Milena Usenik in Emerik Bernard - Sobivanja

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Emerik Bernard:

Kotigina ikona, 2016, akril – montaža, 97 x 53 cm
Kotiga´s Icon, 2016, assemblage-acrylic

Emerik Bernard:
Simbolično pregibanje, 2017, akril – montaža, 120 x 93 cm

Symbolical Bending, 2017, acrylic - assemblage

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Milena Usenik:

Pentlja III., 1975, akril na platno, 180 x 120 cm
Bow III., 1975, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:

Pasat, 1975, akril na platno, 120 x 80 cm
Passat, 1975, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:

Istrski baladur, 1986, olje na platno, 110 x 180 cm
Istrian Staircase, 1986, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:

Rumeni baladur, 1993, olje na platno, 150 x 150 cm
Yellow Staircase, 1993, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:

Moulin Rouge, 2005, akril na platno, 150 x 130 cm
Moulin Rouge, 2005, acrylic on canvas

Milena Usenik:
Ruj, 2005, akril na platno, 145 x 135 cm

Smoke Tree, 2005, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:

Tojeto, 2005, akril na platno, 180 x 170 cm
Thatisit, 2005, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:

Makkima, 2005, akril na platno, 150 x 150 cm
Makkima, 2005, acrylic on canvas

Milena Usenik:
Pentlja VI., 2005, akril na platno, 120 x 100 cm

Bow VI., 2005, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:

Prečrtana, 2006, akril na platno, 150 x 150 cm
Crossed Out, 2006, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:

Pajčolan, 2007, akril na platno, 180 x 170 cm
Veil, 2007, acrylic on canvas

Milena Usenik:
Sence, 2008, akril na platno, 180 x 170 cm

Shadows, 2008, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:

Zamik, 2008, akril na platno, 150 x 150 cm
Shift, 2008, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:

Bucika, 2010, akril na platno, 170 x 130 cm
Pin, 2010, acrylic on canvas

Milena Usenik:
Svetloba in sence, 2011, akril na platno, 150 x 150 cm

Light and Shadows, 2011, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:
Triptih –

Spomin, 2015, akril na platno, 170 x 115 cm
V tej barvni luči, 2012, akril na platno, 170 x 115 cm

Nasmeh, 2015, akril na platno, 170 x 115 cm
Triptych-

Memory, 2015, acrylic on canvas
In This Coloured Light, 2012, acrylic on canvas

Smile, 2015, acrylic on canvas

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Milena Usenik:
Oljka, 2017, akril na platno, 159 x 105 cm

Olive Tree, 2017, acrylic on canvas

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Miklavž Komelj

Dedication to the Soul

of Painting

The latest paintings of Emerik Bernard are in comparison to his earlier work visu-
ally more austere in view of colour application in spite of the fact that the colours
are often brighter than before. After his images which shiver in an almost haptic
manner and on which the painted elements meet with mounted collage elements
in deliriously thick intertwinements (the elements of collage - bits of old fabric sev-
ered from the context of their former usage, but still preserving the history of their
use – shine like pure colour and at the same time the layers of acrylic colour pre-
serve the notion of materiality of something that has been taken out of the context
and was made to function as pure colour. Duchamp once said that colours from
tubes are always ready – made.) now come images with flatter colour surfaces and
the vehemence has been substituted with a more calm, meditative approach – even
the materiality of elements of collage now seems different; if before the painter was
interested in adjoining rough materiality with pure imagination which transformed
this imagination in a vision, the new paintings more and more show how the rough
materiality as such is illusory.

This change is also the theme of the painting “Matter and Geometry 1” (2015). At
the bottom of the painting is attached a visual intertwinement which preserves the
memory of the typical “Bernardesque” compositions, including the thin wooden
boards which like some extensions illusionary stretch into the space beyond the
painting. (This procedure actually originates from the Baroque Illusionism. One of
the best examples of combining painting with mounted elements which extend into
the space beyond the painting is a huge ceiling painting by Antonio Fumiani in the
church of San Pantalon in Berard’s beloved Venice.) This intertwinement lies on a
surface on which wide purple stripes interchange with narrow green stripes in strict
vertical lines. Above all this spans a geometric net painted in cold colours which
seems like a window; in it there are blank rectangles amidst the painted stripes
through which we see the whiteness of the primer coat of the canvass. As if a win-
dow appeared above this intertwinement of matter through which we can see
emptiness – and this emptiness seems so powerful that beside it matter starts to lose
its reality in spite of its intense colours and it fades and disappears when encoun-
tering this void. This whiteness of the empty canvass is a novelty in Bernrd’s paint-
ing. (In the painting “Matter and Geometry” from 1991 also occurs a white fabric,
however this time it is an element glued over the layers of paint.) And yet all the
time this kind of painting was emerging from an intense meditation on the white-
ness of the empty canvas. Years ago Bernard began his essay “The Image Free of
all Detail” with the words:

“Where else does the idea that I have to pant something come from, if not from
my dedication to something which exists as the soul of painting, as Johannes
Itten might have said. And this soul is embraced in the image of an empty can-
vas which induces imagery with its un-painted screen. In simple words, some-
thing which lurks hidden in an empty canvass attracts my attention.”

But Bernard’s visualising of emptiness always resulted from a paradox which he
articulated in his maybe best essay “Approaching”:

“Amazing, the thicker the intertwinements are, the more clearly I see an empty
space, an emptied image of something else.”

