Scetch
Completed on | 2010 |
Category | Other (projects, sкetches, videos, photos, documentary) |
The mental equilibrium tries to reassemble again after a persistent commitment to the reflection of the Eastern wisdom and Western philosophy in Patterns / Forms of Probability (2008 – 2010). In this painting phase, the artist engages in research on Confucian and Taoist philosophy, concluding that there is a supposed ‘particle motion’. By discovering the form (of probability), the artist concludes that its vastness is greater than the completeness, that the continuity between the spiritual and material reality exceeds their presence, and that the force, expressed in Leibniz terminology, is a basic element of mental and physical occurrence, i.e. the force should be expressed as a movement in order to be established.[Nedeljkovic, op. cit., 377.] This voluminous and momentous form establishes a ‘mass of living force [vita activa]’[Ibid., 378.] or an assemblage of metaphysical atoms – monads, each of which is thought to carry a small world, a microcosm. Each monad is an inseparable existence, a unit, or an individual. The reality that this ‘visual quote’ reproduces consists of forces, and behind each force stands a simple indivisible atom which is realized as motion or as space with its actual action.[Idem.] Derived from a neutral suprematic base, juxtaposed ‘patterns of probability’ illustrate and build the contours of the ‘subatomic world’. This lively and dynamic ‘biomorph’, as a parabola wraps around its own imaginary axis and twisting, like a Folium of Descartes, mirrors its “other” side – the one that exists only “in” and “for” our illusion. The thick layers of color, as Fautrier painting impasto,[Jean Fautrie, a French painter, one of the most important representatives of Tachisme.] confirm the structural presence of each particle or minimal unit in the chain of the syntagmatic axis whose transformability paradigmatically outlines the semantic verticals whose end is in the form. The facture is not only a feature of the painting surface,[For surface layers with color, “texture” or constructivist vocabulary – the facture is considered to have an inherent “expressive power” that has a different function of pure media transmission. Maria Lind, Abstraction, Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art (The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2013), 12.] but a bearer of different verbal data. This conceptual intention shows that “the form of content is an abstract structure of relations imposed by a particular language for the same underlined substance.”[Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film, 23.]
This ‘living’ reflection of the subatomic inhales and exhales, and it is quite probable that it is created at the very moment of its occurrence and of its creation. In this aesthetically concise, precise, clean and clear lexeme, Maznevski finds his impetus once again in the lonely space of thought and self-reflection. The work has its own time, a beginning and an end, but the dimension of duration is something completely different. It is like a spread ad infinitum that avoids any completeness, and belongs to the poetic act. Looking for another imagined dimension, the author assumes a certain ‘dynamis’ of the space of poetics which is deeply anchored in the bio-theological teleological ideology, dualism, phenomenology, empiricism and fiction. The two-plane visual model, as a clear reflection indicates the existence of independent planes: in the foreground, the sensory impact with the “biomorph” figure establishes a cognitively recognizable metaphor of “infinity” and a “circular line” as repetition, renewability, regeneration, or return to the initial position, and there is the second one which allows rhythmicity, vibrancy, dynamism, voluminousness, and the layered state to create an internal dialogue or relationship with the stillness.
Thus, the phenomenological contrasts do not take place primarily between the work and the receiv- er or the reader, but internally, in the media, and axially, after which they predictively present a certain at- titude towards the world and the facts. The hypothetical assumption guided by the cognitive recognition of the imagined third dimension in this open metaphysical dialogue is not along the axis of the coordinate system, but in the time, in the conceptual aspect of the time. Its excess crosses the boundaries of the preceptive, leaves the ranges of visibility, and remains or becomes a metaphysical notion.
