Marko Jakše, Slovenian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale

About

For more than three decades the painter Marko Jakše (1959, Ljubljana), winner of several awards, has been creating a stir with his ingenious and imaginative works. Since the beginning of his artistic career he has been dedicating his intense energy exclusively to the medium of painting.

Jakše ranks among those artists that find inspiration in inventive ways of spontaneous expression rather than theory and craftsmanship, with the artist’s body playing an important part in the process. He is an alert admirer of nature, which he penetrates with the innocent eyes of a child, exploring its fragments in their material and immaterial aspects, and ingeniously and sensuously bringing them into more discerningly physical, psychedelic, or cosmic perspectives.

Jakše paints spaces of human imagination. Animals and strange creatures dominate over humans, actual species existing on Earth are joined by hermaphrodites and apparitions from dream islands, or unknown expanses of the universe, or the future. In heightened emotional states, the figures, the shrieking animals, and the hybrid creatures forge complex relationships through ritual gestures.

His canvases depict paradoxical, antithetical entities relating to the symbols and relics of sunken civilizations, spirituality, religions, mythologies, and art heritage. The painter’s visions unveil an anti-world of mysteries, curiosities, and miracles set in archetypal landscapes and timeless architecture.

In the context of this year’s Venice Biennale theme, his paintings challenge the idea of controlling nature and the related categories of existence, the scientific systems, and the knowledge of what actually is the primordial in and outside us, and above all, how something is. Jakše’s response to these questions covers a broad range from Nietzschean Dionysian abandon to meta-symbolistic and meta-romantic allegories reflecting the enthralling drama of human passions and yearning—mysterious games without a master.

Catalogue
The catalogue will include Marko Jakše’s texts by Anja Zag Golob, Aleksandra Kostič, Andrej Medved and Robert Simonišek. It will be designed by Jagoda Jejčič.