When in this same essay he mentions the Mediterranean wave of medieval orna-
mentation he states, “as if Deus Absconditus granted people that last sight of paint-
ed interlaced ornaments before their eyes failed them as they neared empyrean”.

In short, the awareness of his dedication to emptiness obliged the painter not to
leave his canvas empty, because only the density of visual interlacement truly
defines emptiness in its otherness; just as Alejandra Pizarnik once wrote that she
speaks because she wants complete silence. On the painting “Image and Matter 1”
emptiness emerges in tautological literalness of blank segments on the canvas – and
because of this it seems intentional, as an illustration of emptiness. It seems as if the
painter demonstratively wanted to illustrate on just one painting this duality
between emptiness and visual interlacements of which he speaks in his essay; but
through this demonstration he wilfully turns the painting against itself. This painting
seems like some kind of dissection; as if with his ascetic gesture the painter demol-
ished his own construction of the world of painting.

Nevertheless this construction actually emerges out of its own destruction. The
manner in which this visual intertwinement is incorporated into the image which
looks upon itself with the whiteness of a blank canvas corresponds to an experience
that Bernard described in maybe his most beautiful essay. In it he associated his
ruminations on painting with a trip to Assisi, the birth place of St. Francis of Asisi,
who in a paradoxical way connected asceticism with a new discovery of the sensual
world. Among other things he also describes his experience of the little chapel of
Porziuncola which is incorporated in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli:

“When I entered the nave my breath was taken away. In front of the altar
sat a small forgotten bundle, a little church placed in the nave of the big
church. It seemed like a scrap in the sphere of comprehensible facts,
ombra derivativa, a thing of an inexplicable function. No wonder that my
experiential balance was shaken when the symmetry of experience col-
lapsed. The Poveraglia - for which St Frances collected stones and togeth-
er with the Minorites restored it and in it heard the voice of God much
clearer- shone with its inner glow. Something oozed from behind a shad-
owy veil without touching the surroundings. The light had an imaginary
quality because lux corporalis had abandoned functional proportions and
crossed the line of optical conception. Therefore many a visitor redirected
his steps gliding over the marble floor and headed towards the chamber of
poverty. There he sat like a cocoon and strived to overcome the last obsta-

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cles in his prayers. It was an unusual sight: the relic became the shrine and
the covering church was just a shirt, a vestiment.”

And he goes on:

“How quickly the constructed world which substantiated my reality collapsed.
(...) In fact all the relations I built with my knowledge disintegrated and trans-
formed into tension.”

Bernard dissects his own painting and transforms it into a new tension. The way
how a relic of certain materiality which transforms into its own reliquary interferes
with a surface that displays itself as blank in a sense corresponds to the painters
assumptions, specifically in the paintings “Dwelling of Matter” (1968) and “Corpus
Alienum” (1971).

Regardless of all changes in his new work, the artist very consistently follows some-
thing which has obsessed him ever since those two paintings were created: how to
put together completely disparate and at first sight incompatible elements from var-
ious spaces and transform them into a new entity. It seems that he more and more
emphasizes this disparateness and incompatibility. When I visited him for the first
time at his studio in Logatec he was working on a triptych on which he connected
non-mimetic visual interlacements with - for his work a very unusual - a monumen-
tal human figure at work.

However drastic this might seem I saw in Logatec that the artist was even more dras-
tic on a never exhibited painting from 1974. In it there are fragments of images from
entirely different worlds placed side by side. Nevertheless they form a consistent
concept through the fact that it is not an illusion of those elements as such but an
illusion of photographs and reproductions. Painted photographs of sportsmen, a
pigeon and a mother with a child, a piece of El Greco’s reproduction of the Burial
of the Count of Orgaz and an inscription Paloma are assembled together. It all seems
like a trompe l’oeil, but at the same time something quite different appears as a bind-
ing element, something which amalgamates all of these absurd combinations into a
unifying colour vibration which is given its tint by the non-mimetic background.

The process of mismatching is consciously incorporated into the creative process
and gives to the mismatching a certain objectivity by which it ceases being a mis-
match and becomes something else. The artist commented on his new paintings:
“At first I’d say; no, not this ... ”And: “At first sight a mistake. But upon further obser-
vation you see there exists a certain conformity.” And: “Art has reached its limit.
You can only carry on by dealing with this problem in small steps. They are differ-
ent and therefore they work and have a function...”

In attempting this the albums of Bernard’s photographs which lie around the studio,
some open and some are closed (with smears of acrylic paint on some) are not
only his painting aids but an integral part of Bernard’s painting which is evident:
the artist prefers to shoot randomly heaped piles of various materials (this is often
wood, tires, hay ...), which already through the fact that they are observed present
themselves as an enigma and demand attention. He is particularly intrigued by inter-
actions between rough materiality and reflections, between the properties of a sub-
stance and its decay, like rust on metal ... Bernard can observe these random visual
interlacements of cast-away materials as the beginning of something yet unknown.

