PAINTINGS BY LEON ZAKRAJŠEK

The artistic expression that Leon Zakrajšek has been focusing on after the period of intensive involvement in graphic arts reveals itself as a conscious follow-up to the insights that predominantly resulted from the artist’s immersion into the morphological tradition of the Far East. The elementary character of the stroke and the derived self-sufficiency of the non-iconic sign represent the first apparent paradigms of this kind of artistic thinking, best embodied in Sumi-e painting which is closely connected with calligraphy, both practices originating from Zen philosophy. However, in today’s world the latter only represents a basic framework reflecting an immanent historic reference and not a conscious, explicit stimulus in the creation of visual messages. In this sense, Zakrajšek’s study visits in Japan provide clear proof that the culture one has absorbed in one’s native environment gets to be upgraded in contact with new civilisation models and keeps investigating different expressions of coexistence of apparent opposites through creative processes. Indeed, Zakrajšek’s graphic and painting opus has revealed this very formulative and productive interactivity, which does not seek its authorial position between the West and the East, but unreservedly directs itself towards the establishing of a complex identity of the creative subject.
If, on the one hand, with regard to his graphic cycle, executed predominantly in Sumi technique in ink on paper, we were pointing out Zakrajšek’s attachment to the revived Japanese tradition and the models used by contemporary masters of this graphic approach, the paintings executed in oil on canvas, on the other hand, require a different reading based on different conceptual assumptions: the problem of the image field as has been (re)defined by modernism is again posed as a semantic category, without any need for reconciliation of oppositions between fullness and emptiness or between painted and non-painted surfaces. The materiality of the colour plays the role of a view-catcher and the layer structure is synonymous with the sequence of author’s interventions with the support. Zakrajšek patiently constructs sustainable visual entities as if to thicken the ephemeral optical impulses into a firm nucleus, irrespective of light oscillations and changing moods. Instead of transient records and chromatic impressions we observe strictly controlled compact compositions, in which the width of the stroke is at the same time a border image that divides either different colour nuances or construction components of the monochrome surface. Abstract paintings, presented as personal interpretations of the adopted image construction model, function primarily on the level of identification of form and content; they do not have any reference in phenomenal reality and do not reflect any external stimuli, but act as autonomous organisms, whose logic of existence is founded in the process of their own morphogenesis, namely the gradual conversion from the poeticity of primary gesture to the aesthetic of an elaborately constructed surface. Through his multiple colour layers Zakrajšek maintains the explicit “surfaceness” of the image. Rather than by substance – in the sense in which it was of interest to numerous European painters of the mid 20th century – he is attracted by the optical dynamism of transparency that generates the (conditionally illusionistic) depth of field on the perception level. The illusionistic effect is generally associated with the concept of abstract landscape – of which there is actually no trace in these paintings. Here, Zakrajšek is preoccupied with the implicit problem of articulating visual formulation perceived by the observer as such, that is not as stylised representation of an empiric model but as a reality constructed through direct enactment of the elementary creative impulse. The artist is not in search of an ideal form that would incorporate all his notions of the visible, but rather investigates, image by image, how to attain optimal symbiosis of a rationally controlled formal construction on the one hand, and gestual automatism of a painter’s “script” on the other. That is why one can state that after an intensive immersion into conceptual models of the Far East and their visual realisations, Zakrajšek is gradually returning to an artistic expression that is based on the creative potential of a subject and the uniqueness of his decisions in transferring mental impulses into sensually discernible artistic statements.

Brane Kovič

The Abstract calligraphy of a Japanese soul

Leon Zakrajšek and I were born – at a distance of only some hundred kilometres, he in Ljubljana and I in Rijeka – at the beginning of sixties. Though we deal with similar activities – we are haunted with artistic problems in different forms – the destiny has brought us together only by the end of 2006 and it was roughly half way between Ljubljana and Rijeka, namely in Ilirska Bistrica.

I have visited Zakrajšek in his new atelier adapted in the former barracks (where I had spent 15 disagreeable days during an accelerated military training in 1981), in the company of a well known Croatian essayist and novelist who lived four years in China and to whom Japan is not a strange country. Militarism transformed into the shell of art. In a well lighted and arranged space – the graphic artists are much more tidy then painters and sculptors! – he presented us his artistic trace on a number of big format drawings produced with brush in sumi ink. Inspecting these pieces, calligraphic traces of a purified plainness and concentration, I had to identify a strong experience of a Japanese and Chinese view of the world, entirely filled with Zen tranquillity.

