RW2010

Poposki-right to the City

At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje

Zoran Poposki is featured in the biennial exhibition "Dr Global and Mr Local: 13th Winter Salon of DLUM" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, Macedonia, from February 10 to March 1, 2010.

Poposki exhibits digital prints from the Abstract Politics series.Drawing on a wide array of strategies traditionally used by abstraction, this series of digital prints recontextualizes and translates them into the language of new media.
The exhibition is curated by Tomur Atagok (Turkey).

Exhibition in Slovenia

Zoran Poposki is featured in the international exhibition Video in Progress 3: Fields of the Performative, at the Kino Siska Centre for urban Culture in Ljubljana, in collaboration with Photon Gallery, from October 20 to November 15 2009.

The third edition of Video in Progress exhibition project, curated by Kolektiva, is the result of international competition on the subject of performance for video. The 46 selected videos, featuring various formal and conceptual premises, present a heterogeneous interpretation of performance in relation to video within contemporary visual art. Everything from regular performance in front of audience in a gallery to an exhibitionist and voyeuristic presentation of a body as an aesthetic object, absurd actions, exploration of identity, social and political roles, subjective views, narratives and the creation of film or documentary atmosphere.

Poposki’s video performance deals with the topic of difference and otherness as an integral aspect in the process of demarcation of boundaries of one’s own identity. "Zoran Poposki illustrates the influence of a society full of prejudices as to the image of an individual. The performer is, beyond recognition, covered with projections of words that express mainstream society’s view of those who live at its margins", write Metka Zupanič & Vesna Bukovec in the exhibition catalog.

Saatchi Online Top 10

Zoran Poposki has been selected among the Top 10 artists working with New Media registered on Saatchi Online. The selection was made by Georgia Haagsma, Gallery Assistant at a contemporary art gallery in London and a freelance art critic.
Saatchi Online is an online gallery of the London gallery for contemporary art, the Saatchi Gallery.

At the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico

Zoran Poposki's video performance Here has been selected by the Museo de Arte de Ponce (MAP) in Puerto Rico to be shown at Museo de Arte de Ponce in Plaza las Americas MAP @ PLAZA, San Juan.

As a preview to the symposia Encounter with the Art Blogs: Puerto Rico and Beyond, MAP will screen Refresh: Projections of New Media at MAP. Refresh will include artists from Puerto Rico, USA, Canada, Germany, and Macedonia.

The concept of Refresh comes from the browser's refresh button, which allows a static page to update information that has changed. Refreshing is tantamount to restoring strength, animation, and stimulation. MAP is, in addition to renewing its building and reinstalling its collection, "willing to send a new signal: a museum open to new ways of connecting with a young community of artists and the public," as stated by MAP's Assistant Curator Maria Arlette de la Serna, coordinator of this event in collaboration with Carmen Olmo-Terrasa.

“The selected videos address the concepts of new and change—as regards identity or politics or a discourse on historical antagonisms,” says guest artist Arnaldo Román. “The vast majority of artists, especially those in Europe, focus on topics that are related to their current historical situation, change, and globalization, and how it has affected the state of things, for better or for worse.” The public can see Refresh at MAP@PLAZA from August 1st through August 6 with the current exhibition Museo de Arte de Ponce: Fifty Years looking to the Future.

Museo de Arte de Ponce or MAP is the largest art museum in the Caribbean and widely regarded as one of the best in the Americas. It houses the finest collection of European art in the Caribbean, including works by Rubens, Delacroix and Murillo, as well as works by Puerto Rican artists.

At the NDK in Sofia, Bulgaria

A digital print by Zoran Poposki is featured in the exhibition "Contemporary Macedonian Artists" at the National Palace of Culture (NDK) in Sofia, Bulgaria, from July 1-31, 2009.
NDK is the biggest exhibition and congress center in Bulgaria.

