“Life is a miracle, so while it exists, enjoy it” – from Žarko Jakimovski’s exhibition at MASA

In the words quoted in the title, Acad. Vlada Urošević concluded his inspiring address at the opening of the major exhibition celebrating 50 years of the artist Žarko Jakimovski, held at the Art Gallery of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MASA).

And it was evident that all present shared the same impression of what they saw, which the Acad. Urošević, an expert in fiction in the arts, gave an academic explanation.

“The first impression when you come across Žarko Jakimovski’s paintings is a joy for the eyes. The shapes and colours radiate from these paintings with a natural spontaneity and a flash of surprise. Immediately, in the first instant, the viewer is confronted with a bright explosion of colours and shapes that line up in front of him like instant metamorphoses of coloured glasses before the eye of a child approaching the eyepiece of a kaleidoscope,” said Acad. Urošević.

“Untitled (NZ)”, Žarko Jakimovski

After this purely artistic and aesthetic remark, his analysis of Jakimovski’s work, richly displayed in the MASA Gallery, went beyond the obvious, showing why this artist is one of the most meaningful Macedonian artists today.

“Žarko Jakimovski is undoubtedly an artist who thinks through painting; and who, through the process of creation, wants to find answers to some essential problems, the nature of which goes far beyond those questions that concern only the field of artistic expression (…) With the passion of an almost scientific approach that we could call vivisection in the visible world, Jakimovski’s painting becomes a kind of operating table or laboratory for microscopic analysis.”

“Untitled (VJ)”, Žarko Jakimovski

Works from all periods of Jakimovski’s oeuvre, which “most stand on the very edge of abstraction, but never losing touch with the surrounding environment that we consider real,” as Acad. Urošević said, have been moved to the MASA Art Gallery.

In terms of technique, the work on display includes dry pastels and paintings from the artist’s early period as well as later esoterica.