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REWIEVS
The ink
squirting squid
The great mountaineer Hillary has a celebrated quote: “I climb the
hill because it’s there”. But there’s also a famous addition by the
minimalist artist Carl Andre: “The mountaineer climbs the hill because
it’s there. I create art because there isn’t any”.
This is one of the possible answers why in the transition cloacae
called Skopje there are still some artist teetering about: they create
art because out here there isn’t any around.
When I say this, I’m referring primarily to the paintings of Zoran
Poposki. Why today in Skopje, such – at first glance – “anachronous"
(maybe modernist in a postmodernist age) art that is strongly akin to
Jackson Pollock’s, Kandinsky’s, Miro’s? The answer is simple - it’s
here because there isn’t any around. It’s here because modernism, with
all its complex diverging directions, in Macedonia is a quite
degenerated – should I say deformed – octopus. That’s why I get the
impression that the pictorial gesture, the actionist expressive
strokes (just like a squid squirting ink all around, defending itself)
that Zoran Poposki resorts to, are deeply justified right now and
right here, and perhaps more in a certain emotional than intellectual
sense.
The important contemporary media artist and theorist Peter Weibel
says: “The more people adjust, the greater the pressure is to invent
some kind of a savage painting. All of the promises art as an
ideological fantasy makes – sovereignty, individuality, freedom,
authenticity – it cannot keep.
We’re talking about freedom of art, while in reality it is completely
managed, just like everything else, starting with the galleries,
museums and prices. It became a part of the market: economy as
culture. Or, when the claim arises that art is something individual,
mysterious, in reality it must be binding for all in order for it to
be comprehensible and to be able to take part in the general aesthetic
codes. These contradictions make art an ideological fantasy and a
fraud”.
I believe that Zoran Poposki, both on account of his youth and his
position in society, more or less knows what Weibel is talking about:
art is capitalism’s ideological fantasy. When the economy produces a
new notion of the object, art still tries to save the old notion of
the object – aesthetically or auretically; which means saving what’s
disappearing, while anti-art is trying to affirm the new notion of the
object and against art. Art is a kind of a “vanishing lady”; it tries
to grab what’s disappearing. And because it also disappears in the
process, we love it with all our hearts.
Thus, feeling an unusual sincerity of disappearance and devotion in
Zoran Poposki’s paintings, but also a rather stubborn cerebrality
which almost resembles escapism, I would like to salute his first
exhibition, aware that he’s making just the first step on the
painter’s road that will diverge/diverges unpredictably into manifold
paths.
Nikola Gelevski
Zoran Poposki’s Journey of Desire
An invitation to enter a painter’s studio
which hasn’t been “officialized” yet, immediately creates a certain
reserve. However, in this case I instantly felt a pleasant atmosphere,
caused not only by the works that surrounded me, but also from the
very first spontaneous talk with the young artist Zoran Poposki.
There’re probably other similar “hidden” places where one can come
across such an unexpectedly passionate attitude towards painting.
Looking at Zoran Poposki’s formal artistic language, it’s easy to
determine the relations with certain abstract directions of modernity
(action painting, gestural painting etc. of the 1940s, 50s, 60s). He
conveys his thoughts through emblematic strokes which create optical
effects – results of the color range he willfully chose to pursue. He
insists on the speech of primary colors, especially blue.
However, it is Jackson Pollock’s language that we discover first, in
the way of fully conquering the surface, a moment when the painting
becomes a fully integrated object, when the painterly is of primary
importance. One also notices distant echoes of Joan Miro’s
“Constellations”, then Wassily Kandinsky’s experience in using a
single background color, and often the style of Sam Francis which
retains the “traditional” idea of composition.
