PIGEONS, PEARLS AND CANNABIS

Goran Micevski: Unclassified,  Belgrade Culture Centre (BCC), Art Gallery, Belgrade, August 8 – August 30, 2012

By: Vladimir Bjeličić

In this day and age, especially in an era of digital communication, working with analogue technology does not lose its edginess. It produces a special kind of effect in relation to new digital technology, and this is the reason why many (art) photographers still use it. One of them is the Belgrade artist Goran Micevski. Although he sometimes intervenes digitally, he mostly stays loyal to the analogue technique, making original photographic series with unique visuals and atmosphere. These are conceptual compositions which question the medium itself, as well as many variations regarding political, social and artistic issues. In early August, the BCC hosted an opening of his solo exhibition Unclassified.

First, the title itself suggests the artist did not place a lot of importance on sequencing the photographs and contextualizing them. This reduced and precise approach offers bizarre and ambiguous interpretations. The complexity of content crystallizes through quotes by other artists, author’s notes and frequent references to how the artist conceived his work. By observing his own surrounding, Micevski records constructed situations or site-specific occurrences, which establishes a cycle of works as a series of associations and metaphors.

At the entrance, there is a large photograph called Mindgames, with two men guarding a path protected by tape and a big stop sign, with yellow tennis balls in the sky. Scenic and slightly ethereal, it functions as an introduction to the author’s narrative. Other photographs are lined up and mostly characterized by obvious references to conceptual art practice – land art, site-specific, performance art. Also, several works have textual templates, either artists’ quotes or comments from the author himself. Moreover, the titles are relevant to the works as well. Neon Garden visualizes an installation made of neon pipes in nature, as an homage to Dan Flavin, an American artist who is one of the most famous representatives of minimalist art. Oasis and On Dirty Consciousness Once More are the only works with quotes. The former shows a private ambient, a comfortable interior with a quote from Raša Todosijević’s (I get often asked what art can do; it cannot do much, but it can fulfill someone’s life, and that’s enough), referring to the function of art. The latter is a photograph of a highway, with a quote from Macbeth (As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I look’d down toward Birnam, an anon, methought, the wood began to move). In The Black Tent, Micevski questions the photographic medium. In the photograph, there is a black tent on a meadow overlooking the city. The text points to the history of photography. In the past, photographers used a similar tent as an improvised laboratory to develop photographs or just to hide from bad weather.

It seems the concept of the exhibition relies on metatextuality, like a dictionary of symbols. Apart from homages to certain artists or artistic practices, these large photographs and wide shots document absurd situations, as poetic conclusions of earthly manifestations. Visuality and contemplation of the frames reflect sacrality and mysticism, to a certain extent.

Situations, phenomena, interventions or site-specific, these are all just tools that Micevski uses to create an artistic object. The artist is clearly engaged with the esthetic dimensions of his works. Autistic and estranging, these photographs can be read as a series of statements, i.e., artist statements. However, the question remains, what sort of statements are these? Micevski is totally focused on esthetic and conceptual solutions which feed the modernist dogma steeped in l’art pour’l’art-ism. This would mean that he is not interested in social implications because his practice refuses to engage or criticize.

Nevertheless, since photographs always carry a lot of hidden meanings, stories and signs, they always offer a myriad of interpretations. Therefore, we can classify Micevski’s works as suggestive and intellectually demanding, which implies engagement with his works. Although the artist chose escapism as a legitimate strategy of resistance towards the overwhelming trend of engaged art, he, in fact, subliminally directs his artistic practice by exploring the issues and possibilities of a medium and its relation to society. In a way, Micevski makes a fetish of the photographic act which, in his case, is as much a spectacle, as it is mundane. In that regard, Unclassified represents a selection of complex visual codes which reflect author’s preoccupations, either existential, esthetic or purely philosophical in nature.