Hugs and Kisses: Nose to Nose and Mouth to Mouth

Viewing Petra's work, of her relaxed drawing technique and playful content, of the intimate story in relation to the public context; though this always includes a thoughtful presentation strategy built on intense activity and large concentration of projects. When I say that Petra is a pop artist, I am referring to the effect of her art practice: about how popular she is, how ubiquitous her protagonists, and how recognizable her drawings are. In addition, it is hard to overlook some of her references to the initial concept of pop art. Formally, there are several points of contact: repetition, stylization, contour drawing, color-based variations, the use of popular (ready-made) materials, motifs, scenes and procedures of popular culture, mass production, advertising strategy, and design approach. Her strategy of producing hits is based on the relationship between the private and the public, on a stereotypical story and on the resultant visual, communicative and aesthetic approaches and procedures: clarity and symbolism, recognizability and reproducibility, communicativeness and narrativeness.

Petra experiments with different formats, media and means of expression, from large and monumental billboards and advertising columns, complex ambiences and installations, light objects, panels, actions, events, artists' books, websites, illustrations and advertisements in magazines and newspapers, invitations, leaflets, to very small objects and paraphernalia, such as pocket calendars, stickers, cards, badges, and dominos. Her technique is sometimes simple and sometimes complex: drawing, (wall) painting, and various reproduction techniques. She started with lithography, which appealed to her as a painter. Then she began transferring her drawings onto gallery and building walls or on photocopy prints. Wall pictures, the possibilities of copiers (enlargement, multiplication etc.) and composing many parts for a large poster enabled Petra to present her work outside the gallery premises – in the open, to allow coincidental interactions with passersby. There her projects endured the elements and faced gradual destruction, somewhat reminiscent of artistic action as a contemporary urban ritual. Like, for example, in one of her recent projects, when during her exhibition at the MC Gallery she secretly placed stickers around New York subway stations.

The Narration and its Domiciles

Petra draws an intimate world but blurs her personal touch, she simplifies, typifies. The schematization of figures is based on the deduction of facts, relaxed drawing, unbroken outline, gestural stroke, on emphasized lines, flatness and clarity of basic contours. It is about stencils, patterns, repetitions, variations and combinations.
This pictographic method enables easier recognition and recollection. Through reduction to elementary strokes, figures and objects become visual signs and image generating elements of a solid visual art composition. Petra also builds a clear and recognizable relationship between the figures and the background. She simultaneously introduces an original picturesqueness and rhythmic arrangement of simple forms, colors and almost arabesque imagery of the signs.

Petra's narration is based on a stereotype, on idealized relationships between recognizable figures and heroes, on their merry playfulness and everyday dilemmas. The stories and their heroes are literally seen everywhere and soon become an indispensable part of urban life. Every time anew and throughout, Petra has been verifying her presence on selected locations around the city by a large concentration of projects and their regular appearance and presentation. She has left marks and traces. The figures of her world are easily recognizable. Still more, after some time we no longer question their existence. They multiplied over the years. They are assured of being right. All at the same time. And each for itself. Small ones and big ones, with wide-brimmed hats and dark glasses, from behind and from in front, in bathing suits or long dresses, with a smile or serious and concerned faces.

Again and again, Petra seeks unusual and exciting domiciles for her figures and heroes that are continually within the context of the city as an aesthetic phenomenon offering adventure and surprise, joy and delight, to a modern flâneur. She often occupied all possible established and unusual spaces of presentation, including galleries, urban and media venues. Sometimes she depicts them directly on walls, or sticks them into a book but, above all, she likes to (illegally) display them in streets and roads in (large) towns or smaller settlements. Then they become signs, not quite traffic signs, but a collection of Petra's hints and recommendations to all who pass. With her numerous female and male co-workers, artistic means and procedures as well as advertising techniques, she effectively interferes with the town life of citizens, especially in Ljubljana, Maribor and in summer on the Croatian island of Susak. At the same time, she daringly challenges the possibilities and effects of art practice as it ventures into the streets and squares and floods the media landscape.