But, in Poposki’s abstraction, which is close to the 1990s one
(topical and defined as “survival of abstract painting”), is precisely
“the story”. In it he inserts those emotions which reflect certain
spiritual, intellectual or cognitive moments that confirm the
closeness with the process implemented by the aforementioned painters,
especially with the act of creation of the color field. Thus, for
Poposki, conceptualizing a formless configuration (accepted as “free”
abstraction) goes not only to support the realization (as a concrete
artistic, technological or media process of creation of the artwork),
but also causing visions of metaphysical orientations (especially
important for the abstract expressionists). For him the painting is an
exaltation of being, and that’s why he insists on avoiding
three-dimensionality (to emphasize the superficiality of today’s
world), as well as on crevices and margins – subtitles for a number of
painting in which there’s glimpse of a certain control of emotions,
and action has been “banished” to the margins of the work.
Lastly, one can conclude that the level of reading of Zoran Poposki’s
pictorial achievements satisfies the “code” of both modernist and
postmodernist phenomena.
Marika Bocvarova Plavevska, Museum of Contemporary Art - Skopje
The triptych comprised of “Waves”, “Silk”,
and “Letter”, is distinguished from Zoran Poposki’s other paintings by
its minimalist poetics. The centre of the canvases is empty, and that
emptiness is modeled by the forms that exist on the margins of these
paintings. When I first saw “Silk”, I liked it immediately. Zoran told
me the name of the painting, saying it was inspired by the novel of
the Italian writer Alessandro Baricco with the same title. I love that
book very much and so, maybe that’s why I liked this triptych.
There’s another reason, as well. I myself am marginal and scrape a
living at the edges of the centre which in itself looks empty and
nonessential to me. Sometimes, I like to be convinced that with very
fact that I don’t belong to it, I make the centre more beautiful,
giving it life from the edges. For, the way it is now, it would only
be a simple empty canvass.
I’m talking daft? I’m simply projecting my personal condition onto
“Letter”, “Silk”, and “Waves”? If you think that I’m a self-absorbed
twerp – you’re completely right! But, aren’t those who belong to the
centre also utterly egotistic?!
Marko Petrushevski
Embrace
Do you know the stars, the moon, the
scent of spring, the taste of summer, the sun, and the sound of leaves
beneath your feet? I know you know of them, but do you know them?
Have you ever traveled on a cloud? But on one which belonged only to
you.
And have you ever let the rain melt the pain tearing up your chest?
Tiny ponds splatter under your feet, and droplets caress your face.
Raindrops or teardrops? You’re the only one who knows. And you thank
the sky.
The walkers in the rain breath in life, they dream and gaze at the
stars. And the sky sent them a silver rain. Made of stars. Because
they know how to rejoice.
When was the last time that you picked joy for somebody you love? And
invited him/her for a dance on the waves, in the rain, or for a flight
over the rooftops. Oh, such walks can produce miracles. And miracles
are possible only if we yearn for them. They know no limits. Nor bad
weather. All it takes is hope. Of the white and red and blue kind.
Through which yellow fireflies pass. The ones that turn life on and
off. That white, tranquil, green and orange hope, playful as a
mischievous child, is always before you. All you need is a wish to hug
it.
And - embracing hope - go out for a walk. You can ask anybody or
anything. Open your arms and your heart. For the colors, scents, joys,
sorrows, pains, lights, stars, suns, rains that live in these
paintings and wait for you and your hope to hug them. Don’t be ashamed
of your embrace. It can fit worlds in it.
These paintings want to tell you about them. And they wait impatiently
for your own worlds. Hug each other. Make a magical embrace, one which
will remain on your shoulders and your soul long after it finishes. It
belongs to you, and the paintings. They won’t betray to anybody what
you’ve told them. They’ll be happy because of the energy you gave
them. And what they whispered to you in the embrace remains your own.
You can choose not to reveal it to anyone. You can choose to tell it
to everybody. Or share it with what and whom you love.
I invited you for a walk with paintings that can embrace splendidly.
And I revealed to you some pieces of my embrace with them. But I
didn’t tell you everything. It belongs only to me, and the paintings.
You make your own embrace. Because these paintings are waiting to be
hugged.
Gordana Icevska
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