1. Spike, 2.Lunar - Solar, 3.

Stone-Metal

The third solo exhibition of the young sculptor Damjan Gjurov is symbiosis of three collections
made in the past five years and the twenty pieces of art (sculptures) stand for his evident and
continuous interest in many subjects relating to one another, i.e originating from one another in
technical crafting and concept. The main focus of his artwork is the inclination towards combining
unexpected figurative presentations where the primary cause is the existential issues treated with the
esthetical and ethical perception of the human.

The materials the artist uses are bronze, stone and metal, yet bones/horns even feathers are
present in some of his artwork. It is this exact merge of the materials that is crucial for the continuous
figurative interest and transitions towards the abstract and geometrical form. According to the artist,

“the most important part of the creative process is to understand and feel the materials as
authentic, genuine and even as carriers of archaic attributes” ending up as a monolithic piece of art
with different characteristics of the textural structures.

The system of symbolism is the second important moment that connects the collections. This is
implied in the titles of the collections themselves and the sculptures separately. The profound,
archaic character (in Stone-Metal Age, 2019) is derived from projections that the spiritual principle
of the cosmogony predominates; (“Lunar – Solar”, 2015) and finally the collection “Spike” - 2020
completes the cycle that binds and confirms the previous two presenting the human’s position in
society.

In the Lunar–Solar collection the artist is not only focused on the symbolical contrasts but the
archetypical principles (male-solar and female-lunar), the visual interpretations (figurative-abstract)
and the materials and their processing (bones-organic, metal-non organic, smooth-textured etc.) This
unity of contrasts results in specific, technically well executed compositions resembling to ensemble
of Chimeras offering multitude of interpretations.

The collection “Stone –Metal Age” is a continuation and conceptual development of the interest
towards the archaic meanings on different levels, meaning how the materials are treated (similar
approach in connecting, combining the elements in one monolithic content) in regards with the
concept and the inclination towards the symbolical interpretations. To some extent sensible, his
sculptures create a metaphysical ambience and bears witness not only to the matter structured in
shape, form and appearance of the fragment and the whole, but the mythological and universal
meanings.

The latest collection of Damjan Gjurov, is a wrap up to the so called trilogy where he keeps the
distinct features of the personal sculptural expression and shows strong interest to depict the human
existential issues using the form of his artwork. In the last collection, the spike is a metaphor of the
human weakness trapped in the layer of the system. The artist emphasizes the aforementioned
anthropological approach in sequences, where the human is the main focus of everything,
consequently as the philosophy in Protagora’s works “Truth” and the absurd, relativistic “Man is
the measure of all things
The symbolism of the materials themselves, their archetypal references and the universal
principles are the “tools” Dmajan Gjurov uses to present his enigmatic artwork with gothic elements
that are not only symbols but they have a meaning. This research approach towards “revealing” the
technical attributes of the materials and the unexpected imaginative relations, developed by the
(un)conscious binding of ideas, creates a feeling of direct or fragmented reflections of surrealism and
the fiction. The fictive and ethnological-mythological sculptures of Damjan Gjurov, reveal new
sources in the sub consciousness, the dream, the hallucinations, the occasion, the fiction, which
makes the expressive approach of the artist to be descriptive and narrative, symbolical-surreal
metaphysical ambient coinciding with Freud’s and Jung’s surrealism in the psychoanalysis, i.e the
visual reality in the entangled contemplative labyrinths of the sub consciousness.

Maja Čankulovska-Mihajlovska