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About the works of Markus Kravanja

In an unmistakable way, Markus Kravanja shows his people in quiet moments, when looks and gestures are the only form of communication. In doing so, he succeeds in reflecting the feelings of these people in their large eyes, thus providing a glimpse into their inner selves.

These are people of an urban society, predominantly young women, whose appearance is widely considered worthy of imitation in today's Western world. The male protagonists in Kravanja's oeuvre also follow the dictates of fashion, many wearing elegant suits. But Kravanja is not primarily concerned with the zeitgeist, but with the attempt to discover and expose the eternal, the timeless, the elemental in the present. The extensive renunciation of the shaping of individual facial features also raises the picture's message to a level of greater generality. Kravanja says: "I am concerned with the human being, as a thinking and feeling being, isolated and in confrontation with his environment consisting of other people, animals, objects, landscapes."

The protagonists are moved by their thoughts and the viewers are inspired by them to think. And so the actual picture arises in their minds and leads them to the most diverse conjectures about the outcome of the depicted situation. Everyday objects in an unusual way of representation cause an effect of alienation, puzzling picture components strengthen the incentive to look for the content outside the picture and thus to complete it.

Markus Kravanja's pictures raise questions. He rarely offers solutions, leaving sensations and interpretations to the viewer. In this regard Kravanja says: "Whoever wants to get involved should also be able to guess that something else could be hiding behind the beautiful facade, something darker, mysterious. My characters are bearers of secrets."

From: Maria KRAVANJA, "Game of Life - Weiren Zheng & Markus Kravanja", 2013.