Page 6 - TOP 10 CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS - Volume VI

elements that enter from the broader outer space of the field into
its inner space, only those pertaining to pure fine arts allow pain-
tings to become “objects of the eye turned inward”, as the author
wrote in 1993, at the occasion of the exposition entitled ”World
and Consciousness in the Ecstasy of Sublimation, Limitation and
Autonomization”, referring to Plotinus’s gnostic hypothesis: “He
SPIRITUALITY OF MATERIAL ABSENCE will be that which he sees”. Rimele’s works exhibited at that time
point, in an auto-referential manner, to the traces of the creative
“We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of process, to the materiality of the pigments used, to the format,
shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against the which means only to the material presence of the painting itself,
other creates. A phosphorescent jewel gives off its glow and color freed from any resemblance: the image without similarity. Nothing
in the dark and loses its beauty in the light of the day. Were it not about them points to a spatial dimension or alludes to anything with
for the shadow, there would be no beauty.” a form, anthropomorphic, biomorphic, or otherwise. Everything
Jun’ichiro – Tanizaki, In the Praise of Shadows happens in the complete flatness of two dimensions; the paintings
are like abstract bodiless organisms which reflect the creative
“One person knows how to carve the sound of water from a granite energy invested in them to those who feel and accept its frequency.
cube; another person cannot do it.” These images cannot be admired in the usual way: they allow only
Oto Rimele co-experience, encouraging spectators to dive into themselves,
into their own souls.
Oto Rimele started to assert himself in the Slovene fine arts in the
beginning of the 1990s, a time of strong postmodern endeavors Rimele’s early works of that time approached the ideal of Byzantine
that tried to suppress everything that did not meet their principles, and Orthodox icons, from their victory over iconoclasm to
a statement particularly true in Slovenia. Perhaps this situation, in Malevic’s iconoclasm over them. Namely, the destiny of images
addition to Rimele’s personal depth and the traits of his character, in Christianity in practice most eloquently illustrates the dialectic
contributed to the fact that, after leaving the academy, his work relationship between matter and spirit. At the very beginning of
simultaneously took several directions. Since his first paintings, the ten Commandments in Exodus it is written: “You shall not
which already showed a tendency towards objectification, Rimele make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that
has accurately expressed in words his theoretical starting points, is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the
which have been published several times as individual essays or water under the earth.” (Exodus 20:4). Christianity at first adopted
as statements in various interviews. His thoughts show not only the Jewish prohibition, in the conviction that images mislead
clear epistemological bases, but also a consistency carried over people into polytheistic idolatry, into the worship of visible and
into practice, something rarely seen in other artists. After twenty palpable objects, leading them to reject the free and invisible God
years of work, we can observe how his initial ideas have been from Sinai. This is why the Byzantine rulers prevented creation
upgraded and visualized into what Rimele has defined as “paintings of images. However, images also had their defenders, who used
of the consciousness of the mind”. the highest allegory in their defense: the sky lowered down to the
earth when God’s word became an image. It assumed a human
Rimele was already thinking about matter and spirit with discursive face, in which all believers can unite to discover the invisible God.
philosophical seriousness as a postgraduate student two decades As Saint Basil the Great says, the Son comes from the Father; he
ago at the Academy of Fine Arts, a point which seems to have been is his image, the perpetual reflection of his essence. Just as the
a symbolic prophetic announcement. This topic is the origin of all word is the image of the thought of the heart, so the Son (Logos)
cosmogonies which guided and still guide human deeds and ideas is the image of the Father.
at all times and in all parts of the world, including the Greco-Roman
and the Judeo-Christian cosmogonies on which our civilization is It was not long before artistic images, including those of Christ,
based. When at the beginning the Creator created the sky and the were made from concrete matter, the latter being perceived by
earth, in whatever form he did this, he created a basic junction of the most influential thinkers of the time, the Neo-Platonists, as
the two elements at their very disjunction. This disjunction defines distant from God and devoid of his presence. Yet religion needed
the Platonic or the Neo-Platonic unison of the corporeal and the images in order to spread its material and spiritual influence. The
spiritual, which can never be attained, as well as the endeavors of renowned theologian of the Eastern Church St John of Damascus
Christian mystics to achieve the spiritual by denying the material. wrote three defenses of their use in the 8th century. He believed
At that time, Rimele was creating distinctively material paintings that material images were necessary not only because they
which resembled three-dimensional independent objects, and paid enabled the analogy between the model, which was non-material
special attention to thick applications of color. He prepared them and thus invisible to the human eye, and his visual depiction, but
himself from organic substance through a ritualistic procedure. This also because with the credible image of a saint, the holy image
work demanded skills of a craftsman, such as Plato’s carpenter, and assumed also a certain degree of holiness and God’s mercy of the
knowledge of chemistry on the compatibility of certain elements, model himself. As the materiality of the image was also created by
and directed Rimele’s idea towards two solutions of the original God, and as his mercy was breathed into the image – along with
question. One solution was directed towards the alchemic search the secret of the incarnation, in the case of Christ’s images – this
of pre-origin, of the primal matter (prima materia), which included materiality needs to be respected. Thus a man does not worship
the spirit, and the other towards the convictions of theosophers, the materiality in an icon, but its creator, who incarnated himself
such as Rudolf Steiner, Uspensky or Madame Blavatsky, which for humanity. Therefore all the economy of salvation comes from
were based on one’s recognition and acceptance of the unity of matter, as sacred as it may be, such as the body of Christ itself
matter and spirit. or its representations in which the sacredness of the holy body
is present, with its essence being transferred, as in the Eucharist.
The eminent, eternal existential and philosophical question is of
great importance for an artist, particularly a painter who decides to For the destiny of Christian iconography and western art in
renounce all imitative, narrative, descriptive and other allusive and particular, this was a fatal turn towards the belief that for the
illusive factors that could direct perception away from the image understanding of the highest truths, it is not only the preached
as an independent entity. Among the different image-forming or written word that is necessary. Its spirit can also be imprinted