An Image Is Drawn: Clean and Clear Like a Letter

Petra creates the connection of intimate/private life and public action/art practice through constant ’portrayal‘ of relatives, friends and acquaintances by memory or by photograph. In some way, she keeps making (self-) portraits. Sometimes, the computer is of great help to her. The portraits are schematized and universal, almost without personal features, allowing many a viewer to recognize her or himself in them. With selected images from the family photo album, which, greatly enlarged, Petra draws on gallery walls, she shares with us a unique anthropology of her own world. Drawn in one stroke and with an unbroken line, the works introduce an (auto-) biographical narrative. The everyday environment, along with a touch of humor, testifies to the artist's dealings with the world that surrounds her and that is strongly marked by the past. Maybe she is seeking happiness, but happiness is, more or less, a complicated matter. When she takes her line for a walk, she takes us, in her unobtrusive and cheerful rhythm, for a journey through the family album. So, viewing photographs and recalling memories also can be a collective experience. And Petra draws it, actually, she draws the images from the photos as well as the mood that accompanies them – she transfers this mood onto the gallery walls, brings it closer to the viewer and turns it into a social event. Or, she combines the images and confines them into a book that is made available to the visitor to freely travel within.

A special place appertains to portraits of everyday things and objects that we meet, use or merely admire. They are placed in front of us and remind us that summer or coffee time is approaching, that holiday pleasure is ahead of us and that idleness is worthy of our notice. She often portrays the images in pairs or emphasizes their duality. This appears as a union or disunion on multiple levels. Sometimes it is the mere placement in a gallery space, or a combination of an interior/exterior set up and sometimes it is the depiction of pairs of opposites that are based on the image as well as the words that explain the drawing. She also emphasizes duality in a way that seems more like a duality within one entity rather than a duality of two opposing poles. For example, the placement of two seemingly alike figures, but with different textual denotations, which, to a great extent, demolishes the stereotypical conclusion and comprehension of closeness and distinction. What, for instance, does the same face, illustrated once with a mustache, and once without one, tell us? Do the images that depict role changes tell us that nothing is ultimately determined and that we are free to choose? Maybe. And maybe they rattle our understanding of prescribed roles and functions that we take for granted and do not think about. The social, sexual, familial and professional roles in Petra's images are no longer clear and recognizable. They make room for doubt: doubt about solid foundations, doubt about the distribution of roles, whatever, wherever and whenever they may be; doubt about differences and similarities, closeness and affinity. The same person can be pictured in different situations with different attributes and objects. In that case, a wish that can sometimes come true captures the images.

Memory Is a Place where Stories Happen one more Time

There has always been a story in Petra's drawings, woven among the participants, the heroines and heroes of an image, or woven slowly and persistently, from one scene to another, one setting to the next, among the image and the event, the protagonists and the audience, the portrayed and the artist, and between the artist and the viewers. Petra has always shown the relation between the private and the public, the individual and the collective through her playful and witty visual language. For the sake of joy and pleasure. The story is personal, without grand subjects, full of intimate hints and also family and social situations. In short: it is a love story. And very often, her image is populated by memories.

Petra is interested in people, in their world and the stories and relationships they weave. Family and friendship stories or media views construct cultural patterns and, with imagination, reach into everyone's daily life. Petra's images also talk about the importance of circumstances, friendships and acquaintances, of physical and symbolic space, of real and imaginary relationships and wishes. Most often, they are about the little things from everyday life that do not require a special comment and do not have hidden meaning to be unraveled. It may well be that reality and the sum of the events that make up her story, boil down to being simple, special and unique. In the end, people are always in the foreground. Be it those in the images who offer themselves to us, to endear themselves and charm us, or those, whom this image, at least for a brief moment, preoccupies, or maybe whose sound and rhythm of steps it changes and whose train of thoughts it redirects, makes happy or enrages, saddens or just simply leaves indifferent.

The thirst for a glance, a dialogue, a reaction, a gesture, a sound or word has always played an important role in Petra's planning. Petra solved the dilemma of how to present herself and make contact with the audience, the professional and the coincidental, and how to keep this dialogue alive, in various ways. The likeable figures we have met were her representatives and, in addition, she often gave out small gifts to the spectators, cheered them up with little surprises, or involved them in her project, her game: she would ask them to find, put together or finish drawing something. She would suggest that they choose their favorite drawing, take home a small graphic with a favorite motif, or pick one that she would draw for them etc.

Petra's gesture to offer some of her artworks to visitors as a gift in exchange for their presence and collaboration, is one of her characteristics in understanding art practice. Presenting and changing hands, denoting and leaving traces, considered choice and random circulation, it all leads to the conclusion that maybe we do not live in a world of distorted proportions. It is possible that a pleasant bond can develop between us and that a work of art can trigger it. The value of an artwork is also symbolic and subjective as it grows with every exchange, becomes increasingly distinguished, and yet still be connected to the artist as well as to the individuality of all its previous owners.
This is how Petra also plays around with the dilemma between protective copyright and the free circulation of her works. It is the mutual exchange and sharing of experience that has for years been propelling Petra's projects, engaging co-workers and maintaining a special kind of popularity of the artist, who finds great delight and fulfillment in this.

Barbara Borčić