFs and emojis morph into sacred icons, glitched Pinky the Cat stretches amid kitschy ornaments, and gummies, saints, and warriors glow with an eerie, relic-like aura. It’s like a visual jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t quite fit. Absurdity is key here—the point is not to make everything fit neatly together, but to create an intentional tension. Elements like frames from Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain fuse with repetitive linear woodcuts, with the dominant central element of the starburst. Originally used as a design tool to grab attention, the starburst evolves into a visual accelerator, acting as a focal point that propels the motives of eccentric (headless) humanity.
Starburst explores how we experience images today. Just as media flow seamlessly across platforms and contemporary culture elevates the fleeting and trivial, Pavlović’s imagery blends the curated with the chaotic, questioning what is authentic, valuable, and real. In a time of visual hypertrophy, where images are consumed at unprecedented speed, the Starburst series asks how a painting can function as an object, space, and sign all at once, pulling together time, styles, and symbols in fresh ways.
Pavle Pavlović (1983) is a painter interested in constructing a unique universe where he combines personal experiences and motivations with a diverse array of elements from the virtual world. His distinctive paintings are a collage of various influences, paying homage to meme heroes, online phenomena, virals, scenes from comic books, and his enduring inspiration from late Gothic and early Renaissance painting. He juxtaposes these influences with the digital language of gifs and the camp aesthetics of screensavers and stock photography, resulting in fresh and provocatively ironic detachment.
In 2003 he graduated from the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb under Prof. Zlatko Keser, graduating in 2010 under the mentorship of Professor Zoltan Novak. Since 2016, he has worked as an assistant at the Department of Painting at the same institution.
His recent exhibitions include the Biennale of Painting in Zagreb at the Meštrović Pavilion (2023), the exhibition Triumph of the Virtues at the Trotoar in Zagreb (2023), Post-Ordinary at Plan X Gallery in Milan, Italy (2023), Grand Tour at Caja Blanca UALSP in Mexico (2023), and the 9th Beijing International Art Biennale at the National Museum of China in Beijing (2022). His works have also been showcased at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb (2018, 2012), the National Museum in Zadar (2018), the National Museum of Gdańsk (2016), the Essl Museum in Vienna (2013), Spinnerei in Leipzig (2013), Kunstlerhaus in Vienna (2011), and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka (2009). Pavlović is a recipient of the ESSL AWARD CEE, Vienna (2011) and the Iva Vraneković Award at the 33rd Youth Salon, Zagreb (2016). His paintings are held in collections such as the Albertina Modern in Vienna and Erste Fragments in Zagreb.
CURATED BY: Martina Marić Rodrigues
PHOTOGRAPHY: Zupanov
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