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For the Shark that sails sleeping
from Nikola Gelevski's review
To
carry something on the other side. To move something. That's the
literal meaning of the word transfer composed from the Latin
trans-, through, over and ferre, carrying, moving.
According the Dictionary of
philosophy, there is transfer of feeling, phenomenon where one
state of mind caused by something, move on to another (according to
similarity and contingency); there is transfer of values,
phenomenon when the sign invokes the value of the signified; there
is also transfer of sensibility, phenomenon of the sensuality
of the subject for the sensitive impressions which receives from
some other subject.
In the psychoanalysis the transfer is connected with the resistance
because in the psychoanalytic situation there revive some episodes
from the life that could be previously been forgotten.
The psychoanalytical transfer expresses partly the conflict between
the analyzed and the analyst. It is actually a scene space that is
double of the inner space, and which reveals, with interaction and
phantasmatics, the inner protagonists (Id, Ego and the Superego). Of
course, in this context one very important element is the moment of
contra transfer, which is preconscious or unconscious analytical
response of the transfer, oppose to it. But in the psychoanalysis it
is considered that the contra transfer is sometimes key source for
the analyst's insight. So the success of the therapy is not left on
the transfer but on a contrary, it is based on the dynamics of the
process and on acquiring awareness about it.
So, finally, on this point we meet with Igor Toshevski's prints,
with his Transfers, which are, besides all, an attempt to acquire
awareness for the phenomenon of the transfer, in psychological, but
first of all in artistic sense. Because the artistic deed is a
transfer. Or metaphor, if we use a "transport" figure. The artistic
act is questioning of the existing order of things, of the fixed
common places. We could even say that the art is "incorrect use of
the language", as Ludwig Wittgenstein defines the metaphor.
"Incorrect" because it tries in the same time to subdue the two
opposite tendencies, the centrifugal and the centripetal; the first
leads to wider contexts while the second leads towards concentration
of meanings.
It seems to me that Igor Toshevski with
it's Transfers tries to subdue the statical and dynamical principles
which relations are probably the core of the the whole visual art.
His print worlds are movable, interfering and autoreferential. His
Transfers are complex metaphors which similarity is not based on the
only one point or on analogies but on a delicate research of the
visual medium. As a matter of fact, it seems that his Transfers -
which could be understood as a print metaphor - create a certain
resonance, tendency of widening of the meanings and attracting of
other fields of meanings. Exactly that is the task of the "bearer",
of the Haron who transfers between the, sometimes, borderless coasts
of art, which, from the other side, could be a metaphor of the life
itself, that boat between the two coasts.
Formally speaking, what Toshevski calls transferring is actually a
print technique of imprints and copying with solvent. Of course,
Toshevski does not stop at the imprint but uses a whole specter of
drawing techniques: ink, graphite, watercolor... Before this, he
experiments a long time with copied papers, often destroying the
basic imprint, photography or letters, to big seeds or stain. The
impression one gets is very interesting, provocative in technical
sense and from the aspect of design, and the end result is one
specific artwork which synthetics reach and refined artistic
culture.
The iconography of the exposed Transfers is divers and mystical:
clocks, sharks, athletes, ballet dancers, wheels, arrows... Some of
the motives recur, but often twisted, transferred in some other
contexts, they increase the complex metaphoric, the complex
"traffic" that occurs on many levels and in many dimensions.
Besides the fact that Igor Toshevski already has respectably ranged
art opus (with Academy, big drawing experience, with comics and
storyboards, installations, works of conceptual nature, work on
film...), what fascinates is his wish to experiment and to
investigate new prints techniques all the time. Maybe even while he
sleeps. As a shark. That guards the Heron's boat?
But that is already a new metaphorical line. New transfer.
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