In Search of a Distinctive Visual Expression

Aldemar Ibrahimović belongs to that group of painters who, from the very beginning, have sought a distinctive visual language, directing and cultivating their undeniable talent toward what is experienced and intimately known, while setting themselves tasks far greater and more demanding than the mere transposition of such experience from the real world into the realm of art. For this reason, his paintings appear dreamlike, as though lifted from the outlines of landscapes that are unreal yet possible, but also wrested from sheer abstraction, in which things cease to be what they are.

Leaning more toward dream than toward reality, Ibrahimović’s paintings possess only the semblance of reality, leaving the viewer with a subjective experience and the possibility of personal identification. They are stripped of superfluous details that might otherwise allow us to recognise and define them more precisely as visual narratives and concretisations of the real.

His paintings are thus reduced to the point at which detail carries little significance; they are legible and comprehensible only as a whole, as compositions that do not admit an accumulation of symbols and details, but instead represent an optimum that would tolerate neither more nor less than what is offered. Thus, on many of his canvases, we find so-called pure forms, rendered in nuanced planes and colours that “tolerate” one another visually and semantically within an extremely stripped-down, yet clearly defined structure—like a skeletal framework left for the reconstruction and prehistory of the painting itself. When these are not merely silhouettes or figures resembling what we would wish to see, they take the form of the bare bones of trees, the foam of stone, and waves arrested in a storm—elements that create and lend inner dynamism to the painting, as if an invisible world were seething in its depths, having sunk and vanished beneath its newly formed crust. This is why Ibrahimović’s paintings have neither human figures nor their settlements, neither birds nor beasts, nor much sky—save for those paintings of mountain peaks that rise at the edge like volcanoes—but only rocky hollows and echoes of the Day of Judgment. The fact that these works do not merely contain dark chasms or traces of fire and water, and that the remnants of a past world appear through miraculous expression and colour, speaks to the painter’s skill in evoking and bringing that world closer to us, making it less desolate and more accessible than it really is. Hence, any identification or concretisation of the paintings belonging to this cycle with the artist’s native landscapes is almost illusory; it can merely serve as a possible point of departure for conveying and realising a personal artistic experience upon a reduced sketch of reality. These landscapes contain a darker subtext—the condition “after the storm”, as we have tentatively termed it in this brief review.

A second sphere of the artist’s interest comprises far more legible paintings of the houses and rooftops of Sarajevo, notable not only for their figurative expressiveness and poetics, but also for a deeply felt and warm exterior idyll of the old-town milieu. The painter deliberately refrains from uncovering the mystery of the house’s interior as the most intimate space of life; he turns away from the fantasy offered by such a glimpse into its hidden “heart”, once again presenting only the overall composition and harmony of old urban houses, whose “soul” resides not in their hidden chambers, but precisely in their windows, walls, roofs, and chimneys. In the paintings of this cycle, too, there are no superfluous details or decoration; only the occasional bright or dark window, behind the illusion of time standing still, hints at a subtler tale of the fate and fortune of those who dwell behind them.

That this painter, in addition to cultivated skill and lavish talent, possesses a gift for the filigree-like refinement of the most demanding, so-called “living forms”, is evidenced by his numerous portraits executed in various techniques. Among the most notable works are certainly his variations on the motif of the old man, studied to the point of complete expressive realisation, as well as several highly successful and psychologically nuanced portraits. His paintings of sheep and drawings of horses seem to belong to some mythic tale, whose temporal dimension stretches from primordial times to the present day.

One can say with certainty that Aldemar Ibrahimović, though a young artist, successfully reveals and sublimates, in his paintings, a distinctive and autonomous world. This world is realised through the structure of a modern visual language and through diverse artistic techniques that make his paintings an enduring aesthetic experience.

Husein Bašić Decembar 1993.