BURIED IN CLOUDS

To the person and work of Miroslav Stojanovic - Shuki 

I was drinking at least one espresso with Shuki in La Bohème every morning for three months. We always sat at the same table, under the old radio receiver and an outdated calendar, he with an old-fashioned curtain behind him, me sitting opposite to him and with a slight view on the tiny street, as narrow as to put a car and a bike together. Behind me was the window-refrigerator which produced strange sounds from time to time.
There, surrounded by the quiet sounds of a totally marginal radio station, under the watchful morning eye of the waitress from the good old from catering school, with the weak smell coming from the kitchen into the nostrils, Shuki and I were starting a new philosophical and aesthetic workshop every morning, spicing it up occasionally with political-pornographic elements and totally psychedelic sequences.
Statistically, as well as in terms of contents, this period was more than rich. We met probably sixty times, drank at least 200 coffees and smoked over 2,000 cigarettes at those morning meetings. We were late for work probably nine out of ten times when we had our morning sessions. At each meeting we had at least one new topic. We dind’t miss a single occasion to spit on the quasi-intellectual masturbators, new-comer peasants and the baroque façade of the cottage-state in which we live. However, they were side little themes, like small boxing bags in the wardrobe of gladiators. The old checkered tablecloths in La Bohème heavy philosophical issues, poetry, painting, multimedia, extraordinary visions were rolling like the massive stone of Sisyphus. Each get-together with Shuki is a new mental desire, and what we did every morning at that time was a serious brain-building training.
I re-discovered Shuki then. I saw the labyrinths in and of his being in a rotating 3D version. I noticed that Shuki is one of those rare people of whom you are never sure if they are here. He inadvertently changes the axes and directions of gravity. Sometimes, he stands on the ground (rarely). Often, his boots are in a mixture of dense dark stormy clouds to his ankle, and over his head is an unknown planet that gravitates towards the empty sky, spilling rocks, rivers, oceans and cities onto his head. Skywalker, but lost.
After this period of over 200 coffees and 60 themes, anything that comes out from under the brush of Shuki does not surprise me. However, the absence of surprise is replaced by more intense, delicate and complex experience multiplied by millions of his creations. I know what is behind them. And I'm sorry that he doesn’t have nearly so many works as there are chambers in his crazy head. And in each chamber he has at least one door that leads to a maze from which an exit rarely exists...
Both as a person and as an artist, Miroslav Stojanovic - Shuki cannot fit in the space where you see or think you see him, nor in time where you are or think you are, or you have the impression that he is.
You can place Shuki in the 19th century, in the dark Middle Ages or in the last terrible hour of silence in Pompeii. You can place him in a colony on Mars in the future. Not now and not here.
But if by chance you lay your hands on a miraculous sensor for the spirits of the time, for the people dead and unborn, for the nature created and uncreated, a sensor for human creations destroyed and those yet to be created - you will get the same signals and currents from all sides. All of them will type the same message on the transcendental telegraph device, "Not now and not here! This man, this being is not now and not here!"
Shuki is in a constant mental and spiritual lunar juncture. Like the moon in the tearful eyes of the sky lover, he is capable of continuous altering, but unlike the Moon, he is not made of cold rocks and dust, but by explosives, vivid colors, bones, meat and thoughts. Shuki tells a new story all the time, a story about an entirely new Cosmos, other than anyone can imagine or experience now or here, anywhere and anytime. Yes, he is not now and not here, but in the same time, he is always and everywhere, never and nowhere.
Looking at the works of Shuki I experience them as both mythical and sci-fi bird simultaneously. He and his works are like a story about a mythological-sci-fi-cartoon hero, a hybrid between human, beast and machine - an experiment in which you are not certain, it scares you, causing dizziness and attracts you. It is a story about the world we live and die in, yet it is not the same world.
Therefore, he is not here and is not now, whenever, wherever.
Xhabir Deralla
A Friend of Shuki