As for the context of these works in the domain of stylistic definition (not only) in Macedonian sculpture, it can freely be said that Basheski’s sculptures, unlike previous representations of the human figure in our country, are not impressionistic in their execution, nor anatomically overemphasized, nor do they belong to “new realism”… They cannot fit into the aforementioned existing notions; rather, they require different interpretations and a new reading of realism.

In Zarko Basheski’s sculptures there are several elements which are new to Macedonian sculpture – the hyper-realistic treatment, technical production and use of new materials, size of the work, the concept – all of which, when combined in one, offer a multilayered reading of the artwork. Not only in terms of their production, but also in terms of their technological process, the works can be subsumed under the frames of realism, which uses as its foundation photography as an “impersonal and objective start to representation”. In particular, it “uses” the power of photography to convey even the smallest detail and express an intense and precise hyper-reality.

The exhibition represents three different types of humans. The connection between the three characters – author/artist, ordinary person, and imaginary portrait – can be found in the general representation of humanity, that is the human being as a symbol of ongoing existential struggle which includes real life and historic influences, as well as imaginary conditions of the spirit. These representations of people, without idealizing the form of the human body, reflect a strong life force and a potent creative energy.
In Basheski’s latest sculptures, humans exist faced with their own emotional states, such as personal moments of life’s struggles, creation, anticipation, uncertainty, etc. Psychological emotion is underscored through man’s confrontation with all the elements of the personal in public space. The story told by each individual figure starts with the resilience of man emerging from the ground (defined as mother-earth or environment) which, through/with the collective subconscious (a metaphor contained in the historic imaginary figure), come together in the tension and uncertainty reflected in the “small” character (the author, the creator). In all of them together, as in every individual portrait, in different ways there is a strong reflection (even poetic) of dramatic tension which suggests anticipation, and the psychological moment is underlined in relation to the usual hyper-realistic process of strict photographic, unemotional depiction and interpretation.

In terms of their idea and technique, the works from the latest creative phase of the sculptor Basheski are something new and have been technically executed to perfection in a “new type of realism”. The mode of execution is a classical one, while the material employed (silicone) is up-to-date and previously unused in Macedonia. The special silicone that the author uses for the faces is susceptible to complete imitation of the texture, softness and color of the “live” face with its every spot and pore… The process itself “insists” on “frightening realism” of life, in the particular attention paid to the precise execution of every detail (even the hair inserted in the faces is natural). However, the realistic execution of the details is no imperative, but rather it is a function of the idea.

The re-reading of one dimension of the explicit reality of the figure occurs in the odd proportions of the works, which are either monumentally oversized or minimized in relation to natural human size. This insistence on irregular sizes allows for a certain psychological distance between the work and the viewer, simultaneously creating a feeling of being confronted with a sculpture as a work of art, rather than a wax figure by Madam Tussaud. Basheski creates his works with incredible level of detail that imitates life, and his manipulation of size means that in invokes physical reality, without imitating it directly.

According to the author, references are inevitable in contemporary art. When it comes to contemporary sculptors, particular similarities in the execution and partly in the theme of “life”, which is the dominant theme in Basheski’s works, can be drawn to the work of several recent authors, including R. Mueck, S. Jinks. E. Penny, J. Salmon, etc.

In the choice of the timeless theme – man and the several points that emerge as key: the psychological moment, life and creation, Zarko Basheski’s new works integrate concept and execution, that is the idea and the technical implementation. The multiple layers in his artworks can be found in the new way of seeing and confronting sculptures; in the complexes of possible symbolic readings (emphasizing allusions to humanity, humaneness, connection to birth, etc.), but also in the re-defining of realism in art and in the return to the reflection on the phenomena of the human figure.

Maja Cankulovska-Mihajlovska

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Baseski’s project “Link” (Cultural Information Centre KIC, Skopje, 2010), announces his interest in a kind of “disturbing realism” that transcends the limits of hyperrealism. Pivotal in his works is the man as an unsurpassed reason for creation of art.

In 2011, Baseski represented Republic of Macedonia at the 54^th International Art Exhibition in Venice (La Biennale di Venezia). The installation “Leap” consists of three complex, hyper-realistic and larger than life size sculptures of the same man in three situations. The connection between the sculptures – a man carrying himself, a man leaping over himself and a man rising above himself – is man’s eternal strife to transcend himself.

