Galerie Claude Lemand

PORTRAITS OF THE-NON-EXISTENT-BIRD - VLADIMIR VELICKOVIC.
Claude Lemand.

The Birds of Vladimir Velickovic.

The crow is the only bird rep­re­sented in the uni­verse of Vladimir Velickovic. No dove of peace or faithful love, no beau­tiful or sym­pa­thetic real or legendary birds. For Claude Aveline’s poem, the artist painted a mag­nif­i­cent and pow­erful tondo: a fire in the dis­tance, a mas­sacre of humans on the left, a circle of crows on the right, around a black pit. Presented at the Grand Palais and then in the exhi­bi­tion at the city of Issoudun Museum, this work is now part of the Claude & France Lemand Donation to the Museum of the Institut du monde arabe in Paris, where it was exhib­ited it in 2018-2019.

Velickovic’s uni­verse has always been vio­lent, punc­tu­ated by images of torn bodies, des­o­late land­scapes and aggres­sive ani­mals. Death is omnipresent. His palette is lim­ited to black, gray, white and blood red. His raven is a vul­ture with a beak and claws cov­ered by blood. He is relent­less on man to finish off the wounded and devour the dead. His crow is a symbol of the exe­cu­tioner man. For him, hatred, tor­ture and the instinct for destruc­tion and death char­ac­terize the human race. Life is hell.

When he rein­ter­preted the Issenheim altar­piece by Mathias Grünewald, he retained only the detail of the cen­tral part of The Crucifixion. In Velickovic’s work, there is no hope, no travel else­where, no dreams, only night­mares. No escape, no peaceful and wel­coming country ... or beyond.