Public space: participatory art project

Zoran Poposki’s latest project, PUBLIC SPACE (2008-2009), was presented at the main city square in Skopje, Macedonia, on 23 June 2009. Utilizing situationist tactics and focused on a collective utopian intervention into urban geography, this year-long participatory art project explores issues of “ownership” of public space, as well as citizens’ power to “write” urban memory as represented by the names of public space in the city of Skopje, thus reappropriating the urban landscape which belongs to all citizens.

As a space shared by all citizens, public space is one of the main sources of local identity. Furthermore, public space is where citizens communicate and interact with each other and become engaged in public matters, and is thus a precondition for public freedom. Thus the right, as well as the necessity, for the citizens to use public space as something which belongs to them and as a place for public debate and engaging in public discourse.

Phase one of the project started in October 2008, with a publication of an open call to the citizens of Skopje for “submitting proposals for changes to the names of streets, bridges, parks and squares in Skopje”, published on 8 October 2008 as an ad in the largest daily newspaper in Macedonia, “Dnevnik”. The open call states:

The city of Skopje is not defined by its buildings or other facilities. This city is defined by its inhabitants, with their family ties, labor relations, with their knowledge and actions. It is not made up of the past, but of the present which is continuously being created by the people living in it. Public spaces in the city, such as squares, parks, streets and bridges, which belong to all citizens, should reflect that fact. They should carry the names of people living and working in this city today, celebrate each one of us and not just historic figures. They should mark important dates in our lives, and not the past.

Therefore, fellow citizens, we call upon you to suggest new names for the public spaces in our cit. Let’s name them after:
- current inhabitants of Skopje who are good parents, partners, friends, neighbors, collaborators;
- dates marking important events in our everyday lives (birthdays, weddings, etc.);
- our favorite things, such as colors, sounds, activities, etc.

Please submit your proposals along with a brief explanation (no more than half a page) online at www.public-space.info or mail them to CC Tocka, 6 Antonio Grubisic, 1000 Skopje. All proposals will be forwarded to the Skopje City Council.
Let’s make this city truly ours.

In the second stage, realized as part of the Skopje Cultural Summer 09, all proposals by the citizens of Skopje collected in the previous nine months were included in a new map of Skopje, exhibited as a billboard on the central square in Skopje for a period of one week, along with a one-day performance by the artist. A survey of passers-by was conducted, to explore their opinion on public spaces in Skopje and solicit new proposals. All collected proposals, with documentation of the process, will be officially submitted to the Skopje City Council in October 2009.

Young Visual Artist Award

Zoran Poposki is featured in an exhibition at the City Museum of Skopje, as finalist for the Young Visual Artist Award YVAA DENES 09, awarded by the Contemporary Arts Center Skopje in cooperation with the Foundation for a Civil Society in New York.

Poposki exhibits documentation of his public art project "Abstract Politics". Conceived as a series of abstract prints for billboards installed as megalights on the busiest streets in Skopje, this project aims to reclaim commercially usurped public space for artistic purposes. As space shared by all citizens, public space is where individuals see and are seen by others as they engage in public affairs and is thus a precondition for “public freedom” (Hannah Arendt).

The Abstract Politics series of digital prints for billboards draws upon a wide array of artistic strategies traditionally used by abstraction (the liberating power of randomness, chaos, gestures), while at the same time recontextualizing them and translating them into the language of new media. The starting point in the process is the media, i.e. news coverage of national and global political issues. In the contemporary, digital version of the aleatory principle, the headline is searched in Google Images, and the search results thus obtained serve as raw material which is later digitally edited.

Award in Spain

A collaborative art project by Zoran Poposki (Macedonia), Eva Petric (Slovenia/Austria) and Markuz Wernli Saito (Switzerland/Japan), has been awarded at an international competition for public art projects in the Basque city of Sondika, Spain.

In competition with 203 projects from 38 countries, including the United States, Germany, Austria, Canada, Columbia, China, South Korea, Turkey, Finland, France and Venezuela, the art trio acting under the name Z + E + M Collective was shortlisted among the five finalists and received special mention.
The project, entitled “Recipe Benches,” is a multimedia installation in public space focused on the enormous creative and utopian potential of food, as one of the key features of Sondika's identity.