Zarko Baseski’s new project “Behind the Look” is multilayered and manifold. The three realistic sculptures of David, Ezekiel and Thomas, less than life size, are minutely crafted, with emphasized interest in the emotional expression of the characters; insisting on photographic verisimilitude and precision in the presentation of details. The sculptures are made of fibreglass, silica, acrylic, natural hairs and textile.

Baseski varies the subject of exchanging views, the power of look, the wish and “appetite of the eye” (Lacan), in three supposed situations: the victorious look (David), submissive look (Ezekiel) and suspicious look (Thomas).

The historical travesty (the figures of David, Ezekiel and Thomas dressed in modern costumes) reveals a modern drama. The three sculptures denote three possible states or three possible situations in which a man finds himself today.

The first and most impressive sculpture presents winning over the other person’s perspective, winning over the view of the Other. The possession of the other person’s perspective, presented here as possession of Goliath’s plucked out eye that David defiantly holds in his hand, means holding power.

This is the time of automation of perception, time of perceptron, when surveillance cameras in public places reveal the ubiquitous Great Overseer, Goliath, the giant hidden behind electronic devices who controls the world. “The Overseer’s Eye” is omnipresent. It is the eye of Goliath, the eye of power, the eye of control and punishment (Foucault). In a world transformed into Panopticon, we ought to take over the heroic role (at a time without heroes, when heroic feats are no longer possible) of David (with all historical references and consequences of this replacement) and pluck out Goliath’s eye.

The second sculpture (Ezekiel) represents subjugation to what the eye can see, total surrender to and obsession by what is observed. In the “ecstasy of hyper-reality” of our post-modern world, man is petrified and appalled by the exaggerated closeness of things, by their omnipresence and tele-presence, by the total promiscuity of all the things that besiege him and to which he surrenders without resistance. This helpless submissiveness and total surrender to the spectacular projection of a manipulated and edited reality; this exhibition and rendition of factual images in a trans-aesthetic and transparent world causes catalepsy and destruction of any subjectivity. Subjectivity is subdued, lost or completely destroyed and a new all-encompassing field of experience emerges: the world as a fascinating spectacle.

Today Ezekiel would not be able to see God appearing behind the clouds because of the colours and glitter of media fireworks against the grey skies above the desert of our reality. The man, blinded by himself, produces his own vision and trusts his knowledge to a reflection.

To face the monstrosity of the world means to look into Goliath’s eyes and in this eye contact to cease to exist, to lose your own view, to condemn yourself to immobility or to win over the eye of power and become Goliath yourself.

Annihilation of the radical Other (Goliath) leads us to the “hell of sameness” where man is doomed to disappearance, transparency and invisibility. To be invisible for the others means to be like the others. This change of positions, of points of view, between the Self and the Other is nowadays enabled by “media prostheses” and “vision machines”. Man and machines become isomorphous – neither is the Other to the other. What is slowly dissolving is the difference between our consciousness and the software of machines that simulate reality. The virtual world becomes our world. The viewed takes over the place of the viewer and completely wins over (Ezekiel). The viewer becomes what he views.

The third sculpture reveals yet another option between the Self and the Other. Thomas’s suspicion regarding Jesus’ deifying serves only to prove his status. Thus, we find out that even suspicion in mediated images and the game of reflections around us is ambivalent. Apparently, it is a prerequisite to preserve subjectivity (I doubt, therefore I exist), but on the other hand, suspicion is prerequisite to belief (Dostoyevsky). Disbelief in the existence of the Other is necessary in order to acknowledge it. For Lacan, the condition for the existence of the Self is the Other. The Other confirms me; only in his eyes can I see the confirmation of my Self. This is the renewal of the subject, allowing for “presence of the absence”. I exist as Self again. I am visible again.

By becoming visible, I am visible to Goliath’s Eye, facing again the choice to be David or Ezekiel.

