Vade Retro

by Peter Mlakar

A bizarre animal? What does it symbolize and what does it argue and what temptation does it lead us into? This deer is gazing at you, luring you into the golden era. It is standing on the verge of the border. From there, it has halted before you.

Can't you picture it as a herald waiting on the doorstep? Would there be a cross above its head otherwise? A cross designed on its own. Above someone who belongs to it. It must be an advance guard. Through the gold you are being watched by fixed eyes. Thus such posture and mannerisms.

What I am talking about is the border, the curtain. To make a decision and go beyond it.

First we are struck by the light. It is abstract. This is the border, the curtain, the gate. There must be something beyond it. Hence such reception and welcome.

We are passing the deer, the cross is shadowing us like a flaming star, we are penetrating through the golden wall, a virginal membrane leading to the other side. Lend me your ears, please: We are traversing reality, being pulled in by the intersection of two straight lines so as to collide with nothing but a perfect void.

So this painting represents our way in. Will the gaudy colour we are blinded by soothe us to sleep? Is it there where we are caressed by maiden fingers, enveloped by the bodies of mistresses, insane witches, earthly spirits? Is this deer the guardian of all pleasures? Is there an entrance hidden behind the faceless gold and the living horns? Are both merely a gleam of holy love and sacred sexuality which give life to Nature and which are at the same time endlessly distant to everything, even to the brilliant geometric precision of the cross and abstraction?

Indeed, the deer and gold are here to put holiness beyond the world. Behind the golden curtain and the immaterial world there are kind and beautiful women, food and drink in abundance, feather beds, objects sexually stimulating. The spirit as certainty of thought, the interaction of words, infinity, darkness, incomprehensibility. Yet we are safe in this Inaccessibility.