What actually happens when we are faced with the art photographs that represent reproductions of a grand artistic works? This is a question, definitely raised to a spectator of the Series Masterpiece a thematic and conceptual continuation of his earlier projects Museum and What do the pictures want?. The concept of appropriation is a well-established practice in different forms of the artistic contexts, but Košir skilfully uses it as a mask for his, characteristically subtle intervals between similarities, which are the carriers of different identities. Košir is only interested in appropriation, which represents an ideal means for his visual polemics with the omnipresent circulation of the media exposed images, from the standpoint of perception and acceptance of the socially established artworks. Their original meaning, which in our capitalistically oriented society nowadays represents simply merchandise goods, has been significantly transformed with the incorporation into the history-of art- canon and museums. >>

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This iconolatry status of images (where the meaning of icon obviously no longer represents the holiness in the religious sense, but the status of a global recognition) is undoubtedly the most illustrative in the Hellenist top sculptural arts as Nike of Samothrace and Venus de Milo or Michelangelo’s David and Pietà. While recognizing them on the photographs we do not feel the need to check the correctness of identification on the subtitles, for we are certain that we are facing the very images, stored in our memory treasury. Namely, all those images belong to those glorious masterpieces of our civilization that form our consciousness, which we have heard of, have been taught and which we saw in numerous reproductions not only in books, but also on tea-shirts, glasses, erasers and umbrellas and which were rarely really felt or experienced even if we had a chance to face an original; we have satisfied our minds just with the surface of the fame instead of breaking our way to the heart of its meaning. In short, our response in such cases is predetermined with media constructed value of images, which can sometimes even cause a severe psychosomatic responses, as increased heart beat, faintness or hallucinations, based on which (where else than in Florence), the Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini in 1979 described and named a so called Stendhal’s syndrom.

In the modern society of spectacle, where we are losing the sense for reality, the media image has successfully replaced the direct impact of the artistic work itself and exhausted our capability of perception and, therefore, the form and content may differ, and the genuineness of the experience seems only genuine in production of the spectacle. The Košir’s Masterpiece project does not only direct us to the problem of genuineness of the image experience through already labelled point of perception, but also raises the question of the identity itself and of the trust into an experienced vision. Professionally photographed and carefully framed large reproductions do not represent promised masterpieces. At a closer look, or at least comparable one, the doubt on »genuineness« of the reproduction is trigged and it becomes obvious at naive disproportionateness of sugary Dovid and wrinkled Maria’s face on Piety, and, maybe, a little less present on relatively successful imitations, named Nike of Samotbrake and Venus de Mib. Even the systematically distorted titles, compulsory with copies of any trademark whatsoever, confirm the deception. In fact, Košir actually does not reproduce the originals, but the museum souvenirs or merchant imitations, placed in three-dimensional model of the actual today’s environment of the referred original arts. Namely, those souvenirs actually replace or rouse an encounter with the masterpiece with its accessibility, convenient size and availability. It could be said, that Košir includes himself into the Benjamin’s discourse of technical reproduction ability, where »through multiplication of reproductions, the unique appearance of the art itself is replaced with phenomena of mass appearance«, which decisively marks, not only a role of the art itself, but also our perception. And yet, only when the reproductions already exist, we are able to talk about the originals. However, Košir is not so much interested in the ability of reproduction, which is, by all means, already a property of a photographic technique and of a serial product – souvenir that replaces a unique marble sculpture. The ability of reproduction serves him above all as the duplication system; the reproduction reproduces a commercial imitation, which, placed in the directed environment that produces the effect of an authentic masterpiece environment, pretends to be original and creates the belief in vision through the illusion of imitation. Such duplications seem to appear similarly as the psychoanalytic mechanism of repetition, which prevents the rendering of a traumatic experience and encountering of reality. The truth, therefore, is always elsewhere than it seems, but, on the other hand, the access to this truth is only possible through the existence of repetitions.

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