top of page
The World of Darko Taleski
art beyond the form
with colours and other media

Marilena Streit-Bianchi
​
​
Introduction

The Macedonian painter Darko Taleski has a particular approach to art that he pursue even before the year 2000 when he went to study Fine Art Graphic (Drawing, Painting, Graphic, Sculpture, Graphic design, Poster, Typography) at the University of Veliko Tarnovo “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” in Bulgaria. From 2005 to 2007 he did a Master’s degree at this same University in Advertising and Media, and obtained a diploma on Graphic design in contemporary advertising. He also studied traditional Japanese graphics.
He is an art teacher at the Prilep School OOU Kiril i Metodij s., Macedonia, and has followed specialized seminars and projects on the practical usage of Computer technology in the educational process (USAID 2006) and for the modernization of education.
In the past he has shown preference for abstract representations to reproduce with colours a world in which reality gets continuously mixed and loaded by emotions. He is subversive in his recent approach to art in which he is using his body as a canvas in which feelings and emotions can be expressed, because marks on his skin remain visible for a while before
disappearing.
Many artists are living in Prilep, a town in the South of Macedonia, north of ancient Pelagonia known since antiquity for its pure white marble production. Althought he is very active, participating in exhibitions and competitions in Macedonia and abroad, he does not belong to any defined art movement.
He has been mastering and using different media and is not only experimenting with them, because for him they are tools to pursue the quest of the Self and of the world in which we all live.
He says: “My inspiration comes anytime, everywhere, when I walk, when I talk to somebody, when I teach children, when I sleep, when I drink coffee, when I meet new people, when I see the same places and the same things and think over and over again, every time I look them in a different way…….. The inspiration comes like a flash. I memorize it and I transform it into an art piece as fast as it comes. Using the storm of emotions during the creative process, I am giving energy to the art works.”
​
Education and Learning
Education, sensitivity and nature are the determinants for the style of any artist. Artists are also the expression of their time and are influenced by the experience they may have by travelling and meeting other artists as well by the teachers in the art school. Taleski always knew that he wanted to become an artist.
“I remember when I was about 11-12 years old I watched some Macedonian movie on TV and there was a painting of Picasso’s “Woman’s head” that he donated to the city of Skopje for solidarity after the big earthquake of 1963. I liked the portrait made by Picasso, I do not know if it was the first time for me to see something different that I had been taught to be art. I loved art
and I wanted to draw, to paint, to do creative works. My art teacher in primary and secondary school was a very good water colour artist, very strict but... It was only at high school when Violeta Blazheska, a today renowned Macedonian painter, became my teacher that in my class we started using and practicing different techniques, we draw in a different way compared to others in the school.”

His parents would have liked him to graduate in economics, the profession they both had followed, the mother working as an accountant for a retail company and the father for an industrial company in Prilep. But nothing would move him from the idea of becoming an artist, so after finishing high school he went to continue his education in Bulgaria, in Veliko Turnovo city. He was the only foreign student that year and found very good art educated students from Bulgaria from whom he learned a lot. At the University the curriculum was classical art and realism, with a lot of drawing, painting, sculpture, graphics, all to be reproduced or done in a very realistic way. He wanted to experiment, to get a teacher who would tell him what he was doing was right, what he could improve, but that remained wishful thinking.
To make connections between his high school education (economics) and Art education he did a Master’s degree in Media and Advertising (Graphic design in the contemporary ad). When he had completed his studies, it was economically difficult to work as a graphic designer. Today he works in this field occasionally as a freelance artist.
The interest for learning he has for himself and his belief that education makes a difference in life has brought him naturally to the field of teaching. After graduating at university he found a job as an art teacher, a job that he thought would be boring, where he would be forced to repeat the same things over and over again. Today he appreciates the diversity of his students and of his daily activities, and he is an engaged, successful, innovative professional teacher loved by his students. It is a job that allows him to continue to pursue and be engaged in art.
“I hope in the future to reverse the situation, Art becoming my main profession and teaching the secondary activity providing the necessary stimulation and confrontation with reality and, most important, the possibility of sharing knowledge. In life, learning is a continuous process, a continuous struggle between the wish and possibility to realize what one would like to learn and to know. Barriers are everywhere but it is up to us to overcome them and make our life full of understanding and knowledge. Today I am learning as a person, as an artist, from the people I met, from the discussions I have, from the confrontation of the different realities and cultures. This is my richness ! »
​
Early work: Opposition of limitation -“It’s enough”
In 2002 Taleski made a series of artwork paintings named Opposition of limitation - “It’s enough”! a cry of protest against human limitation in thinking and at the same time a message for stopping the use of religion as a pretext to generate conflicts. This artistic soul exclamation of 2002 sounds today as a premonition and its reason to exist unfortunately did not vanish.
​
“It is enough I”, Church, 2002 , Acrylic on cardboard 100 x 70 cm                      “It is enough II”, Mosque, 2002 , Acrylic on cardboard 100 x 70 cm 
​
From graphism to abstractism
Following his natural inclination for experimenting with new techniques, the love the artist had for calligraphy and an impetus to refuse the realism, he had to practice at length for years. Taleski engaged himself in a series of paintings where colours and lines are composing a symphonic overture of remarkable contrasts and surprises. Sometimes the black is prevailing in an impetus of lines and forms where nothing seems to be regular but all has found its place. Sometimes sweet harmonic colours are suffusing the canvas, sometimes it is a vibrant sensory journey you are invited to follow. A revolution from established conventions, a search of the expression by the non representation, a quest of the unknown and of the unconcious. This was the engine of the pencil and the brush at that time.
“It’s enough” II, Prayer, 2002, Acrylic on card board, 100 x 70 cm
 
