Formally trained painter Lili HRIBOVŠEK indicated already in her Bachelor thesis “Archetypes of opposites”, her lifelong artist orientation in the study of symbolism, dialectics of opposites and consciousness as she tried to answer how archetypes influence the human mind, self-consciousness and the sense of world around us. Therefor also in her present fine art works she is trying in her own illustrative way to express the essence of her current spiritual recognitions by transforming them into unique visual image, many time indicating symmetrical composition, special color palette and unusual metaphysical scenes in which a transformed human figure usually has the main role. It is surrounded by symbolic vast cosmos/planetarian space, symbolizing human spiritual integration in both the vastness of one’s own micro cosmos as well as the externalized limitless cosmos.

 

Lili Hribovšek uses a lot of different symbols in her painting: circle, sphere, circle of life –uroboros; the four principles of alchemy: fire, water, air and earth; the archetypes of Adam and Eve, the Sun and the Moon, symbolic complementary colours such as yellow – violet and orange – blue; female and male principle; the principle of anime and animus, etc. Thus here paintings contain and represent different levels of human trough these symbols: the spiritual, emotional and physical level. She is trying to represent all these levels through fine art, using explicit and provocative painted image. The well thought symbolic background of these images is directly transferred using the art interpretation into the viewer. It is a multilayered story of unusual mystic dimensions and possibilities in the form of different composition settings and namings such as: The Sun and the Moon; Left and Right; Aksis Mundi; The One; Vitriol, Birth of the New Earth; Multi Eye I, etc. These images mean the materialization of her intensive visual artistic thinking about specific spiritual problem, which builds a strong foundation to these images. This makes her works carefully planned, whereas the visual and symbolic levels are inseparably connected and interdependent. That is why Lili can analytically and artistically interpret her paintings. In that manner, in her diptych The Sun and The Moon she symbolically  paints the sphere on the left as the Sun, spinning around its axis, thus creating mandalic, uroboric state of mind. It is created of smaller violet strips next to which smaller Suns are traveling in the shape of a spiral, thus forming a bigger Sun, set in a gradient yellow background. The Moon, pictured on the right side, presents itself as a reflection of the sun light and is set into a background of complementary violet color. In the diptych Left and Right represents the moment of shifting from one sphere to another; the impermanence of moment versus the eternal cycle of life; the male and female energy. In another diptych, Aksis Mundi, she painted a man and a woman in a meditative position, sitting on the Earth’s sphere. Ribbons surrounding them represent a universal consciousness, following the principle of toroid. The figures below have their eyes closed, next to them a brain in a nutshell is depicted as a symbol of union of the micro and macro cosmos. The upper figures, set in a subtle reality have their eyes open, observing a pyramid in the form of a molecule, thus representing relativity of our perspective on reality surrounding us. The contrast between the orange and blue color used in this painting is also symbolic as it represents the meanings of the three elements: water and the air, the latter being symbolically represented by the universe, and the Earth in the form of Earth sphere. Also the painting The One was made quite multilayered. The left half represents rationality and analysis (jang), and the right half the emotionality and intuitivism (jin). The painting wants to express our dual nature and to bring attention to our world view in two different ways. Also in the painting Multi Eye I, the eye is the central element of the painting, set as a symbol of collective consciousness. It multiplies into several eyes, arriving from the setting Sun as a combination of many individual consciousnesses. The meaning of title Vitriol is diving into the center of the Earth and finding the philosopher’s stone. It is a word of initiation, expressing the law of transformation process; return of the human being into the most intimate nucleus of his Being, one’s own depths. The central motif of the painting is a face of a woman, set as a representation of the consciousness, unifying the micro and macro cosmos. From the center of her head the rays of light are coming, representing purity; the DNK helix with the Pleiades star cluster; and the cuboids, representing the center; and the rays of galaxies. As the rest of the paintings, also this one is multilayered, trying to show the deeper meaning of our existence.

 

Lili Hribovšek keeps asking the questions: who are we, where are we coming from, where are we going to. With her visual fine art she is trying to answer these questions. In this process her own personality plays a very important role of; her personality of which her creativity is an integral part. We could say Lili, taking her first steps in the path of creativity, faced herself. Through this she developed spiritual foundations for the development of her future fine art creations, as well as the foundations for the development of her own personality. Thus Lili Hribovšek is shaping her own creative way as well as the satisfaction she gets from the act of creating; the unrest and desire to create more and more visual images.

Darko Slavec