Maznevski re-incorporates his cosmological interests in the idea of the proposal: object installation in space, Blue Resonance (2020). The ellipse, as a metaphor for the lunar, introduces the interpretation of the rebirth of the idea as a line in space that goes back in time[The impetus to give a cosmological sign in this artistic context is the observation of the lunar or the moon’s eccentric phenomenon, several times (two-three) in a month, as a natural phenomenon that recurs every two or three years. This statement is not just a cyclical record, but a cosmic, planetary phase that leads to a natural imbalance of terrestrial processes, ebb and flow, as a synonym for the appearance and retreat of the evident radiance, light, possibly interpretive as creative stages and processes of the artist.] concentrically bending inward or outward. In Heidegger’s terminology the principle of resonance or resonant suggests the first and the nearest indicator of another start. The resonance presents metaphysics as an episode comprised of the domination of beings and their truth. It is synonymous with transience and survival [dasein]. The German (continental) philosopher Martin Heidegger suggested that it is not just “a transit to another time in the previous temporal space of metaphysics; on the contrary, the relation of time and space itself becomes something else, because only now it is illuminated in its essence as Da-sein.”[Heidegger, The Event, 63.] This object, which is lonely in its surrounding, illuminates itself and brightens its reflection, its shadow, or its trace in the real space where the human being is only a presumed presence or a shadow, a silhouette of an opportunity.
The plane materialization of the form suggests and informs about an attempt to transform the imaginary idiom of resonance by reducing its imaginary mass, density, intensity and energy charge to a two-plane system with its own rules of equilibrium, gravity and movement. The center of gravity of this materialized form is concrete, determined and independent. It is preserved in the coordinates of its own idea of centrism and nullifies the voluminousness at the expense of a single idea: an even distribution of radiance. The minimalist solution of this form is approaching the practices of dematerialization by subtly abandoning the physical materiality to the point of recognition or cognitive sensibility, while it is simultaneously supplementing the semantic code with a certain amount of information. Art & Language conceptualists’ letter-essay (Unpublished letter-essay, March, 1968) addressed to Lucy Lippard and John Chandler on the occasion of their publication of the essay The Dematerialization of Art (Art International, February, 1968) contains several original reflections on the current formulations of the dematerialized art: “… when dematerialization takes place, it means, in terms of physical phenomena, the conversion of a state of matter into that of radiant energy; this follows that energy can never be created or destroyed.”[Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (California: University of California Press, 1997), 43.]
It becomes “an idea that is read, more than seen.”[Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, 43.] If the aforementioned suggestion is consid- ered, then dematerialization is an impossible process when talking about dematerializing of something, because the only thing that happens then is a change of the state of the matter into a luminous energy, which suggests that we are still talking about the presence. The conceptualist Lawrence Weiner came to the same conclusion when considering dematerialization as a “translation from one language to another”,[Lawrence Weiner, “Art and Project Bulletin” (1969), in Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, Lucy Lippard (California: University of California Press, 1997), 116.] which in turn implies a contemplation that transformation is a kind of semiotic reduction of the sign which produces new meaningful relations while remaining faithful to the source from which the very idea of ontological deduction emerges. This process of alignment and reduction of the energy structure to plane, and to radiance, is close to what in semiotics is called planaire sémiotique as a conceptual reorganization that functions with the use of a two-dimensional signifier.[Greimas and Courtes, op. cit., 235.]
