[...] Zim’s choices – the statement, the concealment, the avoidance, the transfer of the eyesight onto the paper or canvas through a quick étude performed vis-à-vis nature, the construction of the image as an encounter between form and symbols in the service of some metaphor – belong in the broader field of modernism. Zim the artist, however, who is, as aforesaid, not bound by any ideology, tiptoes through that field as if through raindrops. The conflicts always remain in the background, between manual work and the wisdom of the heart. Aïm Lüski once justly placed Zim's choices between the options introduced by Ardon and Zaritsky, between punctilious dexterity on the one hand and free offhandedness on the other. To this I would like to add: between Zaritsky's sensory-tactile light and Ardon's "inner", graphic light [...]
Excerpt from: "Reflections upon the Commencement of a Book" by Yona Fischer

Zim’s paintings represent the meeting point of two deeply held attitudes of two essentials that exist side by side in dialectical tension: the yearning for the absolute, for values beyond the “self”, perhaps even beyond history itself, a desire expressed in a move toward the abstract; and the tacit commitment to a time and place, the duty to nurture and maintain the connection between art and life. It is the tension between these two essentials that endows his work with a concrete/universal depth, and enables it to embrace the absolute and abstract in the down-to-earth landscapes of the ephemeral and particular. As the conflict between the two opposite poles is never resolved, the dialectic between the eye that sees and the hand that paints remains intact, and is the fulcrum of the drive and artistic power of Jakob Zim’s paintings.
Miriam Or. From the introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition “New Paintings”, Holon Museum of Art, 1996

Before any attempt at an understanding or leisurely observation of Zim's paintings, the viewer is first inundated by color; a strong stream of color seems to wash over us, bursting forth from the canvas. Each tone, even the quietest grays - to say nothing of the bold reds, greens, and blues - stands out more clearly on the canvas than in any natural context. Zim places them side by side so that one accentuates the other, "drawing it out", activating it, and brushing off the cobwebs of the obvious. His colors are his subjects. They are not "the colors of things" (the red of poppies or blood, the blue of the sea or sky), but the colors of colors. He seeks to galvanize the red tones so that from within the red, something is said that has never been said before, as if the treasure troves of the different reds held stifled messages, successions of meaning just waiting for the moment to be given expression [...]
Excerpt from: "When Colors Speak" by Ariel Hirschfeld

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