​
Experiencing black and white and the power of line

About his work the artist says: “Abstract and figurative are a complementary expression of my art. When I was studying, I was very much impressed by the art of calligraphy of the old Japanese masters. This is probably why always a small amount of this love permeates unconciously my abstract paintings. From 2009 I started to experience the use of black and white in portraits. What you see is not a conventional drawing. I use a pen that I am moving from above the cardboard, at about 20 cm distance, the ink falls under gravity and I am moving my hand rapidly to reproduce forms and expressions. I have done several portraits in this way and I am very proud of the results. There is a continuous building of forms and characters. I am able to bring to light some of the traits that
compose a personality, the incompleteness, the fears. When using the same technique in drawing portraits with acrylic colours, the result is rather different. Colour seems to bring more happiness to the face and there is also the thickness of the material that becomes an important factor in materializing expressions. I usually use acrylic colours mixed with natural materials, paper and cardboard. I like to experiment with different kinds of materials and surfaces. The line in this period is the most important in my works. It is usually black composite with other colours on a white background, but the line always dominates. The line gives life and more emotion.”
Through the art he reflects the feelings of the people that have had an impact on him, as well as his own feelings to capture the essential, to bring to life his culture, his sensitivity, his vision of humanity. He does not look at ways to escape the world that surrounds him, he wants to represent it and make a contribution to let it be a better world. Sometimes with painting, drawing or video, Taleski uses the real, the real he perceives or feels, to emphasise the injustice, the conformism. He is a very calm person so this aspect that his art is revealing can be surprising. In the interconnected society we all live in, the artist decided to experiment with IT tools and use the power of representation they might provide.
Moments 3, 2010, Acrylic on cardboard, 70 x 50 cm
​
The video

His interest in digital art development has pushed him to explore video as a tool to represent the force of emotions and explore uncharted territory.
What does video provide him with, that other means of expression cannot?
“It is a way to express my strong feelings, a way to escape, to show my inner suffering, the nostalgia for what could be but is not. Video, especially black and white, can shows these feelings in a much stronger way than painting or drawing will do. It remains engraved in technical support, in the face of the performer and its body language, and last but not least can be seen many times it doesn’t matter where you are in the world. A click to the right link is sufficient to discover
and rediscover it.”

