The premise that was silently introduced by cubism and that
in various translations (forms) resisted until today as an all-present
statement that all art is a lie that allows us to realise the truth. As it
is well-known, the tactic of collage, assemblage (montage or editing
in a more general sense) that is the fundament of the 20th century
revolution of visuality and vision is based upon the cancellation (destruction) of the so-called terror of mimetic transparency. The terror
of (all) visible, of presence. Thanks to collage, for the very first time,
the observer is assured (learns) that art is nothing but a convention,
that is the previously mentioned lie. And that there is no “after”.
Nor before. Caranovic’s “Bottles” are as if returning to the problem,
they recall the collage in a very precise manner, but not in order to
rationally bash (destroy) every possible remain of metaphysics, but
more as a possible invitation to reconsider the status of truth and lie
(in general). That is, the work is created to be observed frontally,
objects are bound with the surface (in the box). But bottles are overflowing, carrying everything with them, opening the infinite, —“This is one of my oldest works…(The first, at the very beginning…?)
A4. The Art and the Artist
Self-portrait, 2004
36
As already seen in the w ork I remember Joseph Beuys, from
the year 2000, the Caranovic’s artwork, his assemblages and tactic
of montage are managing objects in unexpected dispositions. By
shifting the definite connotations and reference systems, playing
ironically with determinate histories (of art, political, everyday). More
precisely, with ways of writing (remembering) histories. Therefore
the intervention is set down to choice and connection in a deliberate
incoherent disposition, vision. Where precisely these cuts, openings,
these infinite chasms produce sense. Tactic of montage proposes this
way of work as a soft of principle, it makes visible something that is
present in Caranovic’s work since the very beginning. The principle of
the opening of the space, the creation of distance between the work
and the maker, that is between the work and the observer. It is a sort
of “extraordinariety” in that old, Russian formalism dictum, but with
the necessary time consciousness. Whereas the historical extraordinariety was created by the (Futurist) desire to open the substance of
the given material, to remove historical determination of all and the
impossibility to exist beyond history and representation.