Cosmos and light of the spirit – Kiro Urdin

“So God created man in his own image”
Genesis 1:27

We can define Art as Cosmos and Light of the Spirit. It is a Cosmos ope – ned to infinity, expanding in concentric circles, and constantly enriched with new galaxies. Except God, nothing speaks so powerfully about man like Art, which produces the most precious product of all the products that he could have created and imagined: Beauty. Poetry, painting, sculpture, music, dance… They are all divine acts of the Spirit which are transcendent by definition, and they elevate man from the earthly towards the heavenly, towards the primal authentic source of his origin and existence. And truly, Art is the most prominent sign that man did not reach its holy fire through blind evolution, but that it is ignited in every atom of his Spirit by the Creator Himself, even during his conception at the beginning of Creation. Since then, that eternal fire, like a genetic code, is left as a legacy and the most worthy property we inherited from our Father in heavens. It is the most powerful evidence that He created us in his own image and likeness, not only physically, but also spiritually. Art, being a gift, contains many other gifts and powers within itself. Among other things, it also possesses healing powers for the man thrown into fate and suffering, thrown into the dark night of history, in life under the burden of evil, in which he builds a home on the foundations of pain. But even in such a life, man passes through the dangerous labyrinth of existence with the light of Art, which possesses the power of faith – the same Jesus talks about in the New Testament. And with it, same as with faith, he can move mountains. In that sense, we can understand William Blake who says that we don’t need only faith for our salvation, but also Art. It is needed because it radiates the beauty and the good, the light in which man and mankind come to know their divine origin. As such, Art is absolutely transcendent and carries within itself the utopia of spiritual happiness, cleansed of any crude existential mud, social restraints or historic catastrophes. Art promises this utopia, which was ingeniously, as a prophetic vision, sensed by Dostoevsky: “Art will save the world”. It will perhaps happen when all human souls, like the beasts and the stoneslu red by Orpheus’ music, will come and drink from its spring. God, may that day come sooner. Kiro Urdin, one of the most prominent Macedonian contemporary artists, was born in Strumica in 1943. He holds a law degree from the University of Bel- grade, but never worked in the legal pro fession. He dedicated his life to the arts, becoming one of the most original, and world conceptual artists of our time. His artistic career started in 1972 when he became the chief set designer for telecasts dealing with musical works.

In 1973-74 he studied at the Academies des Arts Plastiques in Paris and was the first assistant of the feature length movie Time, Water. Since the early eighties, Mr.Urdin has exhibited his works worldwide including at the Melys Gallery, in New York in 1987, the Mirror Studio in New Orleans, the Galerie Messara in Paris and in Yokohama, Japan, in 1988. In 1989 his works were show cased at the Galerie Laburthe-Tolra. In 1994 he begun work on the Planetarium, an original painting that the artist repainted each time he arrived at a different place on globe. The work took him from the cradle of civilization, the Byzantine church of St Pante leimon at Nerezi, Macedonia, to historic sites like Jerusalem, Egypt and the Nile , Stonehenge, The Great Wall of Chi na, Machu Picchu of the Inca’s and the Massai tribe of Kenya, to world me tropolis like Paris, London, Berlin, New York, and finally to the Nederlands where Planetarium is on a permanent display. The artist divides his time between his native Macedonia, his permanent home in Belgium, and the world. He has been associated with the Macedonian Arts Council since 1995.