This view finds similarity in the poetical experience of an objective correlative as T.
S. Eliot explains: an emotion is expressed through a number of objects, a certain
situation or a series of events which constitute the formula of this emotion.
However these things are not connected by some anticipated logic: poetry can
change the most illogical and disparate objects and experiences which have no artic-
ulate connection, except in poetry into objective correlatives. If an objective correl-
ative is the expression of an emotion poetry becomes an essential tool to expose
this emotion. Only an objective correlative can render to emotions an expressive
form. However the question of generating new connections between unconnected
and randomly lined up elements does not address only emotions; it deals with the
basic questions about perception. Bernrd’s paintings also adhere to all the questions
which were posed in the nineteen eighties by Jure Detela at the exhibition by the
painter Sergej Kapus, when he wrote:

“What exactly is the thing that we are observing from numerous intersecting
directions and many different points of view? Is it a huge space, or a small
object in front of us? Is it a dominant element within the space which mythi-
cally changes its face when we circle around it so that our observing points
merge into composites which relate a legend? Is it something like the bonds
that connect the spaces in our dreams? Does the substantiality of the domi-
nant spatial element vanish in this legend, so that it loses its dominance and
becomes nothing more than a self proclaimed and from the retrospective view
completely replaceable basis for a legend? Or then again, do we stand on a
hill and observe the country while in our mental view of its places we are
flushed by reminiscences which we had or could have had experienced in
these places? Which is the law that binds various places into a continuous nar-
rative? I suspect that this law cannot be based only on the visible.”

To Detela these are not just academic questions, they relate to his basic relationship
to living beings and to the world. Painting instructs us how to recognise other
beings and form relationships with them.

In his interview with Igor Zabel in the year 2000 Bernard talks about the problems
that intrigued painters at the time when Detela wrote those words, and adds:

“Maybe these facts are fading away too soon today which is a great pity. Not
because of the people who were involved in the discussion of the significance
of the new trends a few years ago, but because all these attempts for a different
artistic experience never came further from their embryonic stage. For
instance; the transition from the illusion of background to the illusion of fore-
ground actually pointed out more permeable borders of a painting and its pli-
ability rendered an array of possible realisations.”

When many considered these questions outdated due to novel artistic trends
Bernard continued to devise a different artistic experience from these embryos. Still
today he keeps experimenting with new solutions again and again. When he talks
about his paintings in his studio he is always focused on the same thing.”This is
very important: if you place together these various things and then get something
integrated from completely dissimilar objects ... After a while it all merges into one ...”
Timing is crucial. That which is put together is actually incompatible and only after
it has been seen by the observer it transforms into a true whole – the real emer-

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gence of a painting is handed to the viewer’s observation, who is responsible. ( In
some sense the function of the observer is crucial in painting; it was not a coinci-
dence that Alberti considered Narcissus to be the first painter – before it comes to
colours, painting is a matter of observation.)

In his essay “Approaching” Giotto interrupts the questioner who talks to him about
symmetry: “Why do you speak of symmetry young man? Is it because of the things
which have harmoniously symmetrical parts and an established principle of num-
ber and measure or because of irrational collisions?” Then he adds: “However, the
actual forming of symmetry doesn’t happen in an already existing order. It hap-
pens when an inner or outer situation is not yet symmetrical and before it is ideally
divided into two parts. Therefore from deviation and discord emerges a wish to
find the ideal harmony amidst the coinciding contrasts.”

Elsewhere Bernard talks about apophatism. But actually his principle of creation -
which uses visual intertwinements of incompatible elements and transforms them
into new entities - is closest to Empedocles’ myth about the genesis of fragmented
creatures which unite at first into completely disparate and later on into harmonious
connections. It is interesting, that Empedocles compares the manner in which
beings emerge and exist in the sensual perceptive reality, which to him is an illusion
(and therefore demands exceptional responsibility), to the painting process.

In short: Bernard’s solitary studio work happens with the notion that this painting
research is closely related to how the “non-painting” reality is being created and sus-
tained. In his reflections on art Bernard strictly divided avant-gardism and modernism;
for instance, he studied Dadaism a lot. It is true that in this he was more concerned
with new visual solutions (his earlier work was under a strong influence of the pro-
cedures of Kurt Schwitters) then with the aspirations for a direct socially-transforma-
tive action (towards which he mainly expressed scepticism in his texts). Nevertheless,
one of the messages his painting conveys is that this work seemingly isolated from the
real world functions directly through the mechanisms of visible reality.

***

When the new works of Bernard are exhibited together with the paintings of
Milena Usenik we can without regard to any stylistic determination notice some-
thing surprising; some of his recent paintings visually correspond whit segments of
her painting which at first sight seems the most distant, her early pop artistic works.
In their previously created works we could find common points especially in the
nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties in their mutual devotion to expressive
colour strokes and their preferred genius loci – Istria. The almost hypnotic lines
from the fabric on her paintings correspond to some elements on Bernard’s new
canvases which we can more or less interpret as a theme of nets on which the con-
structions of the visual world are attached (for instance on his painting “Edges
Create Fullness”).

Indeed, his latest and her oldest works correspond. Nevertheless speaking of
Milena Usenik’s painting it isn’t so easy to say what is old and what is new.

Recently her pop art period has been one of the greatest discoveries of overlooked
fine art in Slovenia. Through this breakthrough that period of her work is now
regarded as distinctly modern.

An anecdote from her exhibition “The Lost Pop” in gallery P74 in Ljubljana best
describes the freshness of her marvellous paintings; a poorly informed female visi-
tor to the exhibition asked who this new painter was and if she recently graduated
from the Academy!

