Viktor Daldon

Time Out

Viktor Daldon's Time out signifies a state in which all of us were immersed until recently – the unusual standstill of mechanisms of daily grind – the pause that relativised many things and perhaps even opened some new horizons. It also signifies the possibility of a repeated time out in unpredictable circumstances and insecure times, as well as the autobiographic description of author's own artistic practice – exiting from existential codes into work environment and spaces of painting.

Viktor Daldon's poetics is primarily characterised by urban charge of his paintings in which fragmentation of motifs, layering of space, 'painting' of words and translating syncopations and rhythms of jazz and its contemporary varieties into visual art systematically occur. The artist sometimes uses templates and wallpaper patterns, writes uniform letters and completely eliminates the element of painting by using monochrome surfaces, while sometimes he does just the opposite as he fiercely works the canvas – splattering it with paint, using intense brush movements, painting with his hands, scratching and carving the painting surface. In his works from the series of painted 'swear words', for example, he practiced self-censorship by stripping letters of their shape and using layers of paint, thus transposing what is said into the sphere of signs. For the purposes of the exhibition in the stone environment of Sponza Palace, the artist has selected mostly larger, as yet unexhibited works created in the period from 2004 to 2020; in addition to paintings dominated by black and white, those with prevailing large surfaces of colour are also displayed.

The exhibition in Sponza will be open to visitors every day from 9 am to 9 pm until 25 August.