MA DE – Iva Körbler

The first thought that came to me when encountering the works of Eugen Varzić was that these paintings are not “just” masterfully crafted portraits and scenes, but rather a complex process of entering and staging a particular portrait template on the blank surface of the canvas. The artist’s insistence on showing fragments of the drawing and painting process, where we follow how a portrait gradually takes shape from the drawing foundation and is filled with color, carries a multi-layered symbolism and metaphor. This is not merely a conscious unveiling or lifting the curtain on the secrets of painting technique; it has an almost ritualistic analogy – the people he portrays gradually emerge before us, to simplify it as much as possible, they rise from the darkness while still remaining in it, some strongly and resolutely turning toward the light, while others bear the scars of earthly existence as permanent marks that cannot be erased in this material dimension of being. They seem to connect light and darkness, one part of them in limbo, while another part of their being is turned toward the promise of eternal life.

That was my first experience with Eugen’s paintings, and one of my initial associations was with the film saga Underworld. Not just because of the stylization of certain images, but because of the pronounced energy of duality between good and evil, which we have increasingly felt in recent years. Then I recalled the film We Children from Bahnhof Zoo, as well as the works and films of Clive Barker, and various other realms and dimensions around us that we don’t necessarily need to know about. Places where people suffer, fight their demons, or where, at some point, they were forced to betray themselves. I was actually struck by the intensity of emotions and accumulated experiences that the painter conveyed, or brought to the surface, in individual portraits, which I believe is also a very psycho-emotional and physically demanding process for the artist himself. Serious painting is no joke, and, to paraphrase Zlatko Keser, it leaves consequences on the artist. But, at this moment of professional affirmation, Varzić is fully aware that painting is a calling and that you cannot easily avoid your path. I can even hear the voice of his mother whispering to him, “Come on / what’s all this for?” as if to suggest, what was all this for? Varzić’s strength lies in the fact that he transformed his mother’s love, which in older generations of women was expressed through the emotion and state of fear, into pure love through painting, but I will return to that later.

Many people at this moment are struggling to preserve and retain their humanity, but also their souls, and these battles are not easy. So when critic Vinicije B. Lupis associates Varzić’s work with so-called mystical realism, we cannot deny the closeness of Catholic mysticism, especially the possible subtle infiltration of the artist during his stays in Spain, where, given their cultural tradition, one cannot become a neo-geo painter overnight, and where Catholic mysticism, developed over centuries, can simply be “downloaded” from the cloud and felt on the streets of the cities. I also sense Spanish artistic influences in Varzić’s use of color, in his evident love for complementary pairs of colors that are characteristic of Spanish Mannerism and Baroque.

The ease of bravura with which Eugen Varzić creates his works, on the morphological level of hyperrealism, is a necessary prerequisite for embedding other, more complex layers of metaphors, states, and emotions in the paintings. We can also speak of a kind of “painting with a key,” where each viewer, regardless of the painting’s title, will see layers that they themselves have experienced in theory or practice throughout life.

If you are hypersensitive or hyper-empathetic, many of Eugen’s paintings, due to their high degree of naturalism, will be difficult to observe for a long time, especially the eyes of the people, in which the artist has truly conveyed fragments of the soul, emotional, and perhaps even karmic imprints. However, he has done this deliberately, to jolt us out of our post-COVID lulled, dulled senses, and lack of empathy for those around us.

But not everything is dark and hopeless, on the contrary; one should give a chance to the artist’s series of motifs related to the mother, motherhood, woman, female creation in this dimension of existence – with a certain pantheistic resonance of Creation (which is feminine in gender), and which creates all life around us, from the plant and animal kingdoms to humankind. There is both a protective and destructive aspect of Creation. In the artist’s depictions of women and mothers, it feels as if Time itself is trapped, warning us not to play with the gift of life that has been given to us.

We live in a time of deceptions, illusions, and masks, where, by their profession or status, many people who should be positive figures and humbly serve the welfare of humanity are unmasked as villains, even servants of darker dominions. At the same time, those with whom we would never want to sit together in public transport, a café, or a cinema, or with whom we generally wouldn’t want to be seen in public, are revealed in certain wondrous moments as wounded but empathetic and gentle positive figures whose humanity has not been destroyed or broken. These times were long foretold, regardless of what one believes or does not believe. The delicate edge of neutrality on which Eugen Varzić operates in this spiritual context opens up a broad spectrum of interpretative possibilities for every viewer of his works because no dogma is packaged within the artist’s cycles. He is interested in emotional purity, which very often almost automatically transforms into something more sublime.

In the faces of the wounded and tormented, there often hides the greatest love and longing for Heaven, just as in the face of the most beautiful woman or man, one can feel a deep darkness in their eyes. Many writers and philosophers have said this in similar ways before, but this is also my original, personal experience. Because Eugen’s paintings mirror these soul puzzles.

Iva Körbler