These paintings - mainly inspired by the patterns of fabrics from photographs in
Italian fashion magazines – through the historical context of consumerism in
Yugoslavian society of the late nineteen sixties and the early seventies acquire an
especially intriguing sociological dimension. However it seems that in painting
these images the painter was primarily interested in their formal conception – in
the search for intriguing symbols which emerge from the parallel lines; typically
she soon started to combine her pop art paintings with the elements of op art.
Actually in pop art she was most intrigued by its op artistic visual elements. Even
the painting “Memory of Melbourne” (1973) which pieces together the elements
of the landscape and architecture of the Olympic stadium is actually looking for
formal principles which are similar to the formal principles of her fashion fabrics
inspired paintings.

This makes her transition from pop-artistic fabrics to the abstracted
“Undulation”(1976) quite logical. The change in her approach regarding the man-
ner of painting that happened at the end of the nineteen-seventies and at the begin-
ning of the ‘eighties at first glance seems to be in complete opposition to her pop-
artistic period. In contrast to the strictly defined lines between the coloured surfaces
of her early paintings the artist now started to delight in fluid coloration and in lib-
erated, spontaneous brush strokes. Nevertheless, her pop-art images also tended to
establish fluidity, a kind of optical undulation. In these works the feeling of fluidity
is achieved through the tension of her sharp clarity of drawing. In her later works
fluidity manifests itself through the blending of colours on the canvas, in its whirls
and in the illusion of dissolving into the painting.

Nevertheless the artist knows that truly spontaneous movements demand great pre-
cision. She dedicated her gestures to the painting after she perfected them in top-
level sports. As a top athlete she twice represented Yugoslavia in handball at the
Olympic Games. The already mentioned painting “Memory of Melbourne” depicts
her reminiscences of the Olympic Games in that city in 1956 when she won the
ninth place in handball.

In her pop-art paintings she sometimes intensified the effect of optical undulation
by cutting it visually. Some of her best paintings, including the “Memory of
Melbourne” were made on several separate and then linked canvases.

She also practices this principle in her later works, although these are not in
advance planned combined images. Rather she forms new compositions from indi-
vidually made paintings and in this way creates a new image. Each individual paint-
ing may be experienced as a fragment of a bigger altogether different entity; thus
the game of fluidity never stops.

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Sometimes the artist deliberately as she puts it “messes up” the fragments of a mul-
tiple canvas painting and in this way creates new tensions. When I visited her in
the studio she had just finished a composition which she was changing in this way.
Her new paintings mainly seem abstract, however we cannot speak of pure abstrac-
tion. Most of the paintings are made from sketches which are based on concrete
impressions of nature; sometimes they contain figures which however are no longer
recognizable in the paintings. The painting is like a membrane between the outside
world of exterior impressions and an inner world of imagination. However on this
occasion she was working on a large picture made on many sheets of paper. Drawn
in a postimpressionistic manner it very distinctly depicted an olive tree in a land-
scape. The painter at first assembled the picture and then she shuffled the sheets of
paper so that they would assemble into a new composition and in this way created
a new dynamic, making the picture more mysterious.

While she talks of her painting she utters a sigh:”I am too open.”

And this very openness is the special quality of her painting. As Mojca Grmek
wrote, “her every painting is like a weft in the endless texture of the many ways
of interpretation”.

The painter’s studio in Logatec opens towards the garden, but she points at a big
heap of dried flower bouquets in the corner of the studio as “her own” garden.
These bouquets can be seen as the essential inspiration in many of her paintings.
The most beautiful example is a large triptych permeated by a shadowy pulsation
of the whirling colours which evokes in us the memory of the still-life painting tra-
dition. This inspired a thought: when the allusions to these dried flowers meet with
the maelstrom of her strokes it seems as if the painter is striving to bring what is
already dry and ruined back from the dead. The motif of dried flowers further inten-
sifies the conflicting feelings that in a painting the colour never really dries. Its
splash preserves the fluidity through which our gaze wonders and into which it
finally immerses itself.

Andrej Medved

A net for the subject - Greillage

Bronze, terraced fortress
above town encircled by lamps on stalks suspended
like a Christmas tree ... and a pale blue long-necked swan with yellow beak ... which

dives in the pond with legs raised
In the air and white wings immersed under the water’s surface ... and
two white doves on a tree with mushroomy nests ... and in low palm-trees cone-like

yellow honeycomb ... At daybreak a bird which
thrusts itself into the leaves, for a fleeting moment, when it pushes into a dark bush
of scaly green. In the street trees with glowing red tulip blossoms

on tips of the smooth branches ... And with blooms
soft, smoky mists on a carpet of purplish sprouts ... And a bush
of sharp edges like a speared peacock with a neck of cobalt-blue and thickly

woven feathers ...

***

Milena Usenik

Milena’s open, “wounded” blossoming canvases are ... die sinnlich() Scheinen der
Idee, meaning = a sensual glow, glowing and shining, glittering, a notion of thought
as an Idea. A simple Idea, meaning it is simplified and freed of all peculiarities, cat-
egories, devoid of thinking: “mimicry” of Nature, ars naturae, however not in the
sense and meaning of the simple and literal mimesis, but as natura naturata and nat-
urans, the creative and created nature where the ideological boundary between the
Real and the Abstract is blurred. Milena’s nature is abstraction, meaning: detach-
ment, disengagement, distinctness of painting, the abstract of the artistic act. The act,
actus, in German Ereignis = happening and occurrence ... as in a creative appropri-
ation. Eigen means one’s own and appropriation, Eigentum in German is owner-
ship of riches, spiritual richness ... and of getting rich which now belongs exclusively
to the artist and her work of art, to her initial attentiveness and entirety.

