May 31, 2007

"Here" - video performance

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Zoran Poposki's Here is a video performance (6:37 minutes, produced by Jane Stefanov) about the relationship between personal and collective identity, as well as the limitations of the local, symbolized by the artist’s attempt to get into a traditional Macedonian dress. The title is “Here”, in the sense that the individual is always already present in his or her own culture.



The costume is one that the artist's grandmother made herself when she was just a little girl, 70 years ago, as part of her dowry for her groom to be - Poposki's grandfather who lived in five different countries without ever leaving his home (borders are a pretty fluid thing in the Balkans).



The background music is a loop of the opening beats of a famous Macedonian folk dance (in fact, it is the folk dance, the ur-dance of all Macedonian dances, or "oro" as it's called in Macedonia). Called "Teshkoto" ("the heavy one"), it's a slow folk dance that gradually picks up the pace, danced exclusively by men.

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.

May 30, 2007

Travels (2007)


In Zoran Poposki's participatory project Travels, a life-size cutout of the artist is mailed to people in several countries for them to "show" it around the country and send back photographs of it with some recognizable landmark in the background. All cut-outs go through customs controls etc., probing most of the institutional aspects and agents related to borders. The image is intentionally pixelated, to underscore the virtual nature of the endeavor. The artist’s double/s goes on tour around the world, “visiting” Sydney, Los Angeles/Hollywood, Oxford, Paris, Copenhagen, etc., bringing in more than 100 photographs by various contributors.




Fortress Europe



Fortress Europe (2007) is a 79x47 inches print of a digitally edited 1960s found photograph of the Berlin Wall, in which the artist Zoran Poposki places himself in the right corner.
On the photograph, people from the Western part of Berlin are peeking over the wall built by the Russians and into the Eastern part. The fall of the Berlin Wall, which had been the symbol of divided Europe for 30 years, signaled the start of the unification of Europe. However, nowadays the perception in the Balkans is that now Europe is once again divided, and a new wall is set in place only this time by the EU itself, with countries and nations being left out (the "other" of Europe), allowed only to take a peek at the life on the other side while denied to take part in it.

Exhibition Abroad (2007)


Exhibition Abroad (2007) the strict visa requirements for citizens of non-EU countries in the Balkans and the difficulties involved in obtaining a Schengen visa.
In the project, the artist Zoran Poposki documents the 1.5 long process of getting a visa for his exhibition in Napoli, Italy, in the form of digital prints composed of portraits (that he would usually use as one of the components of his digital paintings, the other being randomly chosen text from works of pulp fiction and digitally edited parts of his acrylic paintings) and his correspondence with the embassy and the gallery manager.
The correspondence ranges from cordial invitation and extension of hospitality to initial disbelief at the rigid procedure and the amount of documents required for a visa application and ultimately to suspicion that maybe his case is an exception and not a rule.

In a sense, this part of the project is a meta-exhibition since several of the portraits were turned into digital paintings that were exhibited in Italy.
The final product consists of five 35x28 inch digital prints mounted on forex, entitled “Exhibition abroad”, composed of a black-and-white digital photograph and text in chronological order.


May 19, 2007

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).

April 18, 2007

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

April 08, 2007

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.

March 03, 2007

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.)

January 14, 2007

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.

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.)