I am personally not that big admirer of the East, so only Zakrajšek's persuasiveness forced me to think well about his intentions to establish a permanent cultural cooperation on the line: Ilirska Bistrica-Ljubljana-Tokyo. His entrance to the very closed islands happened between 1997 and 1998 when he obtained a Japanese State scholarship for studying at the Tama Art University in Tokyo. He additionally widened his education  at Hanga Kobo-Seya, private ateliers for the graphical print where his mentor was a respectable Harumi Sonoyama and he had the opportunity to work with a connoisseur of wood-carving as Fumio Kitaoka, Yuki Rei and Seiko Kawachi.

Zakrajšek is not an easy personality so the clearness of his works and his Spartan purity can easily cheat you. Behind each work, there lies thousands' years tradition exposed to its primary (abstract) stratum.

Since 1997 Zakrajšek is regularly exhibiting in Japan, in Tokyo and Yokohama, once, or more times a year, but he is very regular in Slovenia (Ljubljana, Izola, Ptuj, Nova Gorica, Portorož, Celje) as well as in Italy (Cremona, Este). The traveller, who is coming from far away countries, is always treated seriously ...

I graduated at the Faculty of Arts in Rijeka with graphic art as a personal choice. In the first phase of my work, I produced some hundred graphical sheets of a bigger format in the techniques of China ink monotypes with a constant investigation of the change of the colour quality using certain foams and bronze dust. The result was extraordinary warm – the China ink obtained magnificent softness - normally not present. Zakrajšek took a completely different path. He understood the upgrading in Japan by reaching the Soul of the East, through the understanding of sumi China ink techniques. The main quality of this thousand years' old techniques is within the black colour which doesn't change its nuance with elapsing of time. The outset is the absolute blackness of the first night where the stars had only to glitter, while the tones are only achieved by alteration (alchemizing).

It is believed that sumi initiated in the early Han Dynasty in China, and that it was introduced in Japan by Yubi, a Buddhist priest from Yurai (South Korea), around the year 700. From the very beginnings, the centre of the production was a town of Nara, at that time a Japanese political, cultural and religious centre where a number of Buddhist temples existed. Even after the throne was moved to Kyoto the Buddhism and sumi were tightly bound to Nara. In the Edo period (XVIII century) there were 38 manufacturers of sumi only in Nara, and 13 survived European industrialisation period of Maiji (since 1868) and are nowadays producing 9 million of pieces of sumi China ink. It is necessary to grate the China ink stick and mix it with water and thus a medium for drawing, namely painting, is obtained.

Good connoisseurs of sumi are claiming that the nowadays manufacturing is too commercialized and that the original sumi China ink is the one produced prior to the Second World War. Well, the materials are only starting points od artistic explorations.

Rijeka had during its history one world's important, visual art, manifestation – The International Exhibition of the Original Drawings. The project was conceptioned and realised by the Modern Gallery Manager, Mr Boris Vižintin and became his life's did. The three most important exhibitions were the ones in 1982 (VIII), 1984 (IX) and 1986 (X). At that time Rijeka had, at least in one segment, tight connections with relevant artistic trends. Japanese artists were very well represented at these manifestations, usually with fifteen authors, and were most numerous, after the selection of the hosting country. We can mention here: Hiroshi Fujinami, Kunito Nagaoka, Matsutani Takesada, Takahiko Hayashi, Nakamura Noboru… I remember best Masao Yamana (Osaka 1948), who was already an honoured artist in 1982, and had his individual exhibition in Rijeka in 1984. He was occupied with hyper realistic drawings of pipes covered with textiles. All the works were technically immaculate but with an artistic charge that is seldom a shortcoming in hyperrealism.

A number of Japanese artists, though, were mainly preoccupied with the western visual art problems, while the American Daniel Brush and the Danish Richard Mortense (born 1910) tried to “catch “ the beauty of simplicity of the Japanese tradition. The independent exhibition of Daniel Brush (who never visited Japan!) was called A Dream for Ise and represented the interest for three symbols of Japanese Emperor’s power, confined within Ise swards, Mirrors and Irregular gems. The graphical work intended to “catch” the spirit of the Shinto temple in Ise, while everything was impregnated with the spirit of Zen. The traces of a brush were broad and simple, often abruptly ending.