This happening, the happening of an art work now means ownership, possession
of a “creative force” a sufficiency in the creative expression, an event destined to
be, a mission (like Geschick), a mission of creating something which belongs to all
the spiritual “workers” who express themselves through Feelings, experiences and

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observation ... The gaze. Here lies a difference, a basic difference between the “sub-
dued” gaze, dompe l'oeil ... and trompe l'oeil, which is a true illusion which
deceives us ... between a true and false look, between the outsmarted and the tame,
subdued look, and the gaze of an authentic creator, who places in front of us the
real inner image which “he (it) sees”... que ca (qui) voit ... And that what it sees is
not just a simple imitation of a situation, namely that what (she) sees, instead we
are given an insight into the artist’s soul, an inner view, which as Lacan says flows
through the veins of Desire ...

With her inner spirit – psyche Milena follows the outward, though essentially it is
the inner, the in;ner object, the pre-occurring, pre-real and parallel notions where
her Triebe, instincts, Wunsche, wishes and la jouissance = Pleasure are at work;
the pleasure of listening = “overhearing” the meaning and the subject of the
painter’s creation. I am listening to the meaning = j ouis sense ... in the sense of
what I paint, depict, therefore the Artwork is her only and unique Pleasure.

The transference of “crumbled” blooming flora is the universe and basis of Milena’s
art on the painting, the image ... the upgrading is colourfulness, the hue which is
her only and highest bet and Law and Vocation = destiny, which from the nothing-
ness of daily life’s riches is being whispered about by her hidden clandestine whis-
perer, an inner, mental talker ... He smuggles to Milena the artistic substantiality =
blossoming Flora as the only significance, mission and delight. Listening to this
smuggled message unconsciously in her every day life, there is just one notion and
an unconditional imperative ... one’s own reason for creating and for every artwork
... and “individual singularity” = Milena’s personality trait and quality = the acqui-
sition, acquiring of that in which she now enjoys.

But the smuggling of reality into her paintings and painting into her painting-clam
(clam – clandestine) is Milena’s destiny (le destine) now too. We know what the
image (vision as envision) of the clam/painting represents, the female sex ... Art is
the only woman that I love, Nietzsche ...

Arched surface ... in the breathing of a paper
canvas leaf ... And water in the depth under a cemented fountain ...
in the Sahara desert ... where a fig bush grows and yellow-white jasmine ...
blossoms on top

and beneath the branches of the wide-stretched tree. Memories
which we pass by in seconds, when the mossy surface undulates
to heavens, when sparrows ripple in thorny bushes of the midnight orchard.
And in the clearing

in suburb, on a yard with walls
which crack, as crack instantly the glass spheres ... at
bowling-green where a flock of sheep and dragon-cubs graze ...
At once and once for all

the round spikes interchange on a a merry-go-round which
leaps in the night as leap the wary dwarfs in the forest dwelling
in cellars and in the doorway, in rooms with canopies ... and in the attic
under the red-green

roof which shields the crowned snake on the pillow,
wrapped in a shirt of tattered yellow-red sawdust ...
The fenced dogs are lying down to rest ... and in the infernal engine of time
a bitch is barking

To colour now = Milena is exception(al) in Green which overflows the areas and
angles of the painting with its intensity, discolouring the emptiness and blind spots
on the horizon which is flat, “flattened” mono-dimensional. However “profondeur”
profoundness which is depend through the colour, the prehistoric depth which the
revived, living and pulsating flora carries within. And ... the incomparable Milena’s
Purple on canvas and on paper, so purple that it takes the breath away, that we
breathe and consume the colour which is like a Japanese cherry, an avenue of blos-
soming Japanese cherries. In this Milena is the one and only, Y a de Un, the
Nonpareil in colour application with all its layers, in painting on the surface and
underneath the veil, and epidermis and the “hymen” of the painting. Here Milena
is “la grand(e) Maitre” the great master, la maitre de bosquetaux. As little as possible
of red and of the red-hot, sunless orange and yellow so that in the painting the
countless (as yet, already ... and always) hues, iridescences and undulations
(full)fill the voids and intensify ... These paintings really have no voids, but there
remain obscurities and empty space-less di-gressions.

Therefore a “blooming-ness” as efflorescence, an indefinite web of flowering forms
in contrast to the defloration of the nature, objects and their relations which adheres
to another self-destructive artistic and existential un-artistic manner ...
Impressionism? Realism?? More than that ... an expanded Pointillism, enlarged
Tashisme where every bit = tache and point is an enlarged Whole, where every bit
of the painting is larger than the whole, some kind of enlargement and gigantism
of the microscopic natural world, and her basic form = primordial form is magnified
in the universe of Milena’s Image.

***

Into the curbs of the halls’ corners, into annoyance, into adoration ...
into crossbars of streets, into imposed floods ... Into the sweaty hides of multiplied
horses,
into the tails of animals stretched ... in the space, where you anticipate in the
insignificance of intent, in loudness,

with chosen permission, splendour
Of paintings ... in the nascency of a trail, glimmering rain, a frightened
gazelle ... Into the blinds, in neon light entrapped, in collages, in geometry of
designed crystals.

