Dejan Dukic’s paintings embrace abstraction and material experimentation, blurring the boundary between control and chance. Rather than applying paint to the front of the canvas, he works from the back, pushing pigment through the fibers, allowing it to emerge organically. This inversion disrupts traditional notions of painting as a window to another world, emphasizing instead the physicality of the medium itself.

His process recalls Lucio Fontana’s radical slashes but replaces violence with fluidity, as oil paint seeps, accumulates, and forms unpredictable textures. Influenced by theories of non-human agency, Dukic relinquishes artistic dominance, letting material dictate its own form. His work resonates with historical discussions on tactility in art, from Anni Albers’ rejection of visual supremacy to Amy Sillman’s reflections on the sensory weight of pigments.

In a digital age that detaches us from physical experience, Dukic’s paintings reassert the importance of touch, material presence, and artistic cohabitation with the world. His subtle yet radical inversion challenges the traditional hierarchy of painting, favoring play, experimentation, and an ethos of letting go.

— Excerpt from the text ‘Inversion’, by Àngels Miralda, 2019