"LANDSCAPES"

"TOPCIDER"

"MOTIONS"

"VERTICALS"

ABOUT MIRJANA

The landscape which in formal sense ranges from association to alienation or, perhaps, to the future is the painter’s world of Mirjana Krestevska, a world created from internal need, led by pure fine-arts language without intention to report anything to soon, and even less finally. Although two completed wholes are notable in her previous opus, it should be emphasised that Krstevska has turned to the new approach to painting even during the preceding one, that those approaches permeate each other bringing new values in recognisable handwriting.

Since the "Topcider" series and other landscapes which originated between 1985 and 1993 - the space of Krstevska’s painting is constructed by thought-out arrangement of plans, geometrised areas within which strong tectonics accompanied by disturbed line here and there broken by inserting irregular, spontaneous signs and strokes which designate special graphism occur. The illusion of depth and height of the painting arises from a play of construction and colour; diverging plans are piled one over the other, the perspectives are multiplied, the space gains new firmness, special architectonics emphasised by vertical axles.

Employing just these vertical axles and her feeling for arcitectonics Mirjana Krstevska has built an authentic painter’s world which dominated in the "Vertcals" cycle - started in 1993 - in which her strong individualism was fully expressed. From researcher of phenomenon of sight through dynamics imposed by nature itself she turned into an analyst of form monitored through line of sight of urban space. The battle fought between regular and iregular, intelectual and spontaneous, contemplative and sensual ends by victory of contemplative. "Verticals" are an intelectual play of geometrical forms by which Krstevska tests the characteristics: degree of persistance, flexibility, fragility... by a combination of graphic- painting procedure. Graphism is expressed by light-dark contrasts and the colour turns into way of thinking. Krstevska no longer thinks about colour, she thinks by colour.

The latter is an extremely important moment in every painter’s work; a premonition of that could be felt in Krstevska’s work all these years and it happened in the "Motions" cycle which is testified by this very exhibition. The newest works have points of contact with the previous ones in experience but exceed them in symbolic of forms, space concept, colour. While her former palette served to a consequent association of objects, what remains from objects in her current painting serves to association of colour. Colour did not lead Krstevska to reduction but to hermeticalness. The painting absorbed the intimate message and transformed itself into a discrete confession.

In spite the distance from the objective world and emphasised striving for noticing order in events and things, sensitive component by which she experiences the world in which she moves is even more expressed in Mirjana’s work. Lines, contours of surfaces and harmony of colours remind of, allude to the sky, earth, open and closed space, to unexpected encounter and prolonged nostalgia, without any of the previous elements being presented in their external manifestation. Everything is hidden, withdrawn deep into the painting, and that introversion provokes for it is expressed unintrusively, quieted down, without gesture, ballanced, in a developed painter’s language.

Gordana Vasiljevic