Marko Jakše: More Freshest Meat

Marko Jakše, More Freshest Meat
 Maribor Art Gallery, Knight's Hall 
14 to 31 October 2010
 Maribor, Slovenia

Marko Jakše: "Have you been crying again, my dear?"
"Oh, yes! And I am still crying. I will be crying forever."

Until 31 October, an exhibition of works by Marko Jakše was on display in the Knight's Hall of Maribor Art Gallery, comprising a selection of paintings from his Australian series More Freshest Meat.

Marko Jakše (1959, Ljubljana) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in 1987 as a self-taught artist. Ever since he has been a freelance artist. He has had many solo and group exhibitions, both at home and abroad, and has received several national and international prizes for his works.  "The painting is in again. Not that it ever went out. At least not of itself. Maybe it only went for a walk to have a chat with itself, in private as it sometimes has to, to remain itself. And to recover the tranquillity it requires to be whole, not to jut out and not to yearn. Oh, yes, in its excess it can often yearn. Then in just leaves and comes back, and leaves again. To slip away, only for a moment, to disappear, to forget. And it often rushes because there is so much to discover, even more to find; however, neither haste nor monumentality become it. Well, indeed, sometimes it likes to boast, although when it looks in the mirror, it finds vanity improper, at least at first sight. Sometimes even pathetic. But it is its own and that's how it is like!"

Marko Jakše is one of those who could be – based on diverse works – classified into completely different periods. He is a painter who makes sculptures, a constructor who builds, his paintings are made like architectural structures built by a stroke and shaped by a colour. Slowly but surely. He is a poet who transforms verses into images, a writer who layers stories as if happening in a single gesture, as if the life unwound itself before our eyes in one go. Momentarily and swiftly. He is an artist, although he would refuse the title, one of our greatest contemporary authors, which, again, he would oppose, a master of specific and individual approach who defies being categorised into any trend, although it has often been attempted. But it turned out more or less artificial and vague.

To connect such an artist with the cradle of the painting, where the oldest images date to 40,000 years BC, is to round up a story told by our civilisation. Australia, the land of Aborigines, indigenous people who tell their stories using images, is a continent composed of these stories. If we could look at them all, we would know its entire history, and if we understood the Aborigines, we would learn about ourselves as well. Aborigines believe, inter alia, that the thing we call art they refer to as life, which is why their relation to nature is so pristine and direct. The human being is a living creature, and part of nature like everything else, be it an animal or a plant, earth, water, air, fire, or stone. A picture, likewise, is a narrative about life, brimming with symbolic meaning, of accepting the external and comprehending the internal.

Within the paintings exhibited, Marko Jakše has realised and actualised his three-month journey of creativity, and particularly of life, which took him across Australia, including The Art Vault residence in Mildura.

Peter Tomaž Dobrila

The exhibition has been co-organised by:
EPeKa Scientific and Research Association for Art, Cultural-Educational Programmes and Technology and Maribor Art Gallery

Information:
Milojka Kline: milojka.kline(at)ugm.si
Stefan Simončič: stefan(at)epeka.si

The exhibition has been supported by: Slovenian Ministry of Culture, City of Maribor, Maribor Art Gallery and KIBLA Association for Culture and Education.