OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: The Paintings of Amer Kobaslija
April 29 – September 20, 2026
MOCA Jacksonville is pleased to present a major survey of the work by locally based international artist Amer Kobaslija. Throughout his artistic trajectory, Kobaslija has depicted his surroundings with virtuosity and wit, displaying a keen eye for detail, informed by a deep understanding of the history of art. Embedded in his work is the search for a sense of place, reflected in the organization of his output in series that describe his nomadic life. He likes to quote Tolstoy: “Paint your own village and you will paint the world.” Outside Looking In will trace his career from early works to the present, including works from his well-known series “Florida Diaries”; “One Hundred Views of Kesennuma” (Japan); “Road to Rossinière” (Switzerland); “Places, Spaces;” and the ongoing “Artist Studios” series.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in Banja Luka, in today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kobaslija fled as a refugee to Germany in 1993, following the outbreak of the Serbo-Croatian war. There, he began his formal art education at the prestigious Düsseldorf Art Academy, before receiving asylum in the United States. He immigrated to Florida, where he completed his B.F.A. in Printmaking at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL, and in 2003, he obtained his M.F.A. in Painting at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Kobaslija is currently a faculty member of the University of Central Florida, where he teaches painting in the university’s School of Visual Arts and Design.-
The Florida Diaries
"The Florida Diaries" has been an ongoing series for the artist, since he moved to Jacksonville in 1997. The works often juxtapose cheerful colors, lush landscapes and the likenesses of friends and neighbors, with a subtext about the continued development which has inevitably led to the replacement of Florida’s pristine landscape with landfills and endless residential and commercial centers. The contrast reflects Kobaslija’s appreciation of the people and culture of his adopted home state, together with his concerns over the consequences of our urban sprawl and impending effects of climate change; the familiarity coexisting with the outsider’s gaze.
After Watteau II, displays Kobaslija’s signature synthesis of a classically constructed realist landscape, with a fantastical narrative. His work is deeply imbued by both Western and Eastern historic painting techniques reflected in the minute details; the horizon lines; his cloud formations; or the unique perspectives he employs — often, as the artist describes it, from a “moth’s point of view” or as “standing on a hillside looking down,” giving the viewer a broader, but also a more intimate experience of being inside the landscape.
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One Hundred Views of Kesennuma
The title of Kobaslija's One Hundred Views of Kesennuma was inspired by Japanese artist Hokusai's famous series of landscape paintings; Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. Following the 2011 tsunami in Japan, he began an extensive series to document the wreckage, eventually making several trips to the country to witness the aftermath firsthand. The palpable parallels between the war torn Bosnia that Kobaslija witnessed in his childhood and his view in 2012 of the desecration Japan faced through its 2011 earthquake and tsunami are clearly depicted through his perspective.
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The Artist Studio Series
"The subject of the studio has autobiographical resonance. Am I reading too much into Kobaslija’s paintings when I suggest that, on one level, they may be interpreted as metaphors for the chaos that prevailed in Bosnia a decade ago, and from which the artist found refuge both in the studio and in art? [...] Kobaslija obtains a wide range of optical and emotional effects through his skillful handing of oil, light and, in particular, space, which he contracts, expands, cantilevers and warps as if it were made of rubber.” — Michaël Amy, Art in America (2006)
The artist studio has been an important motif for Kobaslija since graduate school, both his own, and others he has visited, from Pollock’s, to Philip Pearlstein’s, to Balthus’. Although the studios are always vacant, their interiors are cluttered and lived-in, acting as allegorical portraits of the people who inhabit them. For Kobaslija,they represent a reflection of the artist's self in time: “I see these studio paintings as meditations on past and present in a Proustian sense – the two states of mind that coexist and influence one another.”