* * *

Baseski’s three super-real sculptures oppose the idea of sculpture as an art of the tactile and haptic. Sculptures are there to be seen. The seeing or looking (le regard), the power of the look, jouissance (the pleasure of the sense) of the desire, the process of signification, perception and apperception of phenomena, the representation of reality, as well as the power of the illusion are modern issues that are raised today because of the complex social and cultural changes created under the influence of virtual technologies, zapping and perceptron, mediatization and manipulation of society, as well as instrumentalization of the consciousness and simulation. Spectacularized reality is based on mediated images that are so dominant that completely shape our reality. The base of this spectacularized reality is simulation that works as reality that is growing distant from its mimetic base.

These works by Baseski, as a kind of simulacrum of a disjointed museum of lost reality, lead us into the space of hyper-reality. Yet, what is the meaning of art as radical illusion in the hyper-real, cool, transparent world of advertising, in which signs signifying reality actually cover up the crime of secret liquidation of reality? Reality does not disappear into illusion – it is the illusion that disappears into reality, says Baudrillard. This is why Baseski insists upon absolute illusion. The illusion as dramatic alternative to reality, the creation of a surplus of reality, reinstates the issue of the existence of reality as such.

Emil Aleksiev
translated by Natasha Papazovska-Levkova

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“Ezekiel”
Year: 2012
Materials: polyester, silicone, naturl hair
Dimensions: 120x46x35cm

…The second realistic sculpture (Ezekiel) represents subjugation to what the eye can see, total surrender to and obsession by what is observed. In the “ecstasy of hyper-reality” of our post-modern world, man is petrified and appalled by the exaggerated closeness of things, by their omnipresence and tele-presence, by the total promiscuity of all the things that besiege him and to which he surrenders without resistance…

Read the full Essay

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“David”
Year: 2012
Materials: polyester, silicone, natural hair
Dimensions: 112x54x43 cm

…The historical travesty (the figures of David, Ezekiel and Thomas dressed in modern costumes) reveals a modern drama. The three sculptures denote three possible states or three possible situations in which a man finds himself today.

The first and most impressive sculpture presents winning over the other person’s perspective, winning over the view of the Other. The possession of the other person’s perspective, presented here as possession of Goliath’s plucked out eye that David defiantly holds in his hand, means holding power…

Read the full Essay

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“Thomas”
Year: 2012
Materials: polyester, silicone, natural hair
Dimensions: 110x105x38 cm

…The third realistic sculpture reveals yet another option between the Self and the Other. Thomas’s suspicion regarding Jesus’ deifying serves only to prove his status. Thus, we find out that even suspicion in mediated images and the game of reflections around us is ambivalent. Apparently, it is a prerequisite to preserve subjectivity (I doubt, therefore I exist), but on the other hand, suspicion is prerequisite to belief (Dostoyevsky)…

Read the full Essay

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Leap I:
Materials: fibreglass, resin, silicone, pigment, hair, fabric
Dimensions: 85x85x300cm
Year: 2011

…Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) announced man’s historic degradation and tried to find a way out of the world in which man trapped himself. His idea of the necessity for the man to “transcend himself”, of “the present that lives at the expense of the future,” became a gloomy vision of humanity at the beginning of the 20th century. If indeed there are no eternal truths, no god, no intelligible spheres, no noumenal or transcendental truth, no chance to go beyond this reality we ourselves have created and in which we are trapped, then Nietzsche is right when he says that we are forced to re-create ourselves. The man must transcend himself…

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Materials: fibreglass, resin, silicone, pigment, hair, fabric
Dimensions: 60x60x170cm
Year: 2011

A dangerous transition, a dangerous journey, a dangerous looking back, hesitation and stopping – this is what man is according to Nietzsche. That man should transcend himself, leave himself behind, and in an impossible feat – make a dangerous leap beyond himself.

The poem about Zarathustra, ‘the wicked faceless and bodiless goblin, the leader of the column, with a wreath of roses of laughter on his unprincipled head, with his ‘Be strong’ and his legs of a dancer, is not a realization but pure rhetoric, crazy pun, troubled voice and questionable prophecy, a shadow of the powerless grandezza, often touching and almost always painful, an apparition that staggers on the edge of ridicule…” (Mann).

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Materials: fibreglass, resin, silicone, pigment, hair, fabric
Dimensions: 190x190x290cm
Year: 2011

…Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man?”…

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LEAP is a story based on the ideas of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche about man’s struggle to surpass himself, the possibility to grow beyond himself, to leap beyond the limits of reality he himself creates.

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