ĐORĐE JANDRIĆ

The Heap, encoded

For many years now, renowned Croatian artist Đorđe Jandrić has been recognized for the various presentations of his Heap, which today has come his heteronym of sorts. Initiated in the 1990s, the Heaps were originally created by piling or dumping materials that formed semi-amorphous cones. Very soon, they evolved, among else, into two-dimensional spatial floor plan projections of a pyramid or cone, most often as graphite drawings depicting a square containing a circle and an equilateral triangle. Jandrić draws them loosely and deliberately imperfect, and by reducing a heap to a drawing, he establishes a distinctive symbol that translates volume into a two-dimensional expression.

Ten such drawings make up half of the exhibition at Flora Gallery in Dubrovnik, while the other half consists of ten drawings of a QR code. Both groups of drawings, sized 51 x 51 cm, were hand-drawn by Jandrić using graphite pencil. The first drawing of the first series is a densely shaded black square, followed by a regular sequence of the previously described linear projections of the Heap. The initial idea was to make nine Heap drawings dedicated to natural numbers (from one to nine), accompanied by the (non)number zero as a symbol of both beginning and end. The first drawing shows the complete Heap format that Jandrić has been creating in various versions over the past twenty years; the second drawing divides the format in height and width with number two, resulting in four squares – two feature the Heap and two are left blank. The third drawing divides the format into nine squares, with three featuring the Heap and six are left empty. This mathematical logic continues up to the ninth drawing, which consists of eighty-one squares – nine are filled with the Heap projections and seventy-two are left empty. The second series consists of graphite drawings of QR codes, none of which are identical (although it’s not immediately visible). It may be worth noting here that Jandrić, after high school — partly due to his innate talent for geometry and mathematics — enrolled in architecture studies. Now, more than ever before, he is extensively using that knowledge in this new art experiment. Boris Greiner notes that “the series resembles a chessboard at first glance, but it’s not the pieces that move, but the squares themselves. The artist has played a gambit, where he connected the geometrically precise and stable floor-plan construction of the Heap (a triangle and a circle within a square) with the equally geometric, yet entirely unstable structure of the QR (quick response) code…”

As we have grown accustomed to lately, when we see a QR code, we scan it with our inseparable smartphone and check the screen to see what it reveals. In this case, the app shows drawings almost identical to those in Jandrić’s first series – except now they are not in the negative (white on black), but rendered in a spectrum of color. Reality becomes different because it crosses the threshold of its own narrative, surrendering to the will of technologically innovative computer programs which present Jandrić as a masterful colorist. Maybe this is also the artist’s slightly sarcastic metaphor: that we live in a world we can only truly perceive in all its fullness (in color) through the use of contemporary technology – which isn’t far from the truth. And that what you create isn’t necessarily what you do, but rather what a predetermined algorithm decides it to be, which is something we uncover using a technological tool that must be purchased. The comparison with 3D film screenings imposes itself naturally here – if we don’t put on special glasses at the cinema, we will be deprived of the full experience. Or not? It depends on how we are calibrated. By following the path of least resistance, by succumbing to the ever-growing influence of rising conformism, the vast majority of us have become dependent on technology that distances us from independent thought and steers us toward a dystopian world that is, day by day, becoming an increasingly tangible reality. The analogue world belongs to the past, just as Jandrić’s hand-drawn sketches seem anachronistic. (Do they?) In his work with sculpture, Jandrić has for the most part strived to achieve its transcendental projection. Of course, this is a mental process in which Jandrić relies both on art and theory – i.e., on physics and metaphysics. It is a process that in its ultimate (non) form comes close to the Aristotelian and Archimedean thought, as well as Einstein’s theory of relativity. Such a spiritual dimension does not exists in the virtual world guided by QR codes, since they merely expand on information that is often incomplete, and often inaccurate, thus denying objective reality in favor of the non-existent – the virtual. With this series, Jandrić questions the differentiation between these two worlds, but he also boldly confronts us with the fact that soon gallery walls would no longer display physical artefacts, but only their virtual counterparts. Still, not everything is lost. Jandrić draws by hand, and the QR codes he creates are not perfect or identical, resulting in variations in the arrangement, quality and proportions of colors in the virtual Heaps. By doing so, the artist reminds us that, despite today’s astonishing technological expansion, the final result still ultimately depends on the human hand, the same hand that Henri Focillon, in his essay In Praise of the Hand, celebrated as the perfect tool for creatively conveying artists’ thoughts and emotions. Jandrić’s series of QR codes ends with an empty white square, which corresponds to the initial black square of the first series, thus completing the circle. Malevich’s ideal of reductionist artistic thought, along with an artistic hand, remain the true forces that drive and elevate the human spirit, even today, in the age of computer algorithms and the increasing use of artificial intelligence. It is up to us to recognize and preserve them in virtual reality, which is a message that Jandrić conveys in this exhibition.

Mladen Lučić

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Đorđe Jandrić was born on 7 December 1956, in Zadar, where he completed his primary and secondary education. In 1975, he enrolled in the study of architecture at the University of Zagreb, but in 1978 he abanonded it and enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, majoring in Art Education, while also studying Art History at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. He graduated in 1985, earning the title of art teacher.

He began exhibiting his work while he was still a third-year student at the Academy of Fine Arts, participating in the 13th Youth Salon in Zagreb in 1981. To date, he has had around thirty solo exhibitions and participated in about eighty group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. He represented Croatia at the Sculpture and Object exhibition in Bratislava in 2005 and at Europart in Geneva in 2008. As a nominee of the Croatian Ministry of Culture, he stayed in Liechtenstein working in the studio of fellow artist Brigitte Hasler as part of a cultural exchange program between the two countries.

In his continuing exploration of the concept of sculpture, Jandrić expresses himself through almost all visual media (sculpture, painting, drawing, performance, video, and film). He is the author of several public sculptures. In 1998, he created the commemorative plaques for the Bjelovar-Bilogora County and the Tihomir Trnski Award. Between 1992 and 1994, he worked as the graphic editor and designer of the magazine Kinoteka.

He designed the visual presentation for the monographic exhibition of Zlatko Bourek at the Art Pavilion in Zagreb in 2003, and co-designed (with Z. Bourek) the exhibitions Museum 1846–1996 (1996) and Metallica (2002) at the Croatian History Museum, as well as Baranja in Colors (1999) at the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb.

From 1985 to 1991, he worked as a teacher in primary and secondary schools. In 1995, he became an assistant at the Faculty of Textile Technology at the University of Zagreb, earning the title of assistant professor in 2007. That same year, he transferred to the Academy of Applied Arts at the University of Rijeka, where he worked as a tenured full professor until his retirement in 2022.

Jandrić lives and works in Zagreb.