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A
Paradox of Values
Andrej
Tisma’s exhibition “Transition: Impossible - First Aid –
Do-It-Yourself: Commercials Advertising the Fight for Mental Survival”
at the gallery “Podrum” in Novi Sad, Serbia and Montenegro
by
Milos Arsic
Andrej
Tisma’s exhibition of digital prints called “Transition: Impossible”
confirms his preference of an artist’s active relationship towards
the “real reality”. His concept of art only seemingly implies
direct, narrative statements which, owing to his ability (and gift) to
create ambiguous meanings of the “recognized”, turn into metaphors.
This cycle of digital, semantically reformulated concepts, carefully chosen
advertisement photographs, predefined by the standpoint towards the impossible,
does not imply the bitterness of a pessimistic relationship towards the
observed controversies of economic and political transition. By juxtaposing
two realities (the relationship of “bleak reality” and consumer
ideals), he simultaneously manages to integrate them into an exciting
unity which, by meanings and immediate warnings about the obviousness
of the moment of incompletion (“softened” by the aggression
of commercials as a virtual replacement for the possible), he turns into
a meaningful intrigue.
Concerned rather than apathetic, ironic rather than pessimistic in view
of the “bright future” which transition brings, Tisma questions
his own emotions and his way of experiencing aggressive commercials of
“prestigious” products (Reebok, Lauren, Boucheron, Coca Cola,
Boss, Yamaha). They are “second-hand reality”, delusive images
of false values from the controversial domain of fortune which existentially
endanger and trouble him. His response to reality “from across the
street” is directly enunciated in the illusions of digital prints
which are implied in the universal world of The Picture (equally
a picture-representation, a “marked representation” or a picture
of signs), in the reality of its delusions. The response is forced
but also appropriate, the delusion which is an implied unit of the persuasiveness
of The Picture (digital print), measured by the recognized, becomes
the reality we unwillingly give in to, although we recognize it as not
being the world of promised content. Tisma does not address queries about
the meaning of fortune; he accepts them as the traps of a reality milieu
he is being suffocated by, in which he does not belong due to his sense
of the measures of value. His artistic engagement does not coincide completely
with the possible political relationship towards “reality in the
making”. He is interested in the artistic reality of the “nonfinite
reality”, artistic truthfulness, regardless of its being part of
a representation or a sign, which makes existential contrasts of the “moment
of transition” relative and places them in the sphere of the impossible.
The explicit warning that one should take matters into one’s own
hands (“First Aid – Do-It-Yourself: Commercials Advertising
the Fight for Mental Survival”), since only recognizing “brand”
products in a sea of rot, decay, destitution and poverty, is basically
viewing from a distance regardless of the level of acuteness. Tisma manages
to avoid political rhetoric about the known; he uses a direct statement
which is simultaneously a metaphor about the ambiguously possible
and a message which is immediately visually shaped and interpreted in
different ways. The controversies of the values of transition which he
observes and the semantic traps he places, are transfused into realistic
illusions of precisely shaped, usually “marked” representation,
into visual wholes of “esthetic dizziness” of a convincing plastic
sense. His relationship towards the structure of the digital print is
closer to the “esthetic vision of the world and society” than
to the pragmatic, rhetoric opinion about the domain of fortune and values.
The basis is an intimate questioning which Andrej Tisma does not wish
to keep to himself, he “reveals” his privacy to active “viewers”
and draws them into the world of his own perceptions.
(Dnevnik,
Novi Sad, March 21, 2006)
Translated by Snezana Perc
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