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“Matrices” of Nature

The photographer Aaron Siskind once said that he was no longer able to find his language within realism, as with it, he did not say anything and that he “began to feel that reality is something which exists only in our minds and feelings.” In the same way as Siskind’s compositions as the expression of the photographer’s abstract idiom are placed on geometrical and cleared fields, the aesthetic declaration of the photographs by Saša Kos with their artistic note is closer to the art of painting. The selection of detail shots extracted from the concrete surface, which is bound to his previous series of photographs, speaks mostly an artistic language closely leaning on graphic arts, drawing and capturing from its pure expressiveness and the depths of its force of expression. At a time which consistently asks for something new, such photographic language is withdrawing to the abstract, the prescinding, the minimalistic and to the artistic field.
And as a photograph cannot be “abstract” since as an impression of reality it always has a real background, it can approach the “non-objective” precisely by its purification.
When the author distanced himself from the conventional use of photography turning towards research within the field of aesthetics and artistic theory, it became only an instrument, a mediator and an executor of an already thought-out idea, the construction of the notion. Saša Kos allows the creative process to mature and the images to be purified through the line of thought and so he concludes their manifestation only when they have told the full story to their creator.
The concrete’s “life cycle” happens through three sensitively intertwined segments, where the process of changes – in the otherwise intangible time – is indicated by human intervention. The patterns drawn by the hand of time upon natural changes can be so complete that the inattentive eye does not notice them. By using the magic, which he had sensed in the fully ordinary and common, the author isolated the detail thus cladding it in a cloak of special and exceptional. Through repetitions and variations, these new “abstract” images of commonly overlooked items have grown out to become a sort of “matrices”, especially as the object on the photographs has been focused out of the objective and excepted from the real at a moment, when it is vulnerably purified of the entirety to which it belongs. The object, even though recognisable in reality, is only a basis for the abstraction and the visible thus deliberately remaining what in its essence it already is – only the view is focused on the detail in the reality of the everyday and overlooked world.
The physical distance from which the details have been observed and caught on film (they are brought to the human eye without falsifying the perspective) and especially the use of black and white photography, which remains the excluding moment of all photographic manipulations, add to the sensation that the motive somehow exists parallel to the everyday world  The element of the surreal pervading the author’s photographs entered, when the line and the curve made room for the comprehension of texture as an absolute whole, as a comprehensive surface.
However, these matrices, these patterns are able to live on their own, they are self-sufficient and independent images which do not force the observer’s gaze to a certain “selection” but at first glance leave him cold and distant. But only upon the first meeting – through a “dialogue of insight” contact grows and slowly the photograph gets under one’s skin and the already seen grows into the newly felt.
The rough materiality of concrete in the photographs by Saša Kos is subtly veiled through the ennobled existence and occurrence of the detail. With its sensitive flair for texture and the tactual, the photograph is brought to and back to its origins and at the same time upgraded with the personal to a level from where the “sensed” and the “illustrated” complement each other into a harmony of co-existence.
Tanja Cigoj

Istovetenje realnosti fotografskega posnetka z realnostjo kot tako je najbolj pogost vzrok nesporazumov pri interpretaciji fotografskih stvaritev. Tudi če zanemarimo dejstvo, da je fotografiji odvzeta prostorska razsežnost, ki nesporno določa predmete kot fizična dejstva (ravno tako kot barva, ki se ji avtor zavestno odreče z uporabo črno-bele tehnike), je pri gledalcu praviloma prvi, takorekoč refleksni odziv na videno primerjava svetlobnih razmerij na ploskovitem nosilcu z že evidentiranimi entitetami v pojavni resničnosti. Toda govorica fotografije je po svoji naravi le ena izmed številnih simbolnih govoric, ki namensko in nadzorovano izbrane izseke iz materialnega sveta pretvarja v znakovne zapise, katerih interakcije generirajo določene pomene. Izbira motiva zategadelj nikoli ni sama sebi namen, še tako neznaten in navidezno nepomemben predmet fotografske stilizacije lahko z ustreznim načinom predstavitve in s primerno formalno obdelavo preseže robove kadra, v katerega je umeščen, in razpre asociativno polje, ki ni nujno povezano samo z njegovo neposredno prepoznavnostjo.
Sodobne vizualne prakse se vse bolj izogibajo »velikim zgodbam« in namesto njih izpostavljajo drobne, razpršene vidike osebnega dojemanja in umevanja sveta, ki nas obdaja. Ta pristop prepoznavamo tudi v delu današnje fotografske produkcije, vpete med zgodovinsko izročilo medija in vse bolj izrazite težnje po sinergijskem povezovanju različnih umetniških zvrsti, prezentacijskih metod in upodobitvenih tehnik. Tokrat razstavljeni fotografski ciklus Saše Kosa je značilen primer »majhne zgodbe«, osredotočenja na povsem obrobno temo, ki pa ni brez pomenskih izzivov in oblikovno domišljenih rešitev. Avtor si je namreč za tematski okvir svojih posnetkov izbral »pogled v tla«, v na zunaj nič kaj privlačen in zategadelj običajno spregledan segment ikonografije urbanega prostora, v katerem se pravzaprav ne dogaja nič dramatičnega, nepredvidljivega ali kako drugače atraktivnega. Asfaltne ali betonske prevleke so preprosto tu in zdaj, izpostavljene bolj ali manj naključnim atmosferskim in mehanskih spremembam ter - bistveno redkeje - človekovim posegom; kar jih vizualno opredeljuje, je njihova materialna struktura, ki se na fotografijah kaže kot alternacija svetlejših in temnejših površin. Razpoke, fuge, včasih del nanosa bele barve, odvržen ostanek nečesa ali odpadli oziroma z vetrom prinešeni delci rastlin na teh površinah učinkujejo kot »podatek več«, kot poudarjeni grafizmi, ki nadgrajujejo monotonost slikovne predloge. V Kosovih fotografijah ni presežnih vsebin, če bi na njih iskali kodirana sporočila, bi se bržkone zapletli v mrežo nadinterpretacij. Kar je tu pomembno, je hoten obrat navznoter, k fotografskemu metadiskurzu in njegovim aporijam. Kaj danes lahko sprejmemo kot fotografsko - in posledično vizualno sploh - (še) vzdržno, je vprašanje, na katerega se nam odgovor izmika. V polju, kjer je dolgo veljala paradigma odločilnega trenutka (Cartier-Bressonov moment décisif), imamo zdaj nepregledno množico nagovorov, ki se ukvarjajo samo s tem, do kje je fotografija še fotografija in kdaj preide v produciranje čistih likovnih znakov s fotografskimi tehnikami in postopki. Kosove fotografije se v svoji zdajšnji pojavnosti gibljejo na vmesnem, robnem področju: njihovo nesporno izhodišče je še vedno izkustveno preverljiva realnost, njihov končni učinek pa se približuje percepcijskim in semantičnim značilnostim klasične abstraktne grafike.
Brane Kovič