At the Museum of Contemporary Art - Skopje

Zoran Poposki's work is featured in the exhibition "Identities" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, Macedonia, from February 19 to March 12, 2009. Poposki exhibits digital prints and video performances dealing with difference and otherness, including collaborations with US artist Christian Faur and Jane Stefanov.

At the Skopje City Museum

Zoran Poposki's work will be featured in the annual DLUM exhibition at the City Museum of Skopje, Macedonia, from 11-24 December 2008.

Poposki will exhibit a large-scale digital print previously shown in several international exhibitions, including a Long Island exhibition juried by one of the most prominent U.S. art critics, Donald Kuspit.

Abstract politics

Conceived as a series of highly political abstract works for billboards, Zoran Poposki's latest project aims at reclaiming commercially usurped public space for artistic purposes. The first work in the series (Abstract Politics 1: Political Consensus Holds Key to European Integration, digital print, 2008, 300x400 cm), is installed as a megalight in the very center of Skopje, on Ilindenska Street (in front of the Macedonian Government building), thus marking the official start of the project.

More about the project here: www.public-space.info.

Shows in Seattle and in Istanbul

Works by the Macedonian digital artist Zoran Poposki will be presented in two international shows in the US and Turkey this February.

From 6 to 29 February 2008, Poposki will take part in the international exhibition Borderlands at the Art Gallery of the South Seattle Community College in Seattle, USA. “Borderlands aims to deal with the concept of political borders and how these borders affect people in the global community politically, emotionally, and socially. Work will be featured by artists from Macedonia to Seattle”, states the exhibition’s catalogue. At the exhibition Zoran Poposki will present a work from his multimedia project The Border, which addresses the issue of (im)permeability of borders in today’s global configurations by means of video, performance, digital prints and objects.

In Istanbul, from 19 to 29 February 2008, the program of the 3 Kargart Video Festival will include Poposki’s video performance entitled Here, a single-channel DVD video produced by Jane Stefanov, which deals with the dynamics between personal and cultural identity.

Exhibition in Berlin

A video performance by the digital artist Zoran Poposki will be shown at the international exhibition Trajectories at the New Life Shop Gallery in Berlin, opening on 25 January 2008.

Curated by Sixten Kai Nielsen and Martin Rosengaard of WooLoo Productions, the exhibition "represents, describes and investigates contemporary Nomadism, and related topics and practices" aimed at transcending national borders and identities.

At the exhibition Poposki will present his video performance Here, produced by Jane Stefanov, which explores the personal experiencing of borders (psychological, geographic, political…) and their (im)permeability and arbitrariness in a globalizing world.

"Here" - a video performance

The Border - a multimedia project at Tocka

Zoran Poposki’s multimedia project entitled “The Border” will be presented at the Cultural Center Tocka in Skopje on 30 May 2007, at 9 pm. Through video, performance, digital prints and objects created in the last year, Poposki explores the personal experiencing of borders (psychological, geographic, political…) and their (im)permeability and arbitrariness in a globalising world. Also, a joint performance with Marko Petrushevski entitled “One-hour visa” will be performed at the opening.

“Zoran Poposki is placing his lived experience right into the center of his artistic research and evincing a broad array of strategies and procedures that both reveal and subvert notions of selfhood/nationhood. The crushing banalities of an inflexible social system becomes fodder as he deconstructs it by revealing and recontextualizing his actual experience… Instead of capitulating to the deadening weight of this bureaucratic machinery, or biding his time and simply weathering his way through it, he takes it on and finds material drivers for the production of a critical, participatory creative process”, writes performance artist Lynn Book.

Best of 123Soho 2007 Art Show

Zoran Poposki has been chosen among the 30 artists in "The Best of 123Soho 2007 Art Show" exhibit. His works have been selected from over 1,730 works of art by international artists.

