O, you superior men, this is your greatest evil: you have not learned to dance properly – to dance over stock and stone, beyond yourselves! Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

At the beginning of this century, when rushing towards the New and Unknown, we finally reached the line where our world ends; when the end of History was announced and the colossal ruins of Religion, Philosophy and Art were left behind, when the time of the Great Feast (Baudrillard) and Great Stories was long gone, (Lyotard); when we stepped into the darkness of the Universal Night to the edge of the endless stellar space; suddenly an abyss opened before us. Matter was almost dematerialized by science itself, particularly by quantum physics. Under the cold electronic eye of science, seemingly solid objects that surround us became just enigmatic fields of invisible and immeasurable forces, amorphous and formidable as they had been when the world was first created. Obscure, yet anticipated, endless, grim empty spaces discovered by modern physics emphasize the even darker, more enigmatic character of reality. Faced with the void that suddenly opened before us, at the end of the world as we have known it, we try to look beyond the horizon and the starry skies above us. It is dangerous to look beyond, it is dangerous to look behind, it is dangerous to hesitate and stop. It is necessary to rise above ourselves yet again. The man has to rely on himself, to lift himself on his own shoulders, trying to outgrow himself. On the horizon of reality there comes the new man, making superhuman efforts to outgrow himself, with his head among the stars.

These are the very reasons why Zarko Basheski returns to the man as the basis, essence and unsurpassed reason to create his works of art. The man has central position in this project. The man, the drama of his existence, to be a man – is the fundamental subject he modifies in his three sculptures that make up a whole. They can be interpreted separately, but also as a unit, a studied, closed concept.

By returning to the subject of man and his body in his sculptures, Baseski poses the question of the meaning of human existence. Baseski’s man, like Nietzsche’s, is in a constant struggle to go beyond himself – breathing fire that lights up the night, overhanging the abyss of the unknown, clinging to the invisible rope of reality with his teeth; he is an acrobat, a juggler, walking the tight rope across the universe.

The constant strife towards self-perfection, pushing boundaries, rising above reality, reaching beyond – the very essence of human existence – is the pivotal subject in Zarko Basheski’s works. Symbolically, he re-creates and reaffirms the drama of human existence, facing the horror of the void around and within us, our personal limitations, as well as our determination to go beyond our personal boundaries, to step out beyond the horizon – as humans who bring light to the darkness within and around us. These sculptures present not only the spasm, pain, futility and pathos, but also the glory of the effort to be human.

Emil Aleksiev