Marko Jakše: Black Butterflies

The series of paintings More freshest meat was made last year during his residence in Australia. There, the painful experience of continental Aborigines painted JakŠe's cycle with the dominant colour red and a sharp critical charge against the disturbed contemporary social forms within human community who have been soaking their toes and washing their feet in the blood of their fellow co-Homo-Sapienses constantly throughout the history. The planetary experience of compassion is being upgraded in the new series of paintings, which was first shown partly in the Art Factory, Majšperk, then in Loža, Koper, under the title Črni metulji / Black Butterflies, and has eventually been enhanced with new paintings and wrapped up to be presented in KiBela.

The colour has disappeared almost completely, yet the grisaille combines the shades of grey into a painting of large dimensions, its light contrasts deepening it spatially to almost unthinkable depths. The spaces are a dreamy combination of fantastic and realistic worlds intertwining and merging into new entities. The latter are horribly attractive. If you step away for a moment, though, you get dizzy due to losing the intense input of addictive agents despite the subject matter, or maybe just because of it, comprising hospitals and patients presenting the state of humanity, and the living things, creatures, being caught anxiously in translucent, three-dimensional bodies... fish with flat mouths extending to their gills, phallic sages, yawning hippopotami, frightened solid, dentures-like jaws on the lookout paranoiacally for cut-off, dried phalli hung as artificial salami in a toy store or a pet shop...

“Yesterday I saw a she-bear with three cubs, today I saw the first butterfly. The Brimstone. I also saw stags and does. Moly Hother, how pretty these animals are!

How wonderful all these creatures are. I can only be amazed, admire. They are the earth's greatest treasure. Which is proven by the fact they are disappearing. Beatuy does not linger with man. Man wans to create all the beauty anew. And slowly turns everything into shit...”

From a letter, Marko Jakše, Mohorje, Wednesday (March 2011)

The exhibition will be on view until 15 June

Marko Jakše (1959, Ljubljana) completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana as a self-taught artist in 1987. He has been a freelance artist since. He has exhibited his works at many solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad, and received for his works several domestic and international prizes and awards.

3 June 2011 – 15 June 2011
Opening: 3 June 2011 at 8 pm
KiBela / KIBLA Maribor

Kindly welcome. Admission free.

KiBela, Space for Art is open every day 9.00 am to 10.00 pm, Saturdays 4.00 pm to 10.00 pm, the gallery is closed Sundays.

MMC KIBLA wishes to thank the following for their support: EU-EACEA, Culture Programme, Brussels, Slovenian Ministry of Culture, Municipality of Maribor and Office of Youth.

KiBela programme is part of the European X-OP project.