• Philosophical Dimension of Depths

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  The project of the Macedonian artist Sasho Blazhes entitled “Dive in me”, with its title,

  suggests a deeply personal, and at the same time a philosophical reflection on the things in the

  “depths”. The awareness about the exploration of the layers behind the apparent or what

  under/behind what appears on the surface, is attributed to the author’s curiosity and fascination by

  the mysterious, regardless of whether it arises from unexplored environments – nature or universe

  or whatever sits deeply in the souls of people. The phenomenon of a human or of self, likely

  involves immeasurable dimensions such as the universe, and the information about such

  expansions (universe or the human brain) talk of how very little they have been explored.

  Consequently, the paintings from the “Dive in me” cycle, both severally, as well as together can be

  interpreted as a metaphor of a kind of a multiverse or a hypothetical collection of universes

  because it talks of “everything in existence: the whole of space, time, matter, energy, information

  and the laws of physics and the constants that describe them” or “advanced universes”, terms that

  existed even since the Greek philosophy.

  The lake and the depths of its waters in Sasho Blazhes’s works speak about such

  transcendent multiverses. In them, one simultaneously experiences the depth of the waters, the

  reflections on the waves under the night lights, the many colors of the impressions defining fleeting

  existence of both materiality, as well as the emotional phenomenology. These visual sensations,

  conveyed through an expressive abstract language, perhaps even surrealistically and op-

  artistically, prompt diving into the hypnotic world of the quivering colors, and sometimes even

  against the conscious will of the mind, the sensations of colors into the eye of the beholder act as a

  vortex drawing it all into a world of contemplativeness.

  Diving into the depths involves much more than breaking the surface and plunging into

  oneself. Plunging into oneself also leads to a transcendent realization and movement towards one’s

  own heights. The impermanence and variability or ephemerality of water and all its variations

  offers not only an artistically aesthetic, philosophically cosmogonical, but also a broader ethical

  and ecologically involved dimension. Water as the base of life, of everything in existence in our

  tangible world versus today’s neurotic Baudrillard's simulacrum world (an idea also present in

• Blazhes’s previous creative cycles), reflects a real sensations and the interconnection between

  people and nature.

  The initiation of the development of the idea about what lies under the surface of these

  lyrically presented expressive, but stele serene landscapes of the deep, can be traced as far back as

  2022. Then, the breaking down of the layers of the plane led to the development of the context of

  his critical relation to reality, to painting, to the substantive and crucial carving under the apparent

  essence of the sensationalistic mass hysteria and the conditional helplessness of humans in the

  consumerist society of today. This, so called, resistance with an existentialist background leads to

  fleeing and diving into a personal contemplative Garden of Eden offering a vibrant playfulness, as

  well as a rhythmical calmness and serenity, by connecting with the depths and the realization of the

  substance of my own self.

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  Maja Chankulovska – Mihajlovska

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