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Svetlana Mladenov GORAN DESPOTOVSKI “Instead of preparing and heralding future worlds, Context Goran Despotovski began his artistic career at the turn of two centuries, gaining his affirmation in the framework of the Vojvodinian cultural environment. He has managed to develop his visual poetics by seeking harmony within different contexts: place, time, local and global, intimate and public. Vojvodinian art scene at the end of the 20 th and the beginning of 21 st century is a complex system, which seems diluted and unclear, but is actually an active pulsating organism incorporating a mash of influences of transitional, Balkan, but also a better organised, central European art spaces. Although Goran Despotovski’s artistic explorations have been happening in a “ghettoised”, closed society, such as the Serbian society today, the development of new technologies and an accelerated information flow have enabled the idea of globalised art to become reality, and the international artistic discourse to become more acceptable and understandable to artists worldwide. Faster and easier communication between different societies and individuals which came as a result of a heightened individual mobility and “nomadic” lifestyle of numerous artists, global use of new telecommunication systems, accessibility of the Internet, etc. – all these helped contemporary art to become a common property of the entire civilisation, which is build and enriched by adopting new values characteristic of the identity of different regions or national communities. “Art after the year 2000 attempts to recognise as its own context some kind of a general state of things which already exists in the field of technology, as Ernst Jünger claims. And there is no centre, only a field under a constant influence of different peripheries.” 2 Vojvodina is one of such peripheral regions. Its art scene at the end of the 20 th century was lively with activity as it still is today. This activity is reflected more in different initiatives, ideas, short-term interventions, and virtual explorations, and less in realised projects and finished and materialised artistic production. Reasons are plenty for such a state of the art system, which is more self-organisational than based on strategic planning. It is still dependent on individual agility and creativity, their ability to cope in the confused social environment, lacking the slightest inclination towards contemporary art. There is a number of factors that have had a negative influence on the general impression about Vojvodinian visual art scene: impoverished state of the institutions of culture, undeveloped donor system, the lack of a market for contemporary artistic production, the lack of adequate spaces for presenting visual art as well as large events which would serve its promotion, the absence of new artistic accomplishments, etc. Therefore the image of the value of the artistic accomplishments is blurred, as well as the one of the significance of individual efforts by artists and curators, who are giving their best to overcome the present obstacles with the bare strength of their ideas and personal initiatives. Artistic figures like Goran Despotovski are therefore invaluable – the figures who give the force of their talent and the genuine thirst for exploration to the current of Vojvodinian contemporary art which carries its vital energy. Having adopted the international artistic discourse and enriched it with the particular sprit of the region he originates from and where he works, Despostovski enters the category of those not so numerous Vojvodinian artists who push the regional boundaries by their artist concept, and join the European and world artistic family without a complex. In Goran Despotovski’s plastic concept one can recognise the key features of contemporary artistic practice from the beginning of the 21 st century: free navigation through the ‘field of art’, use of different mediums and their combination (painting, sculpture, photography, space interventions, new media), use of different materials (traditional, untraditional and ready-made – old textiles, pillowcases, bed linen, feathers, wool, drapes, wooden parts of furniture and fences, ropes, thread, coats, TV screens, trousers, jackets, etc.), understanding of how important it is for an artwork/act to communicate with its audience, implementation of relational aesthetics as a theoretical base for one’s own work, respect for the contexts of the reality a new artistic content is born in. Having set off from painting as the basic medium, Despotovski focuses his later artistic research in the direction of transforming it from a two-dimensional form into a spatial one, leading it to a further conquest of space. In his newly-developed ambiences, painting and spatial artistic objects take the positions of equals at first, but in the later efforts the objects take precedence. Having mastered new technologies, the artist applies them skilfully and competently. By introducing digital photography and screen picture in his explorations, the artist achieves a new quality; his works become more attractive and up-to-date. He has never abandoned his human figure adopted earlier, which has been occasionally vanishing from his canvases, to make room for re-examination of pure art, and coming back again, incarnated in spatial arrangements. Figure is the backbone of his latest installations, presented at this exhibition. Installations Goran Despotovski builds his poetics on making a crossbreed between emotional and rational, giving a slight advantage to feelings and a more intimate