Moderna galerija + Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Artists:
Mohammed Ahmed Abdalla Abbaro, Makedonka Andonova, Tome Andreevski, Max Aruquipa Chambi, Maria Auxiliadora da Silva, Vladimir Avramchev, Borka Avramova, Antun Bahunek, Stjepan Bastalec, Ibrahim Bedi, Maria Bonomi, Janko Brašić, Gjorgji Capev, Rimer Cardillo, Peter Clarke, Waldemar de Andrade e Silva, Silvia de Leon Charleo, Evgenija Demnievska, Ladyr Harris Domschke – Pulu, Vadim Fishkin, Jordan Grabul, Ion Grigorescu, Lourdes Guanabara, Petar Hadzi Boshkov, Yozo Hamaguchi, Josip Horvat, Dragoslava Janeva, Vojko Janevski, Goce Josifov– Rombo, Milosav Jovanović, Lúcia Kahn, Risto Kalchevski, Sead Kazanxhiu, Stjepan Kičin, Jano Knjazović, Dimche Koco, Dimitar Kondovski, Ivan Kuzmiak, Ivan Lacković Croata, Wifredo Lam, Mihail Lazarov, Borivoje Maksimović, Done Miljanovski, Manolo Millares, Dushko Mishevski, Vangel Naumovski, Adzem Nihat, Petre Nikoloski, Jolanta Owidzka, Julije Papić, Dushan Perchinkov, Rade Perchuklievski, Juçara Pimenta de Pádua, Ilija Prokopiev, Kristina Pulejkova, Ivan Rabuzin, Ismet Ramikjevikj, Vilma Ramos, Hanibal Salvaro, Józef Sarnowski, Simon Shemov, Tomo Shijak, Gjorgje Shijakovikj, Helenos Silva, Matija Skurjeni, Krste Slavkovski, Petar Smajić, Maja Smrekar, Pedro Soares Fogaça, Mira Spirovska, Mena Spirovska – Menche, Gligor Stefanov, Dushko Stojanovski, Stjepan Stolnik, The Šempas Family, Igor Toshevski, Geraldo Trindade Leal, Marija Tusha Iljovska, Unknown artist, Simon Uzunovski, Patricia Velasco Wallin, Jano Venjarski, Ondrej Venjarski, Jernej Vilfan, Gordana Vrencoska, Franjo Vujčec, Bogosav Živković.
Curators: Ivana Vaseva, Blagoja Varoshanec, Iva Dimovski, Vladimir Janchevski and Bojana Piškur
The exhibition CALDER Fluid Modernity is the first of four exhibitions that offer a re-reading of selected works from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje.
Curator: Nada Prlja
Artists: Robert Adams, Ay-O, Bob Bonies, Alexander Calder, Nicola Carrino, Dorit Chrysler, Ángel Duarte, Herbert Feurlicht, Yvonne Kracht, Borko Lazeski, Géza Perneczky, Bridget Riley, Zsuzsa Szenes, Miroslav Šutej, Žaneta Vangeli and ictor Vasarely, with works from the collection of MoCA–Skopje
Special guest artist: Dorit Chrysler with the sound piece “Calder Plays the Theremin.”
Our contemporary society, marked by rapid change, uncertainty, and instability in social, cultural, and economic domains, is often interpreted through the prism of “liquid (fluid) modernity.” (1) The term fluid highlights how social institutions—such as the family, work, and other structures—are becoming increasingly malleable (flexible working hours, less coherent family relationships, etc.). In this context of rapid change and instability, a question arises concerning the role and interpretation of twentieth-century art collections, such as that of the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje, which encompasses over 5,300 works, predominantly reflecting the modernist heritage from 1945 to 1989.
How do contemporary generations, shaped by fluid modernity, approach twentieth-century artworks, and how do they interpret them? Which concepts, ideas, and, in turn, artworks truly resonate with present-day perspectives?
By exploring the still-present magnetism and appeal of the reductive approach in abstraction, (geometric abstraction and Op Art), conceptual art, and other non-figurative art, this exhibition serves as an open invitation to view and interpret selected works from MoCA-Skopje’s twentieth-century collection through the lens of fluid modernity.
