“It should look fun but it’s not real” Austrian artist, Rade Petrasevic (b. 1982), said of the compositions and surroundings in his paintings. 

Where is Everybody? brings together a selection of oil paintings on peva (shower curtain) of figures entangled in impossible positions, navigating an imaginary space either alone or with another body. Petrasevic composes his scenes with uniform brushstrokes and uses a strangely jarring palette of colours. His gestures are graphic and direct, lending a disruptive and yet clear language to his paintings. For this exhibition at ALMA ZEVI Celerina, Petrasevic’s two metre by two metre pevas have been pinned to wooden structures, designed and produced in collaboration with PS:studio, creating a navigable architectural space that counteracts the artist’s imagined scenarios. 

Naked, intertwining figures in Petrasevic’s paintings at first look engaged in sexual and desired communications. But looking closer, the viewer can see limbs interweaving into absurd, impossible lattices. Some of these points of contact seem unwanted, rather than invited touches, pokes and strokes. There are moments like these in all of the artist’s paintings: nude figures meeting one another or interacting with creatures and plants with what could be intimacy or resistance.

Petrasevic has painted with graphic lines since 2014, when he began to play with oil paint on a residency in Los Angeles. At the time he had been using felt markers on paper to exaggerate flatness in his work. Petrasevic never had the patience to wait for oil to dry, but after experimenting with markers he applied the same technique with oil. As there was no overlaying of material, just a single line of paint, it dried quickly. 

This is the artist's first solo show with ALMA ZEVI. Petrasevic received his B.F.A. from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna and Bezalel Academy of Fine Arts, Jerusalem and has recently exhibited at Friedman Benda, New York; The Breeder, Athens; Galerie Charim, Vienna and Christine König Galerie, Vienna.