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Kevin Abosch by Zivko Grozdanic A statement almost forgotten, that photography creates difficulties, might be a good reason for me to say something about Kevin Abosch, an artist who treats photography as the remains of the past, or uses it as a random sample of someone's spirit, or it is unimportant to him. Countless theories which are opened with these questions represent a complete corpus of content which can be ascribed to Kevin Abosch. The topic of this short text, which aspires to be a contribution to an artist by an artist, is Kevin Abosch, and not his photographs! Why? Art and photography theoreticians could, by using a simple method, consider the photography itself, created by Kevin Abosch, or they would in a post-modernistic manner come to a conclusion that a photo, just as any other visual show, consists of a complex of mutually interwoven signs and meanings. Then they would, through a labyrinth of various subjective theories, compose some conclusion, and place the photograph in some place in a post-modernistic depot. In this sense, I have an easier task. Not being burdened by discursive analysis of the history of art, at which I am practiced just as any artist who has knowledge of art or photography, I have tried to analyze the very approach to "the ritual" of taking photographs, that is, to understand Kevin Abosch who treats taking a photo of "a model" as a tautological act! Actually, if the main feature of postmodern art and society is the loss of trust in modernistic narration, utopia and mysticism, then "the atmosphere" or "the aura"created around the "model" photographed by Kevin Abosch has to be explained by a method which marks the art of primary and analytical painting. In other words, the artist only controls the medium and positions himself indifferently in relation to "the model" and the camera as a tool! Kevin Abosch, just as Baudrillard, sees the electronic digital mass media as tools which have completely changed the reality and by doing so, our relationship with it as well. So, "the aura" and the aestheticism it owns, not the photography, but "the model" being photographed, do not represent anything but an artificial creation or simulation. Baudrillard claims that, in this way, in the newly made appearances made by the camera, reality is created, which is more realistic than the reality or "the hyper-realism". But that is according to Baudrillard. Kevin Abosch says in his photographs that what is important is the psychological study and the autonomy of the person "modeling" for him. The photography made is the psychological reflection of a personality. In FACES there is a structural play by which Kevin Abosch tautologically sets various people in front of a black canvas and in front of himself, goes behind "the sign" and its meaning, creating a specific anatomy of the photograph but also of the subject of the performance itself. In one theory of the postmodernists, Michel Foucault began a demolishing of the myth of the author, the great and the almighty creator who is different from everybody else, with the idea to show that the author is needless in art, that is to say, that his presence burdens the piece of work with subjectivity. Kevin Abosch achieves this indifference in his act of taking photographs, he liberates his photography from himself and lets it circulate in the field it belongs to, that is, to "the model"or the person being photographed. He clearly liberates the person from the obligation to "pose" or to "do the function of modeling". If I take this "elegant theory" of mine, deduced from Foucault's approach to the function of an author and the autonomy of the piece of work, as final, then Kevin Abosch is a CONCEPTUAL artist from my point of view, who uses camera as a tool close to him. His ethical behaviour within a complicated story called art is the core truth about Kevin Abosch, who will not allow, like some classical photographers or photography critics have, not to notice the person who is being photographed, but he will remove himself and put a person in his place to stand freely in front of the camera and Kevin Abosch! Finally, I will use stands of some post-modernists (Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman...) who claim that they are not creators of pieces of art, but that they transform the existing forms of signs and meanings of a culture, society and art, in which the audience go from the role of passive observers into the role of active readers and interpreters of the work. I will also remind you of the scientist Francois Argo, the creator of the first daguerreotypes, who said that "Daguerre's procedure is the new art springing up in the centre of an old civilization, the art which belongs to the new age; daguerreotypes defined by its mathematical accuracy; it belongs to the world of perfection..." - Allegorist, Zivko Grozdanic, Novi Sad, February 11th, 2010 |
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