Atelier & Gallery Ostrman
An artist who effortlessly, simply, and playfully takes on the responsibility of laying out his obsessions and worldview before the public, patiently nurturing artistic imagination and the drive to engage through art—while revealing a deep sensitivity and concern for the world he inhabits—that is Tomislav Ostrman.
His art is based on exploring contemporary society, encouraging the public to actively perceive and participate. He emerges as an artist who actively engages with the time in which he exists through his artistic expression. He comments on it with irony, ambiguity, but also with explicitness and childlike honesty. His paintings are imaginative and unconventional, creatively playful, and unburdened by the need to follow avant-garde movements.
In the spirit of postmodernism, which rejects artistic movements and styles and often relies on individual personalities—the so-called nomads—we can also view Ostrman’s work. His art is characterized by intermediality, montage, and diverse material structures, ranging from tangible objects (tablecloths, plastic discs, plates, etc.) to relief elements and pure two-dimensional paintings. His forms of expression are varied: classical easel painting, painting-installation, shallow relief, sculpture, and even performance.
His work is a fusion of the trivial and the artistic discovery of new forms and content; from the most banal things, he extracts transcendental qualities, bringing visual elements into a new context. The works are the result of a clearly crystallized idea—an imagined ideal world in which love, as the highest category, shapes other value systems, layering them into an intriguing visual narrative. Infusing not only the space of the painting but also the environment in which it exists with cheerfulness, Ostrman leaves an impression of playfulness and draws the viewer into an adventure, into a wondrous world of innocent narration. The deciphering and interpretation of the images are aided by witty titles. These set the tone and are the key to understanding the visual stagings through which the author rejects classical methods of imitating reality. The paintings are filled with stylized figures, treated with intense, pure colors and the language of basic geometric shapes. They function like frames torn from a cartoon or a joyful children's story.
The drawing is simplified, placed in some indeterminate spatial relationships with a hierarchy of forms governed by a new kind of lawfulness. Based on a certain (aforementioned) narrativity, it serves the interpretation of the motif itself—that is, the concept that inspires it—in service of the theme that, in Tomislav's rich imagination, has crystallized as an idea for a visual story.
With a pronounced sense of structure and the use of visual elements and tools, Ostrman skillfully transforms abstract forms into a clear visual sign, building his narrative on recognizable, archetypal symbolism. The central motif of Ostrman's visual code is the character Fućkalica, a sailor who has already secured him recognition. This symbol represents movement, the discovery of the new and unknown, but also a character whose name contains one form of nonverbal communication that Ostrman explores through his art. He is depicted abstractly, composed of geometric elements: a horizontal grid of blue-and-white stripes and circles representing the main facial features. From the playful treatment of his body, it seems as though all the other elements of the painting are derived (the background is often treated with a striped grid).
In his latest cycle, Ostrman has completed his utopia with a female character—Žveglice—thus making the image of a perfect world of love whole. New paintings often emerge on or over the old ones, forming a meaningful unity with them and clarifying Tomislav's worldview. He places his own work within a context of complex, connotative meanings, proving that an artistic creation must be rooted in an idea and an ethical system. Tomislav Ostrman is an example of a successful, exhibited, and market-oriented artist who, at the age of 32, has an enviable number of exhibitions behind him and is currently showcasing his work in the United States.
However, his works can in no way be classified as commercial products. The works of this young painter, currently pursuing a doctoral study at the Academy of Fine Arts (ALU) in Zagreb, are artistically compelling pieces with a distinctive visual language. Carried by purity of expression, simplicity, and joy, they create a tangible vision of a different reality in which the profane and the witty, the everyday and the artistic, coexist in a skillful symbiosis.