Motionless, timeless, still, the absence of anything living transports us into the world of the hypothetical. Where nothing is reflected and where everything is possible. And these speechless spaces are interrupted by small remote fishing villages — these hyper-realistic scenes lacking a protagonist remind the viewer that to exaggerate in one direction is the same as to make great strides into another. In Zvonimir Mihanović’s landscapes it has either just dawned or it is getting dark: he is a painter of the first and last rays of light, a portraitist of a world which still belongs to the night. Mihanović’s dozing realism with its attributive and declarative ‘hyper’ is achieved along the lines of Dali’s paradox: Paintings are the handmade photographs of dreams.
Igor Zidić
Director, Modern Gallery, Zagreb
Editor, Matica Hrvatska, Publishing