The Numinous Gateways of Vladimir Pajevic

Vladimir Pajevic is an elusive artist living in Italy. He's little known in the United States, and probably less so among horror fans. But there's reason he should be. Pajevic's obsessively recurring landscapes, which often show lonely, vegetation stifled gateways, share an inexplicable spirit with the surreal and the strange. His scenes seem so thoroughly isolated and mysterious, in fact, that they provoke serious meditations and unlikely chills.

The real frightful power of Pajevic's art centers in its thick mystery. The artist lends us only scenes of gateways that could go anywhere. They look like the forgotten sentinels of some buried civilization, and what they house within their black tunnels and murky depths is anyone's guess. Unlike overt horror art, Pajevic's landscapes are filled with lush greenery and pleasant skies. His structures show none of the crumbling ramparts or twisted towers of Gothic castles.

Yet, anyone with an appreciation for darkness who stares into Pajevic's paintings (and I mean, really gazes into them) will see that something is just...off. Few pieces exhibited online show any life except for those damnable plants, growths which seem more like relentless, foreign invaders than signs of vibrant life. Moreover, several pictures show abandoned toys outside the gates to nowhere. The absence of their owners as well as the overwhelming presence of those vines and leaves conveys a severe melancholy atmosphere, obscured at first glance by the gentle scenery.

Like the best strange magicians in other mediums, Vladimir Pajevic bottles his sinister atmosphere in containers tilting toward the bright and mundane. Personally, I can't look at his paintings without feeling the subtle eeriness found in Robert Aickman's fiction, or in David Lynch's bewildering dread on film. In some ways, Pajevic's suggestive bleakness is stronger than, say, Aickman's The Wine Dark Sea, or Lynch's Inland Empire. That's because it's so still, so deceptive, and staring you point blank in the face. No one can know where those gateways lead, but it's difficult to imagine it's anywhere good. Worse, the gateways themselves are beginning to disappear in many paintings - as if whatever dwells in those hidden gardens behind the walls won't be content to stay there forever.

With visual hallucinations as quietly provocative and unsettling as these, expect Vladimir Pajevic to become a more familiar name one day. Regrettably, this may take some time, however, as the artist is nearly as shadowy and uncertain as his products. Italian and other European readers may have better fortune finding information about Mr. Pajevic, but those of us in the English speaking world can only wait, wonder, and quiver at the unsaid mysteries in these occult paintings.

-Grim Blogger