The world has become a complicated, twisted place. Our roots are entangled between dirt and asphalt, sunrise and neon signs, between the urge to run towards who we might become and the need to sit still with who we are. Pavlovski's universe is an ode to the contradictions that inhabit us, perhaps even to a fundamental condition of being human. His shapes and compositions evoke prehistoric imagery, recalling some of the earliest expressions of human creativity. The paintings shift between different times and realities, reflecting the contemporary human struggle to find peace and contentment in a world that rarely stands still. Here, egg tempera on wood and cardboard becomes a way of connecting the ancient with the immediate, the enduring with the fragile. These tangible materials invite us to grasp something of the world, to hold it in our hands and understand it as part of a larger whole. But also to question it at its core, to reexamine something seemingly obvious that is in fact steeped in complexity. To ask: How can cities and nature coexist when one so often destroys the other? How do we live with an awareness of the world's many crises without becoming overwhelmed by despair, anxiety and exhaustion?
For Pavlovski, to live is to navigate the tensions between mind and body. Perhaps this is why fairy tales and stories, from raw, ancient images to twinkling animated films, remain essential to our capacity to endure. They offer other ways of imagining the world, allowing wonder and absurdity to coexist with fear and uncertainty. Birds caught in polluted landscapes, fiery apples thrown as grenades, creatures growing like trees: images of a world in which creation, growth and destruction are inseparable. Pavlovski's worlds of lush, colourful flora may feel like Eden, but they offer no utopia. Instead, they inhabit the paradox of knowing that even our best intentions will never be enough to save the world entirely, while surrendering to apathy would mean giving up on it altogether.
Pavlovski's figures possess a gentle softness and innocence. They seem to search for answers to the great questions of existence not through mastery or certainty, but through relationships and curious encounters with the wilderness. Hiding and squeezing beneath tree trunks, carrying crafted objects, and picking apples in the midst of apocalypse and explosions, they embody contradictions and defy perfect logic; they are imperfectly human. Beneath rosy clouds, they look for a way through chaos and gloom, not by conquering the world, but by rediscovering the value of the small and ordinary. Buttering your bread, putting your fingers in the soil, listening to birds having a conversation you will never understand. Finding a house in the forest, not to escape life, but to accept that life will always be many things at once. The way forward in Pavlovski's worlds is not to find an antidote to chaos, but to learn to live alongside it.