An Off-Day for Mr. Eusebio

From an external danger, a man can rescue himself by running away. Attempting an escape from an inner danger is a difficult task. (Sigmund Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanalysis )

 

Fifty anthropomorphic creatures with “7 heads” that crop up from the corner of the gallery, so creepy and shivery, not only that they have enclosed Mister Eusebio, but they threateningly come towards the visitors. This is how the latest project of Gjorgje Jovanovik looks like. As an author, he is already known for interweaving simplicity of artistic expression and complexity of associative meanings in his works.

With his latest project “An Off-Day for Mr. Eusebio”, Jovanovik solves the problem of creating an art work which is both classical and contemporary, and in which the idea-concept indicates identification of the expressive and didactical qualities that this project offers in its various readings. On the pre-shaped painted foundation, Jovanovik, paints a form that is two dimensional in its artistic logics. The painted surface itself completes the shaping of the three dimensional perception of what has been exhibited (painted).

The motive of St. Anthony's temptations is the starting point of this project. The temptation as a symbol of the individual research for universal answers to questions of the duality of good and evil, meaning of life and God's position in it, the nature, the history, and the moral. St. Anthony is a symbol of man's victory over the despair and injustice.

However, Mr. Eusebio's story is one of an ordinary man who has been chased by nowadays ghosts, maybe even more complicated and more numerous than they used to be in the past. Through his character, the author takes us in a world of paranoiac fears that come from the transitional processes, and establishes a link with the myths of human temptations (St. Anthony's temptations). In fact, they are personal spiritual shadows without much narrative, and with a noticeable sense of humor. The personal struggle with temptations, as a symbol of survival and personal faith, is the only weapon for establishing a contemplative system of existence and conscious thinking. Through this installation, Gjorgje Jovanovik builds a transcendental bridge between the personal and the universal. He incites the visitor to think of his personal fears and through a vivisection interactively makes him involved in Mr. Eusebio's story.

In “An Off-Day for Mr. Eusebio”, Jovanovik penetrates the subconscious structures by recording the shakings, the traumas and the goals of spiritual evolution.

Gjorgje Jovanovik's art is initiated by the artist's urge for notion of the world through human eyes, and by trying to remember the drawn picture of collective memory. Mr. Eusebio is just a product of the all above mentioned in this text.

And who is Mr. Eusebio? Well, The story about his off-day is, in about to begin...

Gorancho Gjorgjevski