Solo exhibition of paintings (carbon on canvas) "The BLACKEST BLACK" by Mice JANKULOVSKI from 20.04. - 04.05.2023 in OSTEN Gallery.

The BLACKEST BLACK
Author: Emil Aleksiev
 
Mice Jankulovski has been working on large-format paintings with black color for a long time (2012 - 2022 / Form 3), and since 2022 he has started painting with carbon black (the blackest black) and at the exhibitions in New York he is premiering his paintings from this, latest phase. It is about using a color that absorbs almost all light.
In 2014 SurreyNanoSystems developed super black color known as Vantablack. Vantablack is an acronym for VerticallyAlignedNanoTubeArrayBlack. Specifically, SurreyNanoSystems created this black color by growing microscopic filaments of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the surface of the products being dyed. SurreyNanoSystems claimed it absorbed 99.965 percent of light, making it the blackest black known to science at the time. Interestingly, in 2016, not long after Ventablack was created, sculptor Anish Kapoor bought all rights to the color. This purchase caused a lot of reaction in the art community, because buying paint to then sell it at exclusive prices conflicts with the values of creativity, expression and inclusiveness in art. Just five years after the discovery of Vantablack, MIT found a black color that is ten times darker. This new black captures 99.995 percent of light.
In December 2022, as a complete contrast to the New Year's colorfulness, the black paintings from the BLACKEST BLACK cycle by Mice Jankulovski were premiered in the galleries Artifacts and MC Gallery in New York and became part of the world art scene reflecting all the controversies and doubts, but also all the allure, seduction and beauty of the fascinating spectacle called contemporary fine art today.
Jankulovski's pictures are black. This is a process in our eye, caused by the overflow of black tones and their interaction, and not something that can be painted and that exists before the act of painting itself.
Drama happens in his paintings. Forces collide on their surface that leave a visible mark. These traces create movement that expands into infinity and lines that divide and break up the dark matter of the image. Here reigns light decay, désgrégationlumineuse. The light comes from the background, from inside the picture – in one space, but in countless planes. In front of these paintings you have the impression that you are standing in front of the endless and infinite Universe from whose deep darkness the light of long-dead stars reaches you. The feeling is sublime and terrifying.
While art continues to subvert itself into anti-art or gets lost in life – or, as in the images from Mice Jankulovski's BLACKEST BLACK cycle, reveals transcendence by miraculously connecting science and art.
It is not at all accidental that the premiere and great interest of this series of paintings by Mice Jankulovski took place in New York. These paintings belong to the American New York School and can be associated with the black paintings of some of the most important American artists such as Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), Ed Reinhardt (1913-1967), Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and Frank Stella (1936), and the still current tradition of American abstract expressionism from the fifties and sixties of the last century when New York beat Paris as the world center of modern art.
Presenting his latest work, Mice Jankulovski successfully affirms contemporary Macedonian painting.