Zarko Basheski (1957, Skopje, Macedonia) is a sculptor who has created several monumental bronze sculptures, standing in several city squares in his country, such as the statue of Alexander the Great (Prilep) and the equestrian statues of the Macedonian national heroes Goce Delcev and Dame Gruev, in the capital city centre (Skopje).
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 54th 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 Basheski’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.
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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