UNDERWATER LOVE – A Cycle of Circular Canvases by Maja Lesjak Gavriloska in the Kamene priče tavern

Friday, 01.08. - Thursday, 14.08.2025.

A sensual visual poem of fluid femininity and oceanic depth comes to life in the iconic jazz‑tavern Kamene priče, among the stone lanes of picturesque Bale in Istria.

Exhibition “UNDERWATER LOVE”

On large circular canvases, Maja Lesjak Gavriloska blends acrylic, digital collage and draughtsman’s gesture into quiet vortices of skin, algae and salt. Without linear narration, the works form a series of fragmentary pauses: tender thighs dissolve into open‑sea emptiness, fins into palms, a navel into a marine eye. The artist speaks of the body as a fragile membrane that both nourishes and protects, immersing erotic intimacy in feminist self‑awareness. The cyclical canvas format—miniature pictorial portholes—highlights the elliptical breathing of waves and menstrual rhythms; the viewer moves from one “floating” image to the next like a diver among corals. It is precisely this interplay of vulnerability and compressed power that charges the series with an unrelenting submarine tension.

The Artist – Maja Lesjak Gavriloska / malapala

Born in 1978 in Celje, Gavriloska graduated in Visual Communications from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana and now works in Velenje. She describes her alter‑ego, the wide‑eyed girl Malapala, as a being that crosses the borders of age, gender and species, always “seeking the viewer’s heart”. Malapala is her half‑dreaming medium through which she explores identity, transformation and human fragility. The artist moves with equal ease between canvas, illustration, mural and even painted sails; at the core is always the handcrafted trace and her uncompromising personal line.

Exhibition Context in Bale

Bale, a medieval settlement built on a limestone ridge, has preserved an almost untouched matrix of narrow, radially set streets. Gentle cobbled rises, stone benches against façades and quiet passages joined by low arches create an architectural backdrop that muffles footsteps and amplifies every word. In this intimate acoustic space, the exhibition gains an extra dimension: the blues and warm coral tones of the canvases merge with the rough white walls, while the discreet scent of salt, wafting from the sea only a few kilometres away, recalls that each painting is part of a wider living landscape.

The tavern Kamene priče, housed within one of these stone structures, with its rugged walls, wooden beams and evening jazz programme, naturally continues the dialogue between art, space and sound. Thus, the canvases do not hang in a neutral “white cube” but in a space that breathes and rustles with the audience, intensifying the sensation of diving through body, sea and memory.