Blue, which is the first element of the combination of words: Blue Resonance, is a teleological proposition because it is not completely blue when it radiates, but only when it is numb, silent, and extinguished. However, since its supposed dimness is only connotative, what is seen and what is noticeable are only its changed tone, intensity and density. Vasily Kandinsky said: “Blue is a typical heavenly color,” and the only feeling it evokes and creates is peace.[Wassily Kandinsky, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911),” in Colour: Documents of Contemporary Art, ed. David Batchelor (London and Cambridge MA: Whitechapel and The MIT Press, 2008), 61.] The same idea is expressed by Jean Baudrillard, who suggests that the psychological resonance of blue is a ‘sign of calm’, but adds that each color receives its meaning outside of it, and becomes a metaphor for culturally fixed meanings.[Jean Baudrilliard, “Atmospheric Values: Colour (1968),” in Colour: Documents of Contemporary Art, ed. David Batchelor (London and Cambridge MA: Whitechapel and The MIT Press, 2008), 147.] We have no visual memory of color, and the only thing that is remembered is the generic blue, while the chromatic experience is a result of random events, such as light, intensity, opacity, distance, and matter.[Carlos Cruz-Diez, “Reflections on Colour (1981),” in Colour: Documents of Contemporary Art, ed. David Batchelor (London and Cambridge MA: Whitechapel and The MIT Press, 2008), 111.] Henri Matisse, the master of pure colors, said: “Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist’s mind.”[Henri Matisse, “The Role and Modalities of Colour (1945),” in Colour: Documents of Contemporary Art, ed. David Batchelor (London and Cambridge MA: Whitechapel and The MIT Press, 2008), 99.] With all these characteristics, the Blue Resonance can also be interpreted as a space, or as a gate to walk through and enter. This is suggested by its ‘metaphysical’ semiplasticity, vibrancy, technological abstraction,[The “found elements” of mass production (LED cathodes), in function of artistic poetics, are twisted and reshaped through compositional streaks, forming mild plastic rhythms.] depth, and structure, which represent the interior, depth, and profundity.
Through the cycle of works defined in the concept As it is (2020), Maznevski reaches, as Greenberg would say, a degree of “intense harmony”. Early existentialism (Friedrich Nietzsche) suggests that “artists … are productive if they really change and transform”; they are not like comprehenders who leave everything as it is.[Nietzsche, op. cit., 329.] The modern existentialist idea (Jean-Paul Sartre), on the other hand, grows on the suggestion that “the ultimate goal of art is to renew this world by giving it the opportunity to see itself as it is, but as though it has its source in human freedom.”[Sartre, op. cit., 63] The series of objects as images and counterpoises extensively interprets a more recent storyline in the artist’s artistic expression which is precisely elaborated in various concepts: 17 octaves (2014-15), Golden Octave (2016-18), Quadrophony (2015-18), Stim- ulus 7 (2013), Stimulus 6 (2015), Sun (2015), Black Crossway (2015), Dark Crossway (2015), White Crossway (2015), Pauses (2016-20), Aluilit (2019-20) and Stimuli 16 (2020). With the verbalization of the years-long carefully and poetically thought-out symbiosis, the artist tries to express the assumption that in a certain aesthetic creation the elements appear as constituents of a complex formal unit, while in another, their vibrancy and immanent variability emphasize quite different meaningful connotations. All this indicates that the solubility of the content denominator is completely dependent on the formal procedure, as an inductive aesthetics that acts from within and below shaping a variety of synthesized prose works.
In the double act, the 17 octaves (2014-15) and the Golden Octave (2016-18), the selection of elements in the entire composition is not a precursor of independent sensory vibrations that have a separate mean- ing, but dimensions the dominant meaning that completes the most complex poetic form of the artist’s voice. Therefore, a conclusion is imposed that the task of the structural assembly, as a whole, lies ahead and exceeds the aesthetic details of the elements that constitute it. In this clear transition to the spatial, the canvas loses its integrity, and the subject takes its place, firmly primed on the painting frame. Reduced almost to abstraction, the ‘octaves’ present a certain analogy with music expressed as a rhythmic repe- tition, intensity, harmony and counterpoint in an extensive dialogue with the presence of ‘rests’ and ‘in- tervals’. Just as the rests in music gain meaning only because of the group of notes that surround them,[Sartre, op. cit., 38.] the meaning of ‘visual pauses’ in Pauses (2016-2020) make sense only in relation to the macrostructure of the basic model, the octaves, in the 17 octaves (2014-15) and the Golden Octave (2016-18). The pauses are pure ideas, a binding element, but also an independent and an individual one, and are manifested as the beginning of restlessness, because it proves to be essential for any creative activity. Gilles Deleuze argued that: “ideas should be treated as potentials that are already included in one way of expression or another, and are inseparable from the way of expression … ;”[Deleuze, “What is the Creative Act?,” 312.] as a different way of looking at ideas that arise from some knowledge and are inseparable from the way of expression or opinion which connects the ideas and their performative nature.