87Sobivanja

Emerik Bernard

Let us return to (M’s) pop art. Her pop art is based on lines, stripes as it is later
seen in the paintings of B. Reyl, which I ... in some unconscious state, compared
to the late period of Barnard’s painting. As if here both artists are “caught” in a
loop, which is actually a loop-knot, chaine-noeud, a chain-loop mesh which entan-
gles and catches the freed object (sujet as non-barre). The “construction” of
Bernard’s geometric webs coincides with Milena’s approach to pop art figures.
Figures are a Body, her early and his latest works are the unravelling of the mesh
in the body which spreads –extends into eternity, like the earth and sky ...
Universitatis of the image which continues in the painting, behind the painting,
images of Emerik and Milena who in principle are one and the same, the other and
different-in-the-same and the only weaving of the painting … which now and always
equalises the chromatic fund, meaning monochrome, flat (although diminished,
reduced to stripes-signs) colour weaving which supports the depictive cognition
caught in the network of undulating “externalised” strokes ... just as the object-
painter is caught into the web of the painting Seed … These paintings, these images
are like amoebas (i. e. ambh) wrinkled, amoebas-wrinkles in layers, separable, un-
wrinkled into the endless horizon and whose main characteristic is to repeat them-
selves, recur. In this lies the joy and its deficiency, entropy ... and libido = the
instinct of immortal life.

Doves in dust, fluttering their ashen
wings ... Like a twirling wheel which spins in vain, just like
the angels spin on the heavenly axis ... Just like the birds flutter on the iron wire
and the stone turns

in the cannon’s barrel ... and like the arrow
thrusts in to the bark and into Eucalyptus’ honey, defoliated
mite ... And like the starlings launch into the skin of reindeer. Springtime when
children

stick to the full moon at midnight hour ...
and a bright day that bursts above a blooming glade, just like the rabbit’s clothes
burst into the furry, vaporised air ... in a whirl which conceals the resinous under-
ground

river ... Like blind muskrats and dumb
mice bedew the giant’s palms and the complexion of a freezing Firebird in a
deep ditch ... with wiped faces and half closed eyes they rush into the darkness

of the night in a mysterious park. So that the cymbals, the pipes sound ... and
open the wounds in the veins of tree ... So that in their bone and flesh the yellow
black crows freeze.

The space has disappeared, (actually Bernard’s paintings were never truly illu-
sionistic as in a three-dimensional illusion) the act of painting which is increas-
ingly more abstract with rare reminiscences of the real mimetic model, which
has been “pushed out”, upgraded, “purified”, has become the most important
aspect.

The best of his works in the period from 2014– 2017 are those which convey
an “inner text”, the primordial art as such, the inner body of painting and fig-
urative manner as an immense web which “lurks” for definitions of form,
colour and space to “translate” them into the basic intelligible elements. This
is a disagreement of the canvas and figure; they are blurred, elongated and
scraped into bands, folds and symmetrical stripes. It is a “spreading” of lines
and outlines of an almost animalistic figure which seemingly falls, hangs, glides
in an askew line in an intangible liquid and airy space. The colour texture – the
pictorial “text”- summarises the figural body so that it no longer recognises the
outer marking. So the art is not upgraded with an ideology because the “soul”
of artistic geometry has prevailed. The painting is no longer predetermined
with meaning and contents; it is “delineated” and heteroclite. However it still
holds a kind of magnetism -and reminiscence- of the past ”imitational” mimetic
and symbolic functions; it still is – painting – a “sacral” weaving.

All the figurativeness: through this the figural position changes in “mazzoc-
chio” figuratively speaking; a blow of the visual artistic structure. As such “maz-
zocchio” shows itself /to us/ in Bernard’s works by “channelled” structures
and assumes the role of the basic, primal net which carries and supports every
single artistic denotation. An even and yet also expressive net of artistic textures
now pre-defines our gaze and the visual field of the painting. This almost stiff
“drapery” is a prerequisite to the painting’s space and figure after it conceals –
abolishes- perspective and establishes “another” scheme. Therefore the paint-
ing is an emblematic structure of gliding, undulating and dis-superpositioned
forms and space which is actually unreal. And where the figures and forms are
not palpable, meaning obvious, evident. In this way individual artistic mean-
ings and images along with their entire hagiography are disappearing through
the Schefferianic “referential game of dispersing the determiner”. The so-called
figurativeness is “in suspense”: the painting renounces the historic chromatic
value while it keeps the role of figure and “shape”. So the figurative status is
essential, the entropic system of the image where nothing is determined yet
while the determiner – the meaning – is still “divided”.

The entire body of the painting is corresponding to figural organism, which
modifies into a chromatic curtain. The painting becomes its own light, the light
of colour and stroke and artistic reminiscence. Self-affection, the image con-
verses with painting. Its own illumination and lighting. A divine but also ani-
malistic image – a monster which “takes upon itself” the whole history of its
possible and impossible past depictions. However, I believe, that the “mon-
ster” as we said, is actually not a “phantom”, a “freak” nor a “demon”, a

89Sobivanja

demonic allegory; actually it signifies a Sign, semeion /mega/, big Sign, big
Signal which marks, points, reveals /apparition as appearance/ Bernard’s
painting.