In 2007, the artist made a first attempt to make a video with the title “Why I wanted todo this”. It is not yet a technically accomplished movie. It is a movie of somebody young, feeling an unbridgeable gulf of loneliness, a movie where the rejection is so painful that it does not seem to be for him a way out, a cry of despair, a cry for help. With the online video ART IS DEAD in 2013, Taleski was a contributor to the international exhibition Faceless part II held at the Museum Quartier in Vienna. This exhibition with its 2000 contributors from all over the world explored the fashion of “Facelessness” using media generated images that appeared in the creative arts at the beginning of the 21st century. This video with its gestural language irradiates the inner suffering of a being fearing alienation from himself and his environment. He surpasses the measure of confession, it is a mixture of hardness and pudeur.
“I have been trying to be both: an art teacher and an artist. But somehow I had the feeling I would not be able to succeed in both. After receiving the Microsot awards as a teacher I had in the back of my mind the thinking that if I would carry on being a teacher, in the forthcoming years art for me would be dead for good. I would only be able to share my Art knowledge with others but I would not be strong enough and motivated to keep on creating art. To remind me that I had to change my attitude and live with the happiness and frustrations that I would encounter beinga school art teacher, which I like, and an artist , which is my passion, I made the video “Nostalgia for ART- ART IS DEAD”. After this I had a great creative year and took part in many exhibitions
and art events without stopping.”

He also participated with this video in 2013 to the Short Film Festival Transideology in Berlin and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan. 
In his video he is the merciless narrator of his own feelings pushing his research to the
limit.
Portrait 2011, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 50 cm                                                                                                 Portrait 2011, ink on cardboard, 50 x 70 cm
Nostalgia for Art - ART IS DEAD
A school teacher promoting IT education and international
projects

He has been working for more than 3 years on the stop-motion as an educational tool, a creative tool used to teach primary students 12 different subjects among them mathematics, languages, biology, physics and art. He also had his school participating in the project on volunteering “Be creative to help others”. With this project more than 20 teachers and more than 160 students from different ages, nationalities and social groups were involved and made about 45 animations. In 2012, he won the Educators´ choice award at the Microsot Partners in the Learning European Forum in Lisbon. In 2013, the school project “Fun, education, stop motion animation” won the second prize at the Educational Global Forum in Prague and in 2014, the school project “This is my voice” won the first prize at the Educational Global Forum in Barcelona. The students he is teaching also won first prizes for photography in the International Photo contest in Serbia, and second prize for the one-minute movie (stop-motion animation) “Stop Violence in the Schools”, organized by UNICEF.
“You could ask me why I have been putting so much effort into this during these years. It is because I love art, I love education and I believe that equal opportunity should not remain a slogan, a a void word and children of remote villages of my country have the right to have the same opportunity of learning as if they were in a big town to become the citizen of tomorrow society perhaps in Macedonia, perhaps somewhere else.”
​
Microsoft Global Forum Awarding ceremony, Barcelona 2014
Taleski is an active member of the Macedonian Association “Friends of education” and is part of the organizing committee of Conferences for school teachers to improve the use of IT in education. He gives speeches on different topics including Freedom of expression and privacy in the digital era”.
​
Skin Art
How and Why Skin Art?

The artist was discovered some time ago to have a skin disorder called dermatographic urticaria, which affects 2-5 % of the world’s population. As result, a scratch or a mark on the skin produces a swelling and a redness that naturally decreases within about 30 minutes. Taleski thought then to use his skin as an art tool to deliver messages and/or express feelings.
“My body becomes an art messenger with all his redness and scratches, getting art to become part of me, getting really inside my skin and perhaps I can also get people to experience using my skin as a canvas.”
After experimenting for sometime by drawing on his skin Taleski made the video “Help refugees”. His video is a reflection of the situation that happened last year in Macedonia. Many refugees have been crossing the border to go to Western Europe, hoping for a better future. Most of them were going by the railway line at night and some of them were hit by a train. The
artist wanted with this video to send a message to the authorities which can be summarized with the word HELP.

 
Taleski  participated in an art event organized by Marsil Andjelov Al-Mahamid, a Serbian living in Norway to commemorate the massacre of Serbians at the Beisjord camp near Narvik. This is a tribute to remember the Yugoslav prisoners that were
exterminated in 1942, suspected to be sick with typhus and the others that died by end of 1942, 748 in total. The other artists participating in the event are Tamara Ristic and Igor Smiljanic from Serbia, and Eirik Ghandini from Norway. The event was held in the city Narvik. 
“My skin become a working tool. Remaining aware of the horrors committed in the name of race, religion or political dissidence, keeping the memory alive I believe is the way to avoid reproducing the same mistakes and horrors in the future, although some of what is going on today could lead us to lose such belief and hope.”
bottom of page