The above mentioned is confirmed by the poetic language of Andrei Tarkovsky which definitely arises from the way he creates his films and the art in the art of his language, before even mentioning the film art; or as he puts it himself using sculpting terminology, the time, the interval, and the third meaning is “carved off in the process”.[Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses His Art, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016), 119.] Therefore, the interval is the carrier of time digressions which are not carved but linearly drawn into the process of creation. The complex chromatic structure of the work 17 Octaves (2014-15) articulates contradictions which make attempts to come together through a dialogue between light and darkness, between colors, and between shades – the difference is absolute. The transition from one to the other is also a real phenomenon.[Bergson, op. cit., 274.] Each individual presentation of the state As it is primarily stimulates tactile impressions which are sensibly embedded as a lyrical and perceptual abstractions, which in addition to the conceptual and symbolic or musical obsession remain devoid of narrative content.[Houston, “1965: The Year of Op//2007,” 78.]
In this cycle, the artist explores the dialectical binomials in his antinomic impression: repetition / instance, contrast / gradation, fusion / juxtaposition, organic connection / structure, and dynamics / stasis. The language which creates the syntax is a pure crafty and lengthy alignment process. It is a pro- cess of adjusting the diagram of harmony, the order and the sound of the visual. The painting palette is replaced by a thread of individual elements (buttons) which are conceived as a polychrome structural element that meets the receptive expectation through a variety of bundles and contemplative emanations, different speeds and pulsations, and optical rhythms. The octaves comprise an observation that strives for the absolute and the wholeness, and that reaches states of ritual, repetition, and event. The Quadrophony installation (2015-18) completes the principle of balance as a relation between the individual works in the spatial communication. The complexity of the handicrafts and the precision of the expression indicate that “the simplicity is not simplicity, but a clearer vision.”[Anni Albers, On Weaving (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press 2017), 48.] The weaving used to shape the stimuli is not just a “response to the material and the technique, but to the hand of the creator, the one who here transforms matter into meaning.”[Albers, On Weaving, 68.]
Weaving is primarily a poetic and artistic principle besides being a technique with precision performed to perfection. Anni Albers (Annelise Elsa Frieda Fleischmann) introduces an idea to textile art that the “concrete substances and also colors per se, words, tones, volume, space, motion – these constitute raw material; and here we still have to add that to which our sense of touch responds – the surface quality of matter and its consistency and structure.” She introduces the term ‘medium of tactility’ to describe the palpable experiences. The word matière is used to denote “the surface appearance of the material, such as grain, roughness or smoothness, dullness or gloss, etc., qualities of appearance that can be observed by touch.”[Ibid., 65.]
The susceptibility of the chosen material is its ‘inner structure’, while the aesthetic susceptibility is a matter of function and transformation of the ‘found object’ within the ‘imaginary structure’ that is gradually formed by the intellect, analysis, and deciphering the receptivity and sensibility, as a response to matter. Starting from the conflicting state of the chromatic spectrum which is specific for the fibrous and filamentous element as a basic material, the artist discovers the meaning of the relations among the colors used in a composition of ‘biaxial symmetry’, giving form to the amorphous in the works Stimulus 7 (2013) and Stimulus 6 (2015),.[Caroline A. Jones, “Form and Formless,” in A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, edited by Amelia Jones (Malden, MA; Oxford; Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006), 133.] In the last chronological model, Stimuli 16 (2020), the persistence on the presence of the intensity of the basic blue and red color is more pronounced, and their optical motion is also freer because it follows the line of the circular shape.
