Vladimir Velickovski
Poetic Symbolic Realism of Kashawelski
The exhibition of Sinisha Kashawelski is a result of the artistic practice of a time period fulfilled with hard work and dedication to his own concept. The rational act is a part of his temperament, while the knowledge of his artistic technique couldn't be acquired at the Faculty of Art in Skopje because it comes out from his affinity and dedication to ‘serious’ art.
The central theme in his paintings is the human body, in particular the woman’s figure or act, whose visual meaning is complimented with a choice of elements from the author’s intimate world or they've universal symbolic register of presentation. Kashawelski paints applying a precise descriptive drawing. He insists onto the perfectionism of the detail and the serene harmony of the whole. These presentations of the human body with their plastic expression are a tool that gets the final result in a wider thematic contest. The body may get symbols of some worshiped subject and to manifest its ideal of beauty, always followed with some coded attributes of the material folkloric world and tradition. The invention is not only seen in the positions of the figures, but it is a base to the direction of the artist towards the interpretation of the human body and its sporadic elements which provide some other contest for different suggestions.
Kashawelski doesn't deform to become more expressive. He achieves the inner expression with a precise retelling and description which doesn't get away from the objective ‘ugly’ or ‘beautiful’ into reality. What happens to the space on the painting? Taking in consideration the central meaning of the motive, spread in the middle of the painting, however decentralized with a ‘play’ of some other elements, the space is determined with the plainness of the background which is not empty because it is clearly determining all the relevant meaningful elements. The figures are frontal. The plastic presentation of the figure is sometimes combined with the flat forms of the clothing which differs from the presentation of the material objects. The figure is a center of the crystallization of his/her aesthetics and energy of expression, all followed with some ‘light’ esoteric suggestions. The figures are usually taken from the author’s close intimate world, and their preciseness ‘competes’ with the photography, however seen through the prism of a lyric experience. These aren't connected to the photo-realism, which by the way is a variance of the hyper-realism, nor to the stiff, lifeless academism. We’re not trying to cite anything, but in these paintings a curious eye can see elements of the realism (Grant Wood, Wyeth and Odd Nerdrum), surrealism (not as much Dali as Margite), symbolism (Neo-classicism to Art Nuvo) and element of naturalism (a more serene variance compared to the one of Lucian Freud).
Kashawelski uses pretty known examples such are the iconoclastic presentations, however he is trying in these icon-o-graphic solutions to enter some new elements and meanings, giving it some unusual contest to his artistic presentations.
In his artistic allegories and symbolic presentations a particular place is given to the material requisites as well as the motives such’re apples, pomegranates, gold fish, sequel and hammer which are not carrying ideological or political message but are trying to catch a feeling of ironic interpretation of the well known themes or the sarcastic tone of the ‘comics allegory’. The text of ‘Vita Nuova’ of Virgil or ‘Leave the hope here...’ of Dante’s Inferno is actually an annunciation of the new cycle of paintings that will follow.
And for the end. Kashawelski makes some works against ‘the desert of the soul’, against ‘the death of the nature’, answering the eventual question is there any sense to paint in this fashion. In Kashawelski’s paintings all is real and this is why he achieves an effect of i-reality, getting away from the ‘ugly preciseness’ of hyper-realism towards some art that even today is not anachronistic or surpassed. He is sharply, clearly and very openly composing his paintings and ‘gives’ and ‘takes’ from the nature what she lacks, confessing a particular kind of Mediterranean symbolic realism.
Vladimir Velickovski