Landscape as Pretext

Until now, Aldemar Ibrahimović has been recognised as a landscape painter. Landscape remains his thematic commitment, but only as a pretext, for alongside recognisability and impression, which function as his point of departure, his vistas are positioned and brought forward, acquiring a new order and new colouristic values. In some instances, they are reduced signs and allegorical transformations; in others, they are the sheer beauty of neutrality. Such a concept is, in its essence, a lyrical-reflective experience, while in terms of artistic pursuits, it represents an enhancement (or deconstruction) and a refinement of mere impression. The painter foregrounds the creative component of his “craft” and, confronted with that obligation, openly presents his own thought.

In the deconstruction and recomposition of landscapes or visions, Ibrahimović leaves no seams; instead, by emphasising details and accentuating their essentiality, he directs the movement across the surface of the painting. He asserts the right to his own choice—one that, though subjective in colour and composition, remains recognisable through the inevitable detail. Thus, he arrives at a specific “analysis” in which nothing is the same any longer, yet everything is obvious, condensed into signifying planes and a new construction. This refined complexity of Aldemar’s paintings from the past two years is not merely a salvation from the conventional presentation of an “eternal theme”; it is, in fact, more a globalisation of that theme through a legible visual language.

The specifically conceptualised Montenegrin space—or space in general—is not merely Ibrahimović’s flight from impression (and there are simpler ways of achieving that), to which most painters in Montenegrin art pay tribute, from beginners and amateurs to artists of the oldest generations. Aldemar openly dismantles traditionalist schemes, and, through rearrangement and combination, but only for the sake of artistic necessity, gives pleasure to devotees of landscape and lovers of art alike. For this reason, not only every new exhibition of his but also every individual painting arouses interest; for in essence, each will signify a step further from the enchanted circle of mere impressions.

Mladen Lompar Cetinje, May 1999.