From the cycle of Drawings in Metal / Body and soul
Completed on | 2000 |
Category | Other (projects, sкetches, videos, photos, documentary) |
The beginning of both forms is spiral[The spiral shape, like the circle, is a suggestion for rebirth. See Rank, op. cit., 352.] and enters the stated form as a whole or a system, while the sustainable balance of the spatial drawings follows the logic of the symbolic, metonymically changing or replacing the position of the other. Speaking of matter, Henri-Louis Bergson wrote that: “… matter is made into something radically different from the representation, something of which, consequently, we have no image; over against it they place a consciousness empty of images, of which we are unable to form any idea; lastly, to fill consciousness, they invent an incomprehensible action of this formless matter upon this matterless thought.”[Bergson, op. cit., 25.]
Yet, due to the assumption that these two undetermined forms carry the attributes essence and manner, it is unnecessary to discuss their differences because their meaning is in the oneness or in indivisibility. Aristotle’s philosophical treatise De Anima (350 BC) suggests that “the soul is inseparable if it is always connected with a body”, but it also introduces the idea that only specificity can separate it.[Aristotle, On the Soul, trans. Margarita Buzalkovska-Aleksova (Skopje: Magor, 2006), 7.]
The assumptions about the peculiarities of these two figurines are deliberately left to free interpretation, because the artist insists on unity. The remarks of the artist that one of the elements (the one with regular, orthogonal violations) is an evolved rigid form, and the other (the spiral element) is a sophisticated form, lead us to a conclusion in which perfection, evolution, or natural consequence is immanent to either of these two supposed substitutes, the soul or the body. Democritus, who suggests that the soul is the basis for the entire nature, thinks it is round, just like the particles in the air are.[Aristotle, On the Soul, 12.] Aristotle’s works suggest that the soul moves upwards and that the soul moves the body, that the movements it makes are the same as the ones with which it moves itself, but also that the ‘spatial movement’ of the soul is impossible.[Ibid., 21; 29.]
The historical illustrations of the spiral indicate that it is one of the earliest and most widespread ornaments. It is a view-point that dives into the idea that the most volatile part of the body, which is the womb, where the process of creative transformation lies, eventually creates an abstract image of the immortal soul.[Raznk, op. cit., 355.]
Consequently, the spatial drawings syllogize a supposed movement of both forms only in reciprocity, whose possibility lies in the openness of the end and the definite beginning as a foundation where they commit themselves to the sequence of sensory observations. In an extensive study of the relationship between matter and substance, Roland Barthes suggested that the signifier always manifests itself ‘materially’, as a sound, object, image, etc.,[Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero, trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, pref. Susan Sontag (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1968), 47. The materiality of the signifier clearly separates the “matter” from “substance”, where the substance may be intangible (substance of content) or material (sounds, objects, pictures). In semiology there are “mixed systems” with different types of matter, such as sound and image, subject and writing, collected under the concept of “typical sign”: verbal, graphic, iconic, gestural. More in Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, trans. Annete Lavers and Colin Smith (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968), 47.] and that the material sometimes proves to be an essential factor for the art form by putting into practice l’art pour l’art, or art as a means of creative act – “it uses art to create.”[Rank, op. cit., 7.]