Richard Mortensen, Dane, who during the time became friend with Vižintin, was present at all three mentioned exhibitions with his works inspired with the calligraphy tradition of the East.

In the spiritual dimension, we could locate Zakrajšek somewhere between these two inhabitants of different continents. Although, with the deliberation of his work, he is closest to the stylistically very remote Yamani.

Is an European really able to enter the world of such intricate and closed culture as is Japanese? And especially that Japan, which the western civilization mostly considers as completely unintelligible chaos of immenseness - dazzled by night Tokyo, where strangers are lost outside the small enclaves of luxury hotels, that is so convincingly evoked in the movie Lost in the translation. Even completely different Westerners (such as Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson) could more easily build up some relationship to the surrounding then to understand anything at all about their present surrounding.

For me personally, the best western view of Japan were given by the rockers The Strangles in their aggressive, even militant dedication to the great Japanese writer Jukio Mishima, under the title Death and Night Blood  (Yukio). Their heavy, even industrial punk, gets through the verses:

Death and night and blood
And when I saw that Sparta in his eyes
Young death is good
And we decided that to die there
was no greater love
//The Stranglers: Black & White, 1978.//

Since 1965, Yukio Mishima was a Nobel Prize Winner candidate, but it was his compatriot Jasunari Kawatabe to be honoured with it. But in 1970, with a number of members of his private army he took over the control of a military base in Ichigaya and asked for the resignation of the Prime Minister. He read a manifesto to the soldiers, encouraging them to rise and save Japan from loosing its identity under the western influence. After the unsuccessful action Mishima committed the ritual suicide (seppuku).

While talking to Zakrajšek in Croatian (his mother is Croatian), in a moment, despite his assessment and closely measuring his words, out of fear of being misunderstood – a characteristics of a person who is travelling a lot and communicating with people of different religions, life experience and view of lives – I remembered The Stranglers and the verse  ... I saw Sparta in his eyes. His movements are impressive and always following his thoughts, but the look and the trace left by the brush on the paper are having that clearness, and are summing transience to the most decisive way. The works are simple, but are carrying with them thousand of years of several cultures: as Slovene, European, Chinese and Japanese.

Between 1405 and 1431 the Chinese overtook at least seven major navy expeditions through Pacific and Indian Ocean, and few of their ships were more then hundred meters long, while Columbus have travelled to America by the end of that same century on ships that were less then thirty meters. Differently to the Europeans who were oriented as conquerors, the Chinese destroyed their ships by themselves after understanding that they were culturally superior to everybody they encountered.

The national income of Japan in 1600 was bigger then the European. By the end of the XVII century Japan was manufacturing more muskets then any European state, so it possessed 100.000 rifles compared to the French army who possessed only 10.000. Some issues have to be corrected in the Euroepocentric conscience, especially regarding the actual happenings in the Far East.

The discussion from the first part of the XIX century is highly instructive. Shimazu Narikia, daimyo (leader) Satsume asked his counsellors: «What do you fear worst from the West?» The answer was – European ships and cannons. But daimyo was not of the same opinion: «The cotton textile is the most dangerous. If we do not start at once with preparations we shall soon become addicts of Westerners in the way of dressing us».

These few scattered facts are giving us the sketch of a world ever so distant and hermetic for Europeans. Zakrajšek and his visual arts – even when pictures and colour graphics are concerned – represents the bridge towards the Far East, but in fact, in times of minor or major political discrepancies between Slovenia and Croatia, his fascination with Japan opens artistic flows which are needed in the modern world. We shouldn't forget that he was a selector of certain exhibitions in Italy for graphics from Japan, Slovenia and Bosnia & Herzegovina – and it is so rare to find it in one person.

The goals are different, such are the paths, but in the Arts the elementary rule is to leave the same track in the same material as Nature does. How to be original and ken, how to transfer own fears and hopes to the observer is the issue that places high standards in front of the nowadays artist. The real rate of tradition and experience, local and over-all-human, intimate and public, makes and artist big and important. Leon Zakrajšek definitely belongs to the world's artistic elite ...

Igor Žic