Visitors

The series Visitors, 2004-2010, depicts the gradual decomposition of the human body, testifying to the ending of the life cycle
Eschewing all sentimentality and moralising, Bertok obsessively documents and displays the mortality of the body, turned by physical death into a mere lump of insentient flesh doomed to decay
The motifs of burning corpses in an abstract non-space are a testament, naturalistic if aestheticised to the extreme, to the now ubiquitous process of cremation of the human body, hidden from the public gaze
Old age, disease, death and the encounter with the dead body have been pushed to the margins of contemporary society, whose information channels are abuzz with the imperatives of health, youth and vigour
Bertok s shining portraits seem surreal and are surreal because they represent the rejected, the forgotten, the marginal.
Bertok pictures corpses decomposed through the process of cremation, representing a peculiar Memento mori iconography.
The body is no more marginalized because it is pathological, but because it has become a corpse. As Kristeva suggests, the corpse is the reverse of the symbolic, consequently the refuse of civilization. The injured body from the former series has finally been symbolically killed, but at the same time it is really dead
This is a series of photographs that shows us flames composing abstract paintings in which sometimes appears a skull which will decompose more and more. These images are quite unbearable because it shows death at work, but mostly because it shows what we refuse to see - the passage between the dead body and the urn. This part of the work of Goran Bertok, in addition to showing the unshowable also questions the ethics of photography. How far can we go and can we show everything. The answer is probably in each of us, and up to each of us
And death shall have no dominion and death will come and will have your eyes

Visitors

Goran Bertok: Visitors

The series Visitors (2004-2010) depicts the gradual decomposition of the human body, testifying to the ending of the life cycle. Eschewing all sentimentality and moralising, Bertok obsessively documents and displays the mortality of the body, turned by physical death into a mere lump of insentient flesh doomed to decay. The motifs of burning corpses in an abstract non-space are a testament, naturalistic if aestheticised to the extreme, to the now ubiquitous process of cremation of the human body, hidden from the public gaze. Old age, disease, death and the encounter with the dead body have been pushed to the margins of contemporary society, whose information channels are abuzz with the imperatives of health, youth and vigour. Bertok approaches death from the standpoint of life: he is interested in its mythology, which has echoed the notion of »death with dignity« throughout human history; he is fascinated by the psychological effects of the inescapable mortal terror and by the remains of what was once a living organism. Death is not idealised, since it unavoidably causes fear, pain and suffering, but perceived as a consequence of life.

Miha Colner


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