The panel responsible for the selection was composed of Chin Chin Yang (artist and chief curator of 123Soho), Heidi Jain (photographer), and Younghee Choi Martin (artist).

Il Ramo D'Oro, Napoli: opening reception

Photo courtesy: Vincenzo Montella

Review in the newspaper "Il Mattino"

D’Alterio e Poposki sulla linea del confine

A thin line between cultures and expanses of the soul. An ideal boundary that separates, but does not divide, two different artistic sensibilities codified in two very different stylistic codes. Entitled “Border”, the joint exhibition of Michele D'Alterio and Zoran Poposki takes place at Ramo d’Oro, the Art and Culture Center of Vincenzo Montella at via Omodeo 124.

(…) An explosive gestural energy, which wants to break out of the confines of the canvas, characterizes the works of Zoran Poposki, a Macedonian artists who, after New York, Berlin, and Paris, is making his debut exhibition in Italy. The series “Hush” comprises eight digital works (large-scale inkjet prints) of psychodelic chromatisms, which explore the interconnection between the visible and the written word. “In this project I am elaborating the idea of change – he explains – by combining digital photographs of my friends, pictorial elements, such as vibrant drops and lines of color, and inserted selected words." Utilizing a Dadaist technique, the photographed subjects were requested to randomly open a book and choose the first sentence they see. Words that acquire different meanings depending of the sensibility of the spectator. Sentences sometimes intentionally left unfinished to leave room for individual imagination to complete them.

The exhibition, accompanied by a catalogue with an introductory text by Giorgio Agnisola, can be seen until 29 April. Tiziana Tricarico

Exhibition in Italy

An exhibition by the Macedonian artist Zoran Poposki and the Italian artist Michele D’Alterio opens to the public at the gallery “Il Ramo D’Oro” in Napoli on 14 April 2007. The exhibition is conceived as a confrontation of two expressive experiences, the abstract and expressionist one of Poposki and the surrealist and conceptual one of D’Alterio. Poposki exhibits large-scale digital prints that elaborate the issue of identity and the relationship between images and language/text/narratives.

In the exhibition catalogue, the Italian critic Giorgio Agnisola states that: “The Macedonian artist unleashes onto the canvas a gestural and abstract energy, tied to the evocation of color but also to the expressive techniques of the sign, in a multilayered construct out of which often emerge figurative forms, profiles that seem to be creating a sort of inner scenography. Still, in the creative stage it is exorcised through rational interventions, phrases, signs, thoughts, that the artist applies to the painting, provocatively, with the intent to demystify. That results in a visible ambiguity that evokes in the spectator a conscious and intensive analysis of the word and the image, in a space which is emotionally engaging while at the same time problematic, unknown in a way, yet encouraging.”

Zoran Poposki has exhibited in New York, Paris, Berlin, and Macedonia. He has attended residency programs in the US and in Austria.

The exhibition in Napoli will be open until 28 April.

Exhibition at the National Gallery

A solo exhibition by the visual artist Zoran Poposki opens to the public at the National Gallery of Macedonia, Multimedia Center Mala stanica in Skopje on 06 March 2007, at 8 pm.

The exhibition comprises large-scale digital prints and photographs from the cycle “Hush”, created in 2006-2007.

Poposki’s work explores the hidden interconnections between the visual and the written word. Or more specifically, how pictures and narratives are intertwined in the attempt to tell our personal histories, but at the same time they subvert each other, their union sometimes producing unexpected (even ironic) results.

Zoran Poposki has exhibited in the US, Germany, France, and Macedonia. This is his eighth solo exhibition.

(Click here and here for installation views.)

Looking back on 2006

Looking back, I think it is safe to say that 2006 was action-packed for me in terms of exhibitions: a solo show in Paris in spring, a couple of group shows in New York in the summer/autumn, and another solo show in Berlin this winter. Plus an odd one back home and two residencies abroad: at the School of Visual Arts in New York and another one at the Transart Institute (at the O.K. Center for Contemporary Art in Linz, Austria).

