#1 In one of Gligor Čemerski’s early paintings from the mid sixties, the late-Hellenistic bronze satyr of Stobi, as if alive, arises in his ecstatic dance in the midst of a summer landscape. The painting is entitled “The Shepherd of Stobi” – a choice of title that transports this image from the realm of mythology (Civilisation) into the realm of everyday rural life (Nature). With his own interpretation of this mythical character, Čemerski introduced a metamorphosis that has remained fundamental to the poetics and philosophy of his painting until this very day: he brings Civilisation closer to Nature, he illustrates the manner in which they delve into and complement each other, which is so peculiar to Macedonia. Here Civilisation springs from Nature, only to return as its own mark.
#2 Thus, it can be said that Macedonia’s layers of earth and civilisation mingle in Čemerski’s vision; the spontaneous embroidery of natural features, and both the traces and marks of artistic activity that has endured in this environment for millennia, approach each other to the level of mutual interchangeability. In Čemerski’s work, in his views of Macedonia, Nature and Civilisation are reconciled; there, that which has been created by the interaction of the elements – by the age-long influence of heat and frost, of wind and water – and the accumulated yield of human endeavour driven by the need to materialise the human idea of beauty, happily blend into one.
#3 In his early years, Čemerski set off in search of the clues that the ancient spirit has left upon our earth: there are the Greek satyrs, the goat that nursed Zeus, the goat-legged Pan, Orpheus whose tune once woke the rocks, and Icarus in his ecstatic and tragic flight. Čemerski’s paintings from those years unfold events and sights from a particular mythology that, in this painter’s meditation, insists on the link between untamed nature and the mysteries that, made manifest by this nature, reveal the presence of divine forces. With these paintings, in an utterly palpable and unambiguous form, Čemerski introduces the Mediterranean spirit into modern Macedonian painting. From this ensues the distinctive symbiosis of the fervour of celebration and the tragic foreboding of the bloody outcome of sacrifice, enchantment by the sun and the apprehension of the nearness of the nether forces, Eros and Thanatos, inseparably bound together in his art.
#4 This affinity to the ancient heritage on our soil somehow naturally turns into a desire to come closer to the Byzantine heritage; in Čemerski’s paintings the memory of the ancient pagan cults and the memory of the ascetic spirituality of Byzantium come together without sharp transition. In fact, they are reconciled in his art and they find their points of contact in that they belong to the same soil and by being along the same line of spiritual continuity where Dionysus, the god of vines and wine, and St. Trifun at Nerezi, the protector of the vineyards, meet secretly. Čemerski’s serene and merry Icarus and the versions of the angels of St. Sophia, that this painter has revisited so many times, fly towards the light with the self-same exaltation.
the art is inside