This leads to the assumption that in the first two examples, the presence of the chromatic intensities is mediated by the shape, while in the subsequent example, they seem to guide and determine the path of movement.
The radiance of the matter is intoned by white and yellow digressions, which, despite the quantitative representation, intrusively interrupt the harmony of the retinal.
The harmony, however, does not seem to be disturbed by the deliberate contradiction of the sequence of colors, because the polychrome structures function as an organic fusion of elements, constituting an organism separated from the physical world and from the surrounding space – the world. The meaning of the polyvalent structure indicates a virtualized “return to the real world” whose “signal originates from the direction” as a “deep, temporal expression internal in the structure”.[Oiticica, “Colour, Time and Structure//1960,” 74.]
The series of monochrome realizations: the Sun (2015), Black Crossways (2015), Dark Crossways (2015) and White Crossways (2015), suggest that the color or the coloring has a different sensitivity when illuminated – especially the white, because it is open to light alternation.
The potential ‘exit’ in space, subtly marked in the center of the painting composition, has a receptive function, a sensory one. As a center, perhaps cosmic, it generates motion which is produced optically or kinetically, and involves the body in an active aesthetic experience.[Houston, op. cit., 82.] The subtle statement of the White Crossways (2015) demonstrates that white is an ideal color or light, as a synthesis of all colors. It is assumed that it is ‘the most static’, and that it ‘favors a quiet, dense, and metaphysical duration’. The blending of two different whites shows unevenness – one of which is always brighter and the other naturally opaque, although the confrontation of the two whites shows that they are always clean and never neutral.[Oiticica, op. cit., 74.]
The essence of shaping here focuses on the structure which is shaped “when the color becomes the color of light, finds its time, and continues to discover its own nucleus, leaving it naked.[Ibid., 76.] It is said that if the color is ‘color of time’, then the structure ‘coherently’ becomes ‘time structure’, i.e. time is embedded in the structural genesis of the work, learning about its space in the spatial dimension of the work.
Time in a work of art is said to be different from its symbolic meaning given in philosophy and by the laws of perception; it is the inner, existential relation of the man with the world.[Idem.]
Final word
The syllogistic key derived from the applied poetics suggests that Maznevski quite skillfully permutes the old ontological claims that “the linguistic work is in the phoneme”, “the work of art is in the color” or “the piece of music is in the tone”.[Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, chap. Hans-Georg Gadamer (Skopje: Magor, 2006), 11-13.] When it comes to Maznevski and his works, it can be said in a Heidegger manner that the work introduces us to the ‘other’, to the ‘linguistic in the color’ or to the ‘shape of the music’. The ‘sculpture’ can be the ‘tree’, but the ‘tree’ can also be ‘music’ as well.
His abstract suggestions expressed in the form remain in the domain of the irrevocable, despite their concrete actualization in a given form or the formation of some ‘objectified’ matter that continuously changes its host or its temporary residence. This conceptual principle indicates that the ontological is not anchored in the form but in the intention.
Therefore, the legibility of a work cannot be completely or sufficiently effective and clear, because the essential side of art lies exactly in the assignment of various poetic functions that go beyond and transcend the domain of immediacy and recognizability in a given artistic context. Art in practice shows that it will always be inaccessible to any final judgment, and that the cognition will always be challenged to expose the opacity of the ‘transparent’ and the intentional determination or timidity of art before the ambivalence of interpretive methods. As long as certain aesthetic issues remain unresolved, their position of ‘now’ and ‘here’ in relation to their ‘before’ and ‘then’ could place them at a particular social and sociological moment.
The relevance of such statements will be productive and explained depending on their readiness to face the compromise or the conflict that it itself will set as a goal for analytical thinking. Any conscious or deliberate determination to be grounded in an imaginary meaningful context will mean that “form is obtained, and infinity as well”.[Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 212.]
Natali Rajchinovska Pavleska, MA