(Installation view of my Paris exhibition; more pics here.)

The shows went great - both with the critics and the audience. Let me just mention the juried international exhibition in Huntington, NY, where out of 580 entries from all over the world, one of the most distinguished US art critics prof. Donald Kuspit of Stony Brook University selected my digital print "Marija" to be among the 24 artworks in the exhibition (see photo below).

2007 looks promising as well - with shows scheduled in Italy, Macedonia and Germany.

For all of you who have enjoyed my work in the past year, I wish you a very happy, creative and successful 2007!

Exhibition in Ohrid

Solo exhibition of my digital prints will be held at the National Institution Cultural Center "Grigor Prlicev" in Ohrid, Macedonia.

The exhibition will present 8 large-scale digital prints from the cycle "Hush", created in 2005-2006. My digital prints explore the hidden interconnections between the visual and the written word. Or more specifically, how pictures and narratives are intertwined in the attempt to tell our personal histories, but at the same time they subvert each other, their union sometimes producing unexpected (even ironic) results.

The exhibition is realized upon invitation by the Mayor of Ohrid, on occasion of the Day of Ohrid, and will be open until December 20, 2006.

Exhibition in Berlin

(Vreme, 22.11.2006) - Solo show of Macedonian artist Zoran Poposki will be opened at “Gallery 24” in Berlin on Wednesday evening. The artist presents large-format digital prints from the cycle “Hush”, created in the period 2005/2006.

"After this year’s solo exhibition in Paris and two group exhibitions in New York, it is a pleasure to present my artworks to the German public”, artist Poposki says.

Poposki's expressionist digital portraits represent a combination of digital photography and his recognizable visual writing, marked by the great abstract traditions of modernity, primarily abstract expressionism and post-painterly abstraction. His digital expressionist portraits deal with the issue of authorship and identity through a psycho-analytically inspired type of abstract expressionism.

See also:
http://www.culture.in.mk/story.asp?id=16937&rub=47

Interview in Forum Plus magazine

The September 9 2006 issue of Macedonia's most respected weekly Forum Plus carries an interview with me, about my exhibitions in NY and Paris.

Visit: http://www.forum.com.mk/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=3&tabid=172&EditionID=100&ArticleID=3174&Page=1 (in Macedonian)

Exhibition in the US: Zoran Poposki exhibits with 24 world artists

(Vreme, 01.09.2006) - Macedonian artist Zoran Poposki is taking part in an international exhibition at the Alpan Gallery in Huntington, New York on 2-27 September. An open competition was announced and 24 works including Poposki’s digital print “Marija” have been selected amongst 580 works by artists from the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Britain, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa and Switzerland.

The selection was made by one of the US most renowned art critics, Donald Kuspit, Professor at the New York State University in Stony Brook and editor of the influential art magazine Artforum.

Poposki’s digital expressionist portraits elaborate the question of authorship and identity through a psychoanalysis-inspired abstract expressionism.

Digital Color Artist of the Month

"Zoran Poposki (b.1974) is the May 2006 Digital Color Artist of the Month.

Zoran is an accomplished abstract expressionist painter and graphic artist from Macedonia. His work has been featured in national TV programs, newspapers and magazines.

Zoran takes a passionate approach to painting. His expressive strokes have been compared to a squid squirting ink all around, defending itself. His paintings are a form of refined lyricism, more emotional than intellectual."

Visit: http://www.digitalconsciousness.com/galleries/ZoranPoposki/ZoranPoposki-HUSH.phtml

Exhibition in Paris

(Mimosaextra II/06) "On April 20, 2006 the abstract painter and digital artist Zoran Poposki will open his exhibition at the GALLERY twenty-four in Paris.

The body of works from this Macedonian artrist combines element of mixed media and text to create a powerful exhibition. His abstract paintings and prints are present in private collections abroad, and are along side the works of such masters as Miro, Appel, and Jorn."

An installation view of the exhibition (you can see more pics here.)