Calder / Chrysler
In 1964, Boris Petkovski, MoCA-Skopje’s inaugural director, visited Alexander Calder’s studio in France to select an artwork for the Museum’s collection. Among the exhibited pieces, Red Polygon (1961) immediately caught Petkovski’s attention. Presented here, in this exhibition, the piece does not merely serve as a historical artefact, but also as an exploration of fundamental artistic communication, prompting questions about levitation, motion, luminosity, and geometry. While small metal components within the sculpture’s structure create their own distinct kinetic patterns, the Red Polygon thus embodies an ethos of fluidity in both its form and its meaning.
Accompanying Calder’s sculpture is Dorit Chrysler’s sound piece Calder Plays Theremin. Chrysler’s primary instrument, the theremin, was activated by the movements of Calder’s mobile, with the resulting sound serving as the foundation for the audio work. Together, these pieces occupy a central position in the exhibition, extending modernist concepts into contemporary practice. The interaction between the works not only pays homage to Calder’s lasting influence, but also invites visitors—through Chrysler’s sound piece—to reflect on the ongoing dialogue between modernism and the fluid, more playful, yet simultaneously unstable nature of our time.
Ay-O / Vangeli
Аy-O, Perneczky, Szenes and Vangeli practices are directly related to conceptual art and Fluxus, the presence of their works within this exhibition invites viewers to explore how those modernist movements can be reread from a contemporary perspective. Revisiting Marcel Duchamp’s radical proposition from the early twentieth century—that the meaning of an artwork should deliberately remain enigmatic—this segment, balancing between the visual aspect, the titles of the works, and even the artists’ names (Ay-O), explores how the dissolution of fixed interpretations in conceptual art empowers both the artist and the viewer to continually redefine the work’s significance and interpretation. In this regard, Žaneta Vangeli’s piece Autoreferential Plastic or Chao refuses to conform to a single, unambiguously defined narrative, allowing it to remain in perpetual flux— a condition that resonates with the ongoing need to reassess values and identities from the position of fluid modernity.
From Calder’s “geometry” in motion to the unpredictable explorations of Vangeli and Ay-O, the exhibition affirms that the legacy of the twentieth century remains vital precisely because it paves the way for the fluid, the mutable, and the elusive.
. . .
Footnotes:
1. Zygmunt Bauman, a renowned sociologist and philosopher, developed the concept of “liquid modernity” to describe the instability and constant change in contemporary society.
2. The term “mobile”, a play on words in French meaning both “movement” and “motive”, was coined by Marcel Duchamp to describe Alexander Calder’s abstract sculptures.
. . .
Media relations: Angelika Apsis; Conservation: Jadranka Milčovska; Coordination of artwork selection from the MoCA Skopje collection: Iva Petrova Dimovski, Blagoja Varoshanec, and Vladimir Janchevski; Technical preparation: Ivančo Velkov, Jordan Arsovski, and Toislav Karevski. MoCA–Skopje expresses its gratitude to the students from NOVA International Schools, who assisted with the installation of this exhibition, and to the Austrian Embassy in Skopje for their ssupport of Dorit Chrysler’s work.
The exhibition Forms that Fly, International Artists in French Collections, which will be open on 08.04.2025 at 8 pm is the second of the exhibitions planned for 2025 that enable the re – reading of selected works from the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje.
The Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje and the Faculty of Fine Arts, UKIM – Skopje, invite you to the “45 Years” exhibition. The exhibition will feature a selection of 45 works, from 45 authors, from the MoCA collection and works owned by artists – FFA teachers (since its founding to date), emphasizing the course of artistic expressions and practices in the last four and a half decades. The exhibition will be accompanied by documentary articles in the history and activities of the FFA in order to valorize the inheritance of the faculty, but also to open new perspectives for its future.
Exhibition of works from the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje collection and works by contemporary artists
November 28, 2024 – March 30, 2025
Contemporary artists: Inas Halabi (Palestine/Netherlands), Syowia Kyambi (Kenya/Germany) Ivana Sidjimovska (North Macedonia/Germany) Ala Younis (Kuwait/Jordan) and Carla Zaccagnini (Brazil/Sweden).
