Miroslav Miro Šuković (Bihać, 1977) is a Montenegrin painter with a strong presence in Serbia. He is one of those real, noble artists from South-East Europe who, despite highly developed drawing style, were able to conquer the painting, which is often not the case with authentic (genuine) painters, the best example is professor Dragan Lubarda. Šuković comes from the powerful flow of Montenegrin irrationalism, from the brood of Balkan fantasy, as perhaps the highest form of figuration, because it is not created on the basis of seeing and imitating nature, but on the exploration and definition of imagination, of some inner landscapes. He is a psychonaut who flies over his inner landscape, an eagle who sweeps his territory, his irrationalism is strong and original. The artistic expression of this painter is on the side-lines of the academic, but his stylization and deformations require a higher artistic culture, after all, the whole and not only recent Balkan fantasy grew on the aesthetics of deformation. It is less about the beauty or the unattractiveness as it is about the truth, about the value and power of personal expression, which in the abundance of external sensations finds its way to its incandescent nucleus, to the silence and secret from which art springs.
At first glance, Šuković’s work is expressive, however, the painter found a way to combine expressionism with fantasy, which is not usual. It can not be even said that he is a (post)modern artist, he lives his art period aside from the noise and fury of the neo-avant-garde. His work is pre-modern rather than (post)modern or anti-modern, he is a primordial artist who creates like a cave painter-shaman. That is why the usual categories of anatomy and color are not crucial for understanding his creations, but only the power of expression. In his works, the color values are muted and more subtle than placed in the second plan, reduced to the basics, to the struggle of light and dark, and the anatomy is only indicated or within the framework of the ghastly. When we talk about chthonic and demonic in this opus, we should keep in mind that the Serbian word for ghastly has a sacral prefix – miracle.
One Englishman said of the Serbian people “that they produce too much of history”, which is undesirable in global levelling. The same can be said for Montenegro, which knows about courage and heroism, therefore, too much of ethics. It seems that such a strong, heroic life in peaceful, non-war conditions can also take on an expression of pathos. Uroš Tošković defended himself from this with sincerity and aesthetics of nihilism, darkness and void as a sure antidote to current nonsense and materialism of all kinds. On the other side of realism, from the perspective of only rationalism and materialism, Šuković searches for spiritual values. They are present above all in the effort to reach the chimera of pure art, to create painting without the burden of narrative, but also (post)modern prejudices. Expressive and irrational in his work is a dramatically elevated temperature of creation, ethical as probably the highest expression of humanity. Therefore, Miroslav Miro Šuković does not complicate his art, hence, the compositions are reduced and the colour is simplified, he doesn’t imitate the outside world but explores and perseveres in his extraordinary.
Dejan Đorić
