SENSORAMA

Dobrila De Negri

In her first works, realized in the beginning of 90´s, Tanja Ristovski examined primal human needs and the (im)possibility of their satisfaction. Balsam für die Liebe, Once Upon A Time All Women Were Cooks or Way To The Stomach Goes Through The Heart is her first exhibition/action and is the reaction on the existing life conditions at the moment of economic crisis that have put in question not only moral and spiritual, but basical, physical aspects of human existence. Naturally, the choice was drawn to the materials whose deficiency was then felt the most: victuals. In this, and especially in following installations, food and the very act of nourishment is considered not only in the dimension of physical survival, but also in the prismus of multiplex meanings and complex cultural connotations.

Tanja Ristovski interprets food as a substitute that is carried into the organism and that essentially influences one’s physiological, mental and emotive structure. Throughout her works she stresses not only visual, but also the other characteristics of the material: scent, taste, tactility, that is, all the categories that are in direct relation to the bodily functions and sensory reactions. The material obtains the role of stimuli and is in the same time a surrogate of distinctive psychological conditions. This is especially evident in the installation Imaginary landscape, where she uses lapis lazuli and transparent plastics as surrogates of the blueness and air. In her work the object is functioning as an instrument for the transmission of sensory sensation and mental association into a complex imaginary experience.

In the work Altera Silva, consisting of 40 tree-stumps coated with silver leaves so that wood retains its original texture, she examines transposition of the identity of the object by the means of minimal modification and introduces sound in the form of a musical happening that is actually musical improvisation inspired by the ambient installation itself.

In the era where visual culture has an absolutely dominating role and when, thanks to the ever more sophisticated technology, it is possible to stimulate all the sensations with the visual stimuli, even the reality itself, the future of the senses is put in the question. her reflection on the sensory experiences Tanja Ristovski formulates in the work Body Of Water (transparent plastic bags filled with water, 30 lit in volume, and placed directly on the floor)and in the text which is the part of the installation, where she writes about senses/corporeal as of the anticipation and manifestation of certain mental and spiritual conditions.

Tanja Ristovski stresses different levels of sensory perception and gives the body the status of a channel for comprehension and communication. The installations and interventions she realizes, regarding their effect on more sensory level provoke and require the participation of the spectator. the works are sort of a pretext for establishing communication on the relation artist-public, they have in the same time representative and instrumental character, and thus extend the field of perception (visula, sensory) on the field of participation. She annexes certain psychological meanings to the organic materials, for example, in the installation Sinestetic. Here, chocolate and vanilla are used as pigments, and, in the other hand, as substances whose fragrance excites senses and stimulates different sensory and mental associations. Through the characteristics of the material(especially through the strong and specific fragrance that the artist relates with the idea of woman, body and erotic) she intensifies relations in the instantaneous sensory sensations and deeper psychological impulses.

The idea of interactivity and using the work as a medium for establishing the contact in the dialogue with the public is also recognized in the works as Sweets and Vulgata. Sweets is actually an offering the cherry sweet in the jars that with their shape allude the symbolism of the male and female principle. For the artist sweets implicates, corresponding to its psychological effect on the body, irrationality and stimulation, concept of hedonism and aesthetic of emotion. Vulgata is realized in the exhibition Out of Chaos, that was organized immediately after the abolition of cultural embargo and was a reflection on a different aspect of the war situation in Yugoslavia and on the phenomena of social changes after the war. Vulgata is 100kg of flour formed with water into a coherent whole, placed directly on the floor. the public was invited to touch and leave their traces in this yeastless bread of big dimensions (an emblem of transformation, purity sacrifice and, in the same time, material survival) and to "feel the spirit of bread". The tactile allurement of the used material functions as a channel for performing the contact with public.

Exploring interactivity and possibilities for contact extends in the installations that, in the first sight, do not require the participation of the public. Play Circumstance deals with the issue of making an intercourse between the incompatible forms, bodies as the ball and the rope , that can attain the relation only in a play. To play means to make a bridge between one’s fantasy and reality by exertion of libido, a kind of transmission of mental energy. and one possibility for interaction. In the same place exhibited wall installation Playing Space (documentary photographs which, without any specific theme, present the artist in different social situations).

The idea of play is in a specific way elaborated in the sculpture Mikado, produced in cast steel and of monumental dimensions. the installation suggests the feeling of lightness, maneability and suspension in the space, and in the other hand, the perfectly realized, sharp pointed metal bars (that completely reproduce the Mikado sticks) make an association on aggression, danger and provoke a succession of ambivalent reflections in the spectator. Folloiwng the interets for the relation artist-public, Tanja Ristovski realizes one-evening photo action in the frame of Progetto Arte (a project by Michelangelo Pistoletto). She makes instant, Polaroid portraits of visitors, immediately reproduces them in a mode of poster on the copy-machine and exhibits them.

In the sculptures, space interventions or happenings of Tanja Ristovski the idea of transmission of energy and intention of connecting physical reality and individual imagination always trails through. In the time of computerization, Internet connection, transmission and fluctuation of information by the means of the media, it is inexorable that the work of art takes the character of the mediator in establishing the contact between otherwise alienated individuals. Work Safe as Milk problematizes this question of communication and is organized so that the milk is offered as a communicational agent in the social (functionally defined) gallery space, while the camera is immediately reproducing the event on the monitor, realizing so simultaneous communication on two levels.

In this and in the next work she turns more to the use of new media as the video. Here We GO is a video installation where she uses as a title and textual part verses of T. S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men. The sequences of putting make-up on, taking it off, the flow of water in lavatorium and pulsation of the palm are insinuations to the aspects of partitioned erotic. To this, she juxtaposes documentary sequences from her childhood that illustrate the spectatorial position of child subject in the (dominating) ideology of genders. By the procedure of dialectic montage, repetition and textual insertion, she connects the images in a hypnagogic allusion on some realms of life and female existence as an existence "in-between".

In all her works Tanja Ristovski gives special attention to the titling and to the text as a verbal presentation and variation on the same idea or experience that is contained in the work. This accent on verbal comes out from her experiences with poetry and writing. Lately she has been working on a visual poetry where she pays attention to the visual suggestiveness of lingual elements and connotations coming up from thus organized writing.