When all the conditions have been fulfilled /after Lacan/ then through the
process of re-discovering /Wiederzufinden/ of the missing, lost object we
behold the archaic, primal Form which steps out from the Thing as its primary
and foremost “exterior”; So the Thing is in the centre, but/still/ excluded, the
prehistoric Second as an original presentation alienated in the subconscious; it
means the since antiquity oppressed paining of all paintings of Bernard’s basic
Desire. As J. Lacan says: the Eye is returned to the eye, but the look reaches
further to the Second in the space of the subconscious and of desire. The look
exceeds the image, the look “astounds me in that it changes all perspectives,
all the aspects of my world; inasmuch from ground zero, where I stand it
arranges this world ... in a sort of web of organisms /underlined AM/ ... Is it
not clear, if the look here only reaches as far as this void object which is cor-
relative to the world of objectivity and can feel surprise, or to the object which
is carried by a function of desire? We can grasp the advantage of the look in
the function of desire only if we let ourselves into, if I may say so, the veins
through which the area of vision flows into the field of desire. “(J. Lacan, Four
Basic Concepts of Psychoanalysis).

And the abstracted, abstract Form of Bernard’s canvases is “the absolute
Second”, but not as the final solution and result, because the artist in this new
Millennium still searches for his painting of all paintings as the ultimate and
crucial aim of his “quest” /as Geschick after M. Heidegger/, his devotion to
the basic, primal Thing.

91Sobivanja

Življenjepisa avtorjev

Emerik Bernard

Emerik Bernard, rojen 22. septembra 1937 v Celju. Po opravljeni Šoli za
oblikovanje v Ljubljani (1955–1960) se je leta 1960 vpisal na Akademijo
likovnih umetnosti v Ljubljani (ALU) in leta 1964 diplomiral pri profesorju
Gabrijelu Stupici; pri istem profesorju je leta 1968 končal tudi specialko za
slikarstvo. Med letoma 1985 in 2007 je bil zaposlen na ALU, najprej kot
docent za risanje in slikanje, leta 1995 pa je bil izvoljen za rednega profesor-
ja. Živi in ustvarja v Logatcu in Ljubljani.

Nagrade:
1968 študentska Prešernova nagrada na Akademiji za likovno umetnost

v Ljubljani
1986 Župančičeva nagrada
1987 nagrada Prešernovega sklada za dela, razstavljena na Beneškem bienalu
1997 Prešernova nagrada za življenjsko delo
2001 Izvoljen med člane Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti kot

izredni član, od leta 2007 pa je redni član.

Milena Usenik

Milena Usenik se je rodila 9. septembra 1934 na Velikem Vrhu na Blokah.
Slikarstvo je študirala na Akademiji za likovno umetnost v Ljubljani, kjer je
leta 1965 pri prof. Maksimu Sedeju diplomirala in nato leta 1968 pri prof.
Gabrijelu Stupici končala še slikarsko specialko. S svojimi deli se je pred-
stavila na številnih samostojnih in skupinskih razstavah doma in v tujini. Živi
in ustvarja v Logatcu in Ljubljani.

Nagrade in priznanja:
1973 posebna pohvala na razstavi slovenskih likovnih umetnic v Umetnostnem

paviljonu Slovenj Gradec
1977 3. nagrada na natečaju za likovni osnutek Bloudkove značke in plakete
1993 priznanje,1. bienale male slike Mini prix Lucas ´93, Bled
1995 grand prix, 2. bienale male slike Mini prix Lucas ´95, Ljubljana

Biographies

Emerik Bernard
Emerik Bernard was born on September 22nd 1937 in Celje. After complet-
ing School for Design in Ljubljana (1955 – 1960) he entered the Academy
of Fine Arts in Ljubljana where he graduated in 1964 under Professor
Gabrijel Stupica. He continued his training with the same tutor to gain his
Masters degree in painting in 1968. From 1985 to 2007 he was a lecturer
at the Academy of Fine Arts, at first as assistant professor for drawing and
painting and since 1995 as a full professor. He lives and works in Logatec
and Ljubljana.
Milena Usenik
Milena Usenik was born on September 9th 1934 at Veliki vrh in Bloke. She
studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana from which she
graduated in 1965 with Professor Maksim Sedej and in 1968 she completed
her Master’s degree with ttor Gabrijel Stupica. She exhibited her works in
numerous individual and group exhibitions at home and abroad. She lives
and works in Logatec and Ljubljana.

93Sobivanja

Seznam razstavljenih del

List of Exhibited Works

Emerik Bernard:

1. Jašek, 1974, montaža-akril, 71 x 81,5cm
Shaft, 1974, assemblage-acrylic

2. Istrski kontrapost, 1984, akril-montaža, 240 x 180 cm
Istrian Contraposto, 1984, acrylic-assemblage

3. Romanov porton , 2007, akril, 150 x 330 cm
Roman’s Portal, 2007, acrylic

4. Pretakanje delov, 2012, akril-montaža, 180 x 149 cm
Flowing of Parts, 2012, acrylic-assemblage

5. Istran, 2013, akril-montaža, 90 x 80 cm
Istrian Man, 2013, acrylic-assemblage

6. Od navznoter navzven, 2014, akril – montaža, 130 x 110 cm
From Inside Out, 2014, acrylic-assemblage

7. Istrska kapelica, 2014, akril – montaža, 148 x 100 cm
Istrian Chapel , 2014, acrylic-assemblage

8. Robovi tvorijo polnost, 2015, akril – montaža, 150 x 86 cm
Edges Constitute Fullness, 2015, acrylic-assemblage

9. Trimorfen, 2015, akril, 149 x 310 cm
Three-amorphous, 2015, acrylic

10. Snov in geometrija I., 2015, akril – montaža, 141 x 151, 5 cm
Matter and Geometry I., 2015, acrylic - assemblage

11. Delitven, a tudi povezujoči poseg, 2015, akril, 130 x 271 cm
A Dividing-Uniting Procedure, 2015, acrylic

12. Čudežni ovoji, 2016, akril, 130 x 256 cm
Miraciulous Wrappings, 2016, acrylic

