Exhibitions

The driving motivation of Lovre Jakšić’s work is determined by active and direct contact, which the sculptor makes with his favorite material, stone: Seget and Brač stone, Prilep and Carrara marble … The shapes and themes of the sculptures are motivated largely by the sculptor’s fascination with stone quality like shimmering whiteness, its structure, and hardness. By reaching into the matter, the hand discovers and recognizes its measure, logic, and story, and helps it to match the specific content that is realized in the sculpture. The artist’s haptic relationship to the material is retained in life outside the studio, so Lovre’s sculptures simply entice touch and direct discovery of the dynamic fusion of different surfaces, and the relationship of fullness and emptiness that alternate on them.

It is precisely in the variable transition of coarsely worked surfaces into smooth, perfectly polished surfaces, and after the introduction of cavities, which loosen and dissolve the form, that the specificity of his sculptural manuscript is realized. Art critics mostly emphasize its organic quality. Especially in Lovre’s early works, the closeness with the scrapes of the Brač landscape was noticeable. With it, the author approached the family tradition (sculptures After the Atomic War of his namesake, grandfather, self-taught sculptor), but also the tradition of modern Croatian sculpture (especially the works of his islander, Valerij Michieli).

It is important to point out that in Lovre’s oeuvre we find examples of exceptional portrayal skills, and a willingness to cope with the demands of realism. These are primarily sepulchral works, works intended for churches, and monumental solutions. However, in the works he shapes, guided exclusively by his own need for creative research, the coexistence of abstract and figurative notions of form is noticeable. Also, the topic that interests and inspires him the most is the human head and body, whether lonely or paired. The body is, after all, the eternal weft of sculptural thinking, regardless of the stylistic conditioning and the material in which it is brought to life.

Yet it seems to us that the life of the body (and deed) in the stone, which has lasted since prehistory, in particular, and that the stone path each time resonates with a different resonance of meaning. The choice of stone or marble is not only determined by the question of valorization of the metier, the artist’s aesthetic identity, and views, it also conditions the symbolic ambiguity and the invocation of the rich sculptural history of antiquity and the Renaissance. It does not at all imply imitating and encouraging formal similarity.

One of the possible symbolic facets of the selection of the material is the search for spiritual values. The refined unfolding of the sculptural form into winged creatures, angels, is burdened with simplified likeability, superfluous descriptions, unnecessary symbols, and the burden of narration. Subtle moments are realized in fine details, the rhythm of gaps and full volumes, into which the observer enters subjective associations.
Extremely significant are the expressive depressions, long and deep, roughly worked furrows, which help the sculptor to animate and tear his figures. By dramatically engraving, he achieves the astonishment of the scene and the utter tension between the outer membrane and the interior that it envelops. Its emphasis suggests a moment of introversion, which is inherent in every individual after all. In addition to the forms that imply spirituality and introspection, Lovre is also instructed in more sensual modeling, which softens the form, bends it, and merges it into intriguing compositional collages.
Lovre’s experience of form, due to its focus on the immediacy and vitality of the material, which it addresses daily, is constantly encouraged to reconsider and vary the solutions achieved. Thus, it remains recognizable, but also open to new statements.

Barbara Vujanović, art historian