(On the occasion of the exhibition of Jordan Manasijeski in the gallery “Robevci”, The Institute and Museum Ohrid)
In the “Robevci” gallery (one of the most remarkable houses in the old part of Ohrid ) is held an exhibition of the paintings of Jordan Manasijeski (born in 1948) who is among the few famous painters from Ohrid. In the authentic surrounding (in one part of the area there is a permanent display of archaeological findings from the Roman period) they have displayed canvases which compose a small selected review of the Manasieski’s works, in the past ten years. In those works bearing the same title “Stories about the holly areas” (and each of them also has its own title), essential characteristics and contents of his painting are synthesized. Actually the idea of the author was to direct the attention of the audience to one particular aspect of the individual spiritual experience.
In 1969, Jordan Manasijeski graduated from the Pedagogic Academy in Skopje(Prof. Vangel Kodzoman, Vancho Georgieski and others) and at that time he was attracted by Lazar Lichenski’s pictoriality and Nikola Martinoski’s painting. His turning point is Van Gogh, with the meaning he gives to the color and the wideness of the painting vision.
Manasijeski’s creative beginnings are connected to his work with the comics, establishing his reputation as skillful drawer of the comics “ Kiko and Veki”, “Space pirates”, and others published in “Nash Svet” and “Makstrip” from 1980 to 1986. During the second half of the 1980s, following his vocation, he completely dedicated himself to the art of painting. He began to exhibit paintings from 1990, creating works with marks of realistic- impressionistic painting and recognizable motives from the Ohrid area. By doing it, Manasijeski has placed himself in not that small group of Macedonian painters and drawers who created a unique chronicle of the old town architecture that is slowly becoming extinct. He always had a desire to put such motives on canvas so they can stay forever. In his pictures prevails the clear intensive color (put by a snoot) and the wide move and the noticeable trace of the bush in order to depict the life fullness and the atmosphere of the motive. The areas are soaked with “Daily light” and a color which is its analogue value. Parallel to that, only for his own pleasure he makes experiments, more often logical than dramatic in the area of abstract- associative painting, collage and the use of means not intended for painting. In the course of time, the painting practice, the precise lines of the motive transform with the free (fauvist) use of the color in more synthetic and more abstracted presentations of the visual sensations. The painting of an area is more widely presented, without the classic ending of the drawing, the anatomy and the area plans.
The color graphically placed (in relief) has its own chromatic and sensual qualities, but in the pictorial structure even unconscious impulses will start trembling. In the era of “exploitation of the visual” there is a need for “painter’s autonomy” where expressive and psychological meanings of the color will be implemented together with the polly figurative presentations of unusual (anthropoid) creatures performing a “silent dialogue” in the atmosphere of a ripple area, suggesting symbolic meanings, romantic feelings, as well as some surreal-fantastic marks.
The colors have the main word, as a mean and as a structure, their sound and brightness making forms that are more associative than precise in their subject perception. The local tone loses itself on the behalf of the free use of color (for example in the “white phase” or in the violet tones) which suggest or evoke mood and elements from the memory or the dream with imaginative areas or made up “scenes”. In some sort of extraordinary symbioses elements of the visual world exist as well as elements of an “invisible world”. Uneasiness is an organic part of his undetermined and puzzling “stories”. The faces and the objects arise from the shape created of colors sometimes without prearranged intention and without a narrative structure.
Manasijeski, in the past years, thanks to the engagement of the Ohrid gallery “Bukefal”, presented his paintings in Bon and Troisdorf near Koln, then in the autumn saloon in Paris (2009), in Tokyo, New York, at Florence Biennale (2011). The curators from the “ Amsterdam Whittney Gallery” in Chelsea, New York highlighted his “gentle talent” and the “unique artistic vision” where he “reveals the invisible in the visible”. Some of these paintings have found their place in the new exhibition that Manasijeski had: “ The game of Joy”(2008), “The vision of joy” (2009), “Friends of brightness” (2010), “Game” (2011), “Flowers of the heavenly ballerina” (2011).
Manasijeski’s paintings contain skillfully achieved picturesqueness, expressively shown disturbance and personal spiritual experience, as well as certain dose of an adopted method of “making a picture”, where the rhythm, color and the associative ness of the forms in the valley give them visual attraction, that can reach a larger cycle of audience.
(The author is an expert in art critics and professor for history of art)
Author Vladimir Velichkovski