Ivana Gagić Kicinbači — Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

https://ivanagagickicinbaci.com.hr/

The work of Ivana Gagić Kicinbači stands at the precipice where materiality and transcendence converge. This Croatian artist, who navigates the liminal space between drawing, visual poetry, and digital printmaking, produces a body of work that does not merely invite observation but rather demands contemplation. The essence of her artistry is deeply rooted in the metaphysical, resonating with a pursuit of inner freedom, an engagement with temporality, and the revelation of the sublime through matter.

Her artistic inquiry is not one of passive depiction but rather of profound excavation. It is an intuitive process that both acknowledges and subverts traditional understandings of form and medium. The tension in her work is not merely gestural but intellectual, evoking the tradition of conceptual minimalism while simultaneously engaging with the expressiveness of materiality. In this regard, she situates herself within an art historical lineage that includes modernists such as Cy Twombly, Paul Klee, and Franz Kline, yet her language is distinctly her own, deeply personal and philosophically charged.

Gagić Kicinbači’s statement reveals an artist deeply attuned to the interplay between the corporeal and the spiritual. Her insistence that art can function as an unveiling of the transcendent echoes the inquiries of abstract expressionists and conceptual artists alike. Unlike traditional draughtspeople whose line merely delineates form, she treats drawing as an epistemological tool—one that maps the tensions between existence and perception, presence and absence, silence and expression.

Her academic rigor, particularly her PhD thesis Drawing in Contemporary Art as a Medium for Expressing the Transcendent, reinforces the philosophical underpinnings of her work. This is not drawing for drawing's sake but a relentless search for knowledge. The artworks serve as thresholds to the unknown, where meaning is simultaneously constructed and dissolved within the very ink that stains the surface. It is a practice rooted in a paradox: the more her lines appear abstract, the more they articulate something fundamentally human. This duality underscores her creative process, an interplay between knowing and unknowing, presence and void.

Gagić Kicinbači’s oeuvre is defined by a synthesis of techniques that transcend medium-based constraints. In No Comfort in the Flesh (2024), a digital print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Satin, the artist orchestrates a collision of visceral line work and compositional tension, creating a tableau of existential unease. The fragmented body appears entangled within its own contours, suggesting the inevitability of corporeal limitation in contrast to the boundlessness of the psyche. There is an echo of Francis Bacon’s tormented figures, yet Gagić Kicinbači introduces an ethereal ambiguity that is uniquely her own.

The Drawing Diaries, such as Note (2024), expand on this dialogue by incorporating a visual poetics that oscillates between calligraphy and abstraction. The elongated inked gestures form a syntax of their own—an asemic writing that speaks beyond linguistic structures. Here, the artist is in conversation with postmodern explorations of semiotics, evoking the works of Henri Michaux and Japanese calligraphy traditions.

One of the most striking aspects of her technique is the materiality of ink itself. In works like Drawing diary, an excerpt from a visual poetry artist book No. 7 (2024), the ink bleeds into the handmade paper, forming organic disruptions in its linear composition. The rawness of the material process lends a visceral immediacy to the work, reminding the viewer of the unpredictable nature of creative impulse.

In works such as Venice (2023) and Struggle (2024), both digital prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Satin, the artist embraces the fluidity of movement and dissolution of form. These works speak to an ontological questioning of time and space. The swirling dynamism within the compositions suggests an ungraspable temporality, an idea mirrored in Blessed are Those Who Endure in Peace (2022), where ephemeral white forms, reminiscent of vapor or smoke, exist within a void-like expanse of darkness. This duality of light and shadow recalls the chiaroscuro explorations of Caravaggio but with an abstraction that elevates it beyond mere visual drama into a conceptual investigation of endurance and resilience.

A particularly striking spatial intervention is evident in Drawing (2024), an Indian ink wash on printmaking paper exhibited as a freestanding sculpture. By liberating the drawn form from the two-dimensional plane, Gagić Kicinbači constructs a dynamic experience for the viewer—a physical embodiment of the very tensions she explores within her paper-based works. Similarly, Story from the Beginning (2019) stretches ink across a monumental expanse, utilizing scale as a means to engulf the viewer within its gestural intensity.

The interplay between visibility and obscurity, a recurring theme in her work, is masterfully exemplified in Archer(2018), a woodcut in a wooden frame with LED lighting. The juxtaposition of the ancient method of woodcut with the contemporary introduction of LED light underscores her engagement with time and technology. By illuminating certain segments of the composition, Gagić Kicinbači emphasizes the act of revelation, inviting the viewer to decipher what is seen and, perhaps more importantly, what remains concealed.

Hommage for Love (2024) offers an emotionally charged, almost visceral engagement with color, deviating from the monochromatic tendencies present in much of her oeuvre. Here, red functions not merely as an aesthetic device but as an emotional conduit—a signal of passion, suffering, and devotion. This work serves as a reminder that for all her intellectual and conceptual depth, Gagić Kicinbači remains, at her core, a profoundly emotive artist.

Ivana Gagić Kicinbači’s work is a testament to the enduring power of drawing as a philosophical medium. In an era where digital saturation often numbs perception, her work insists upon the necessity of slow looking, of introspection, of communion with form and mark. She does not depict reality; she questions its very foundations, unearthing the tensions between body and spirit, silence and utterance, absence and presence.

Her ability to transcend traditional media and reimagine drawing as sculpture, installation, and digital expression sets her apart within contemporary practice. There is a quality of the sublime in her oeuvre, a confrontation with the ineffable that compels the viewer not just to see but to experience.

As we stand before her works, we do not merely witness an artist creating marks upon paper—we bear witness to an intuitive dialogue with the infinite. Gagić Kicinbači reminds us that, at its most profound, art is not an object but an event, an occurrence that unfolds within the mind and body of the beholder. Her work, like all great art, leaves us with more questions than answers—and therein lies its brilliance.

When we stand before her creations, we are not merely looking at an artist placing lines, strokes, and impressions onto a surface; we are witnessing something far more profound—an intimate, almost transcendental conversation between the artist and the vast, ineffable forces of intuition, emotion, and the infinite unknown. Each gesture, each delicate or bold movement of her hand, becomes a trace of something greater, a visual record of a dialogue that exists beyond language, beyond rational explanation. Her work does not simply occupy space; it exists as an event in time, an unfolding moment of artistic becoming that extends beyond the boundaries of the physical medium and into the realm of perception, interpretation, and feeling.

Gagić Kicinbači reminds us that, at its most essential and profound, art is not an object to be owned, categorized, or understood in rigid terms. Rather, it is a phenomenon—an act of creation that continues to evolve long after the artist has completed their role. It is something that happens within us as viewers, a living experience that shifts, deepens, and expands the more we allow ourselves to engage with it. True art resists easy comprehension; it does not seek to provide definitive answers or guide us toward a singular conclusion. Instead, it challenges, unsettles, and provokes, inviting us into a space of contemplation where our own thoughts, memories, and emotions become part of the artistic experience itself.

Her work, like all great art, leaves us with more questions than answers—and that is precisely where its brilliance lies. It compels us to return, to look again, to search for meaning in the spaces between forms, in the echoes of movement captured on the surface. And perhaps, in that endless pursuit, we come to realize that the beauty of art is not in what it tells us outright, but in the infinite possibilities it leaves open for us to discover.

By Marta Puig

Editor Contemporary Art Curator Magazine