Ivan Yovanovich Commentary

The Drawers - Ivan Yovanovich Commentary written by Julie Oakes

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An Exotic Erotic Christmas, Dec 9 - Jan 11, 2007

With a masculine urge towards tactility, Ivan Yovanovich comes to grip with detritus. His choices of found objects are substantial, no floating garbage or airy remnants of distracted littering but weighty adamant, stubborn substances. The work inspires a gut reaction like the raw sexuality of young men whose strengths are fueled by healthy hormones and irrepressible appetites. There is a staking at place, a claiming of territory whereby the art pieces, especially when lying on the floor, exhibit an uncouth, immodest, stiff surrender that begs to be managed.

Feminine and masculine are both present for although the relationship to physiognomy is more often female with the crevices between limbs being similar to vaginal orifices, the material comes from the masculine world. The pieces inspire rough handling. It is partially the choice of the found object, the shape of the wood, that suggest that it is most reasonable to hoist the piece up by the crotch, an implied rudeness that Yovanovich exemplifies with hints to bondage practices by dressing the wood in harnesses originally meant for domestic beasts. The suggestion of female genitalia , either left as natural as they were found or rouged like the nether lips of a brothel mistress, insinuate sado-masochistic acts. The studded messages, “stripper” or strip her” further the invitation to manhandle and engage in a 'debaucherous' celebration. That the wood is shaggy with weathered wear and splinters apparent, creates the sense that to fornicate with this wooden woman, sans identity other than gender, would be to yield to a lusty moment so intense that it would beget destruction rather than new life. And to offer these found objects, barely manipulated up as 'art' further challenges the relationship that humans have to objects and the craft of the artist to historical forms of art making.

A cross between an urban inventor and contemporary allegorist, Ivan interacts with intensity and serves up an intellectually complex premise that even truncated, dead trees, can lead to arousal.