Zdravko Joksimovic

 

     Your Body Deserves the Best

 

 

  “Your Body Deserves the Best” is a publicity slogan which, taken over from the world of advertising, refers to my sculptures that for 20 years have had the body for the main theme. This cycle began with the red torso, in 1977. The body and bodily aspect represent just a frame, comfortable and mobile enough, and capable of embracing everything that in the current age is connected to the phenomenon of the body, and utilized as such by almost all marketing strategies. As if nothing happens outside the body. That is why it is almost impossible to define the strict frame of a bodily discourse. On the other hand, from a sculptor’s perspective, I still succumb to temptation so that in a formalistic labyrinth, which the history of art tried to define and set up as a system of values, I can find my place. The end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries were marked by various fetishistic-masochistic manipulations of the body and bodily aspect with which I am trying to have an open and direct dialogue so as to redefine and establish my own critical stance. A formal frame, which I deliberately refuse to leave, speaks about my need to continually search for the classic language of sculpture, its universal laws and its communicability. Therefore, from the formal point of view, what I am interested in is whether, and to what extent, the traditional sculptural logic allows one to be inventive, lavish and poetic, while still being available to the contemporary, yet spoilt and passive, onlooker who accepts only what is being served as wholesome, low-calorie food.

  I, in fact, enjoy looking for a new combination which seems slightly familiar but, at the same time, fresh and unexpected. But sculpture is not just that. Until now, I have been talking about the ever present sculptural curiosity and the love of pure language of sculpture, about the awareness of the fact that finding the best solution for a sculpture is a dying craft, about the need to feel like a worthy piece of historical continuity, and to be part of a long-lasting family of sculptors and, eventually, to feel at home within sculptural practice. However, art is never just that. It has its own need because of which, it can be said, it exists – to answer most persistent questions every day: how do I feel and what do I think about? What is it I do, actually, and why? To what degree does a sculpture reflect the state of the spirit? How truthful and consistent is it in its attempt to define itself within the world and how shrewd is it to show me my place? That way both our stances are created.

  This is why “the body” constantly changes its roles; it stays in a particular condition, for a while – it simply likes it – and then leaves it, finds itself in new situations, whatever they are, restlessly and untrustingly awaits something and, while waiting for it, practices other skills; it hurts, gets angry, learns to swallow even the inedible, leans towards the light, gets old and hairy, applies makeup and dresses up, maintains hygiene, thinks of nothing at times, mistreats its senses with chores, gains weight, plays the adult and children’s games at the same time….The tired and exhausted body disbelieves its feebleness which becomes more noticeable with age. And re-discovers it physiology again and again. It tries to keep its emotional accounting as if it were of any use … by running away from joylessness it falls into melancholy as this was something one can run away from … This is an existential metabolism. An individual torn between life, joy and death.