A boy aiming his slingshot into the sky seems to aim both at the broken windows of an abandoned building but also a series of birds that seem to appear in the gaps of cracked glass, transfixed in various stages of flight.
Artist Pejac is well known for his negative-space interventions, from pealing back paint chips to carefully reveal brick beneath to other contextual installations. Much of the art is in the craft: a meticulous removal (or breaking) of materials to slowly reveal some new whole, much like a sculptor chips away at a marble edifice.
This latest piece was produced during his residency with the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, Croatia, where he spent multiple weeks crafting site-specific works.
Camouflage (Tribute to René Magritte) is set in the huge windows of an old paper factory power plant, depicting a flock of birds that might be hard to spot were it not for the outline of a boy taking aim below them. His figure calls attention to the larger work, signalling a passer by the existence of something both large and subtle going on in the frame.
The implied story is one about hunting and survival, the birds disguising themselves against a backdrop of broken window panes, making them harder for the child to spot. The boy, too complex a figure to render through even the most craftily broken glass, is painted over a series of panes (images by Sasha Bogojev).