perception of the world, in which the search for a distinctive, personal space becomes the aim of artistic engagement. Articulating this emotional drive in the direction of achieving his original ideas, his plastic concepts mirror the state of the society they emerged in, putting the cultural-social aspect in the foreground. The artist does so with a right measure, without pathos and powerful expressionistic gestures, but with a profound empathy with the person who is always in the background, at least implicitly. Intimate and public, personal and communal intertwine, erasing their boundaries and merging in a common ‘undefined’ state, in which personal gets easily transformed into collective, intimate into public, and individual into general and vice versa. The presence of a human being in spatial concepts developed by Goran Despotovski can be felt even when the human figure is not physically there. Coats and cloaks in the installation entitled ‘Showroom’ are arranged in such a way to make a special ambience, suggesting memories of people who used to wear them, implying their present or past existences. The sound which is heard when you come closer to this ambiental setting only underscores their mysterious presence. The artist frequently uses old, already used and forgotten objects and fabrics saved from old family houses, puts them in a new context and opens them to the public. The absence of human figure in the following installations makes it even more present: ‘Medium’, ‘Suggestions’, ‘Folding’, ‘Repeat’, etc. In the latest spatial works ‘Mumbled’ and ‘To Float’ human figure plays the leading role. ‘Mumbled’ is an installation composed of dolls/human figures as natural-size objects, made of soft materials, sponge and fabric, without defined facial features, placed in a line. The repetition of identical figures serves to state a social criticism - the artist’s intention is to remind the audience of the events from the 1990s: wars, isolation, oppression, long lines in front of the supermarkets, banks, petrol stations… The figures stripped of all individuality, as if clones made from one original, underscore the impersonality of these people, merged into a mass, while the sound the visitors hear when they come closer illustrates a murmur which merges with the indistinct mumbling of the masses. The peacefulness and patience of the figures in the line impels the spectator to move them, to do something that will ‘shake them up’ and rescue them from the situation and hopelessness they have ended up in. Love for ‘a man in the crowd’ and the understanding for his problems which come as a result of the insane situation he finds himself in speak of the artist, for whom humanity is an essential aspect of living, while a critical stance toward the society, warning and expressing public disagreement is a duty of an artist. It is well-known that the destiny of an individual in a society such as ours is determined not only by their origin, decision to become socio-politically engaged or remain passive observers, but in new actual relations in the society. In the country with a permanent fight among political parties and financial powers for control, where capital is celebrated and consumer mentality is forced upon the people, an inevitable collapse of the value system has occurred together with repression of humanity and solidarity. The artist’s concern about the destiny of an ‘ordinary man’ and the preservation of his microcosm is evident in most installations done by Despotovski. The artist feels with other people’s problems, listens to the whispers of the masses and is capable of understanding their essential meaning, which speaks of his strong empathy, his willingness to share the fate of the others. In the installation entitled ‘To Float’ the artist uses a transparent white fabric for making figures resembling dolls. These nameless and impersonal dolls have not only lost their faces but all implication of colour, turning into something amorphous, ill, washed out, hospital-like sterile, untouchable and unreal. They cease to represent individuals and become symbols of a general undefined state. The artist evokes a feeling that human existence is endangered, he warns us of the danger that individuality could be lost in the new world order, of the increasingly present process of individuals turning into a shapeless and faceless masses, of the human alienation. Despotovski’s work is rooted in the criteria of coexistence, which can be seen in his need to instigate dialogue and create opportunities for spectators to give their own contribution. ‘Installation becomes a place of encounter, a fleeting space, a place of meeting with the society.’ 3 ‘Art is therefore a state of encounter.’ 4 In some installations spectators set off the sound by their motion, turning it up and down thus making the murmur and mumbling of the masses audible, louder or fade away completely. By this, the audience takes part in forming and changing the work of art together with the artist. Its activity contributes to the factor of surprise, so the final outcome can never be told in advance. Interactivity becomes of essence and without it many of the artist’s efforts would stay unfinished or insufficiently understandable. The interaction between the artist, the work and the audience on the one hand, and geographical place, time and space on the other, and memory, reality and predicting on the third, constitute the environment the artistic explorations of Goran Dimitrovski live in. 1 Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Kosava, No.42-43, Vrsac, March 2003 |
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