The fact that tragedy draws its strength from the impossibility of action – shows itself as a spiritual surrounding of exhibited works of art of Jure Žaja. His interest is directed towards the investigation of the relatioship between the present reality and future potential. The final points of spiritual states represented in the exhibited works could be conditionally marked with concepts of possibility and impossibility. Trapped between those two opposites, with intensive experience of the first and the presentiment of the second, the artist reveals in his work dimension of humanity sheltered by society. The emotions evoked by seeing the exhibition last long, and it may happen that much later, for no apparent reason, the visions of his sculptures come to mind. Our unexpressed questions are suggested in this completely sincere dialogue between his artistic work and public.
The intense drama emanating from sculptures provokes a stream of ideas, which we feel as something deeply intimate.
Harmony between the form and the idea, brought to a praiseworthy level, gives full vitality to Žaja's work.
The artist shows a denying, antithetic attitude towards reality. We can see that Adorn's lucid thesis, that art is an antithesis to society found its sense in Jure Žaja's work. This non-affirmative relation towards reality is a result of dialectic thinking which analytically and synthetically penetrates into the object, removing what is peripheral and creatively concentrating on what is essential.
Just because of understanding the situation of man of today and a complete self-experience, Žaja's work is determined towards social reality.
On seeing the exhibition, a question is imposed upon us: "What is a man of today?" The artist's answer, deeply sunk into reality, does not show a contemporary man like Michelangelo's, purified of ideology, stretched towards the eternally beautiful David. On the contrary, Žaja shows us not the ideal man, but a disturbingly realistic man, unauthentic, lonely, caught in the mechanisms of bureaucracy, smashed, ...
The obvious engagement of Žaja's work is not a result of factors imposed from outside, but a result od his intellectual maturity and understanding of the inevitability of engagement.
The humanistic orientation of his engagement, in spite of its realistic review, brings a warm scents of hope. The absurd in Žaja's work does not have a universal, cosmic dimension, but comes as a result of the relation between man and man, between society and man. And just because of that, Žaja's hope is so close to us.
Beside a unique protest which emanates from artist's work, it should be emphasized that his work shows undoubtedly what one's engagement should be.
Rade Padovan
Exhibition catalogue
Padovan, Rade. Jure Žaja.
Zagreb : Zagreb City Museum, 1975