13. Pastelni triptih, 2016, akril, 138 x 270 cm
Pastel Tryptich, 2016, acrylic

14. Fernetiči, 2016, akril, 171 x 124 cm
Fernetiči, 2016, acrylic

15. Razlike v utripu celote I. III., 2016, akril, 130 x 271 cm
Differences in the Pulse of the Whole I. III., 2016, acrylic

16. Razlike v utripu celote II., 2016, akril, 130 x 90 cm
Differences in the Pulse of the Whole II., 2016, acrylic

17. Različno, a tudi prav, 2016, akril – montaža, 183 x 131 cm
Different but Also Right, 2016, assemblage-acrylic

18. Kotigin vrt II., 2016, akril – montaža, 207 x 190 cm
Kotiga´s Garden II., 2016, assemblage-acrylic

19. Kotigina ikona, 2016, akril – montaža, 97 x 53 cm
Kotiga´s Icon, 2016, assemblage-acrylic

20. Simbolično pregibanje, 2017, akril – montaža, 120 x 93 cm
Symbolical Bending, 2017. acrylic - assemblage

Milena Usenik:

1. Spomin na Melbourne, 1973, akril na platno, 230 x 320 cm
Memory of Melbourne, 1973, acrylic on canvas

2. Pentlja III., 1975, akril na platno, 180 x 120 cm
Bow III., 1975, acrylic on canvas

3. Pasat, 1975, akril na platno, 120 x 80 cm
Passat, 1975, acrylic on canvas

4. Istrski baladur, 1986, olje na platno, 110 x 180 cm
Istrian Staircase, 1986, acrylic on canvas

5. Rumeni baladur, 1993, olje na platno, 150 x 150 cm
Yellow Staircase, 1993, acrylic on canvas

6. Moulin Rouge, 2005, akril na platno, 150 x 130 cm
Moulin Rouge, 2005, acrylic on canvas

7. Ruj, 2005, akril na platno, 145 x 135 cm
Smoke Tree, 2005, acrylic on canvas

8. Tojeto, 2005, akril na platno, 180 x 170 cm
Thatisit, 2005, acrylic on canvas

9. Makkima, 2005, akril na platno, 150 x 150 cm
Makkima, 2005, acrylic on canvas

10. Pentlja VI., 2005, akril na platno, 120 x 100 cm
Bow VI., 2005, acrylic on canvas

11. Prečrtana, 2006, akril na platno, 150 x 150 cm
Crossed Out, 2006, acrylic on canvas

12. Pajčolan, 2007, akril na platno, 180 x 170 cm
Veil, 2007, acrylic on canvas

13. Sence, 2008, akril na platno, 180 x 170 cm
Shadows, 2008, acrylic on canvas

14. Zamik, 2008, akril na platno, 150 x 150 cm
Shift, 2008, acrylic on canvas

15. Bucika, 2010, akril na platno, 170 x 130 cm
Pin, 2010, acrylic on canvas

16. Svetloba in sence, 2011, akril na platno, 150 x 150 cm
Light and Shadows, 2011, acrylic on canvas

17. Hladen dotik, 2015, akril na platno, 180 x 170 cm
Cold Touch, 2015, acrylic on canvas

18. Triptih/Triptych –
Spomin, 2015, akril na platno, 170 x 115 cm
Memory, 2015, acrylic on canvas
V tej barvni luči, 2012, akril na platno, 170 x 115 cm
In This Coloured Light, 2012, acrylic on canvas
Nasmeh, 2015, akril na platno, 170 x 115 cm
Smile, 2015, acrylic on canvas

19. Oljka, 2017, akril na platno, 159 x 105 cm
Olive Tree, 2017, acrylic on canvas

95Sobivanja

Emerik Bernard I Milena Usenik
Sobivanja I Cohabitations

Ljubljanski grad – Palacij in Stanovska dvorana /
Ljubljana Castle – Palatium and Estates Hall
5. julij - 27. avgust 2017 / July 5 – August 27 2017

Izdal in založil /published by: Ljubljanski grad, zanj/ for the publisher:
Mateja Avbelj Valentan
Organizacija razstave / organisation of the exhibition:
mag. Marko Arnež, dr. Tina Pleško
Avtorji besedil / texts by: dr. Tadej Bajd, dr. Miklavž Komelj, Andrej Medved
Izbor del in postavitev razstave / selection of works and exhibition set up:
Milena Usenik, Emerik Bernard, mag. Marko Arnež

Prevod v angleščino /English translation: Nina Zelenko
Jezikovni pregled /editing: Dušanka Pene
Korekture /proof reading: mag. Barbara Kalan

Fotografije / photography: Arne Brejc, Boris Gaberščik, Dejan Habicht, Marko Tušek
in osebni arhiv umetnikov / and the artist’s photo archive
Grafično oblikovanje / design: Marko Tušek
Tisk / print: Tiskarna GTO Košir
Naklada / edition: 300 izvodov / copies
Cena / price: 5,00 eur

Ljubljana, julij / July 2017

Razstava in katalog sta nastala v sodelovanju z Galerijo Prešernovih nagrajencev
Kranj. / The exhibition and the catalogue were organised in cooperation with the
Prešeren Award Winners Gallery in Kranj.



Cena / price: 5,00 eur