Kosta Bogdanović
WRITINGS IN STONE

Barren willows on the shore…
Water in the river flows away…
One can see the stones at the bottom.
Yosa Buson (1716-1756)

 

Observations of stone, at any time and in any place in human experience, reveal a path towards elementary esthetics of the natural form; the irresistibility of its wealth of diversity (structure, form, size and place where it is found) creates a type of “perception habitat” which, very meaningfully, cultivates visual and tactile perception.

Concurring with the common term petra in the Greek and Latin languages, which signifies stone, it also encourages multiple meanings of its traits in the metaphorical and other meanings from which very rich poetics of mythical, religious, poetic, musical and other meanings are discerned. The phenomenon of a stone’s structure and colour, from precious stone to the ordinary broken one that is used in the construction domain, and the one in sculpture, as well as in other areas, remains in the segment of its stability which we recognize and intend for various aspects of esthetic fulfillment, beginning with the beauty of mountain massif scenes to a fantastically esthetic structure and encounter of its colour and form. It was not by accident that Michelangelo realized that, in sculpture, “the task of the hand is in the service of the mind to discover the magic of the stone.” Stone, that oldest element of the solid state of the Earth’s crust, already around two and a half million years ago became an inspiring form recognized by the first creator of the stone block made by hand, in the image and material, and who, with further blows, as a “humanized being” transformed it simultaneously into a tool and a weapon. That was the moment of perception immortalized by Njegoš in the verse:

The blow finds the spark within the stone,
Without it the very spark would turn to stone.

The stone as an initial matter, form and meaning, has since the earliest times of human consciousness served as a symbolically and metaphorically vital landmark for mythical, religious, poetic, alchemical, medical and other aspects, starting points and points of departure as regards meanings of inspiration, belief and practicality. Entering deep into general cultural dimensions of its rich meaning, one can nowadays speak of complete poetics of petromorphology in the domain of scientific, cultural and artistic fields. “What writings, ancient coins, medals and books are to the historian, the rocks of the Earth’s crust are to the geologist and paleontologist.” (Gejki)

 

II

 

One of the contemporary interpreters of writings in stone, which the processes of the changing features of the Earth’s surface have set as traces in time, is Branislav Perić, esthetician and mycologist. The union of these two interests only appears unusual at first glance, if one knows that as a philosopher and a natural scientist he has discovered his domain by setting out from the “two ends;” true, not simultaneously, but he has reached them on time, with the same scientific and artistic objective. Namely, this creator is among the very few who observe science and nature integrally and inter-conditionally, while inspiringly engaging in the triad: esthetics - nature - art. He has created a distinguished series of photographs of “writings in stone” with a refined sensitivity for the natural and artistic form, or more precisely, the figural in natural. Merging scientific patience and artistic sensitivity, Branislav Perić has entered deep into the traces of the petromorphic state of the structure of matter, form and colour of the stone.

Due to his brilliant knowledge of modern digital processes, those insights were reinforced by his son Ilija, the co-author of this exhibition, who, at the same time, proved to be a connoisseur of the artistic possibilities of photography.

The series of photographs, which reveal artistic sensations on the surface of stone, portray Branislav Perić as an artist who is able to observe, see and translate nature’s peculiarities into meaning of a higher order form. The scenes of a fine stone texture, cared for by rain, sun and wind, small indents and creative encounters of cracks in the stone mass, and the division of those cracks by illustrated horizontals and verticals in the photographs of Branislav Perić open a new world of events on the stone and in the stone. The translation is done in such a way as to create, from general places, a highly nurtured degree of esthetic form. Through it, in this case, again in a natural way, “the selection has been made” of the natural form’s survival for which the creator goes out of his way.

The significant characteristic of Branislav Perić’s creative undertaking is that he has, on the basis of the most general places of visible and comprehensible states of natural processes on a stone’s surface, with unique poetics of a personalized form, established his own rule of perceiving and framing certain details of a stone surface as it relates to its natural and actual state in space. That is concentrating on recognizing and positioning for oneself the appropriate level of esthetics of the natural form similar to how, let us say, Roger Caillois poeticized the world of stones, such as his description of the “onyx”:

There exists in an onyx a certain precision,
A fineness of a grain where the veins’ caprice
Is written without stains, yet with no restraint;
Royal firmness of strokes in the most beautiful of
Specimens removes and makes superfluous
The need to search for any ideal for the onyx.
It does not express and does not represent
Anything other that its own purity.
Independent, meaningless, they fascinate
Enriching the world of illusion, but imitating nothing.

 

Reminiscent of the sensitivity of such a poetic vision of a stone and its features, Branislav Perić has, with this exhibition (as a lesser part of the existing material), returned to art in an exceptional way, perceiving the natural world and its phenomena, following the series of his photographs that announces the possibility of comprehending the sculptural aspects of mushroom forms. With such sensitivity for the speech of material, form and color, initially on mushrooms and now on the stone’s surface, this author opens the possibilities of linking science and art, as one of the rare creators and scientists of the Renaissance spirit, which is how we will remember him.