Graphic design and artistic intervention – Iliana Petrushevska
Exhibition design – Jovan Ivanovski, Ana Ivanovska, architects
MoCA-Skopje curatorial team: Ivana Vaseva, Blagoja Varoshanec, Sofia Grigoriadou, Iva Dimovski, Vladimir Janchevski, Nada Prlja
Concept collaborator – Tihomir Topuzovski
Conservators – Ljupcho Iljovski and Jadranka Milchovska
The exhibition is part of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje.
The exhibition Broken Time. And the World is Made Again by What it Forgets is a representative selection of works from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje, some of which have rarely or never been exhibited. Most of the exhibited works are by artists originating from what has been understood as the “peripheries” of the world from the perspective of a Eurocentric “geopolitics of knowledge,” as well as works by contemporary artists connected to those regions. This selection attempts to locate different stories, often excluded from the dominant narratives, but nevertheless possessing great emancipatory power.
Broken Time, responding to the task of inheritance, opens up space for works of art, stories, and ghosts that have not been equally exhibited, imagining possible future readings of the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje, which will inevitably be haunted by the past.
The general idea of the exhibition is to reexamine historical and critical themes such as colonial history and neocolonialism, feminism, hegemonic exploitation, the hybridity of cultural formations and transformations and the corresponding resistances and struggles, as well as the complex realities of countries (and groups) that are conceptualized as “peripheral.” The exhibition consists of works from the MoCA-Skopje collection that originate from the Global South—bearing in mind that it is a heterogeneous and deterritorialized category—or those that do not participate in the global market from a hegemonic position. The exhibited works have been archived under a national umbrella, originating from Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Morocco, Mexico, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, South Africa, Venezuela among others. Works by artists from these countries but active elsewhere are also included. They are put in dialogue, on the one hand, with works from the countries of the former Yugoslavia (North Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro) as heirs to the Non-Aligned Movement politics and its legacy, that are especially active in the realm of culture. On the other hand, the exhibited works are in dialogue with works by contemporary artists who critically question local and global hegemonies. Some of the works of the MoCA-Skopje collection that are part of the exhibition are by the renowned artists Maria Bonomi, Roberto Matta, Aída Carballo, Félix Beltrán, but as well as by Remo Bianchedi, Roberto Valcárcel, Samson Flexor, Fayga Ostrower, Anésia Pacheco e Chaves, Gerty Saruê, Peter Clarke, Max Aruquipa Chambi, Maria Auxiliadora Silva and others.
The works by the invited contemporary artists (Younis, Halabi, Kyambi, Zaccagnini and Sidzimovska) that have been selected for this exhibition are not meant to be experienced isolated, but offer the opportunity for ongoing dialogues among them and with the exhibited works from the collection of the MoCA-Skopje. Postcoloniality, political action and artistic forms of resistance, women’s bodies, perspectives and production, environmental destruction and colonial extraction, haunted colonial and modern narratives, modernist thought and architecture, forms of solidarity and deconstructions of the national, are some of the themes that the artists address. These themes are not exclusive, as more than one can be traced in each work.
Bringing the works of the collection in relation with works by contemporary artists creates a potential framework for contextual and critical stories of postcolonial solidarity, transformative emancipation and collaboration. It is also an attempt to potentially establish a different representative anti-hegemonic identity for the museum. Undoubtedly, the MoCA-Skopje collection, positioned this way, can be employed to reexamine past exhibitions, as well as knowledge about (epistemology of) the collection itself, thus revocating the power (politics) that it has represented.
Artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Beirut Urban Lab, Centre for Spatial Technologies, Forensic Architecture, Kumjana Novakova, YoHa and Matthew Fuller.
Disastrously, but with deliberation, war is increasing today. How are we to make sense of it? War comes to us and takes place through technologies of sensing and action. As well as operating as destruction, war happens through the senses and on the senses. Sensory technologies influence and mediate the ways we experience, know, interpret, classify, and inhabit the world, as well as the traces we leave behind.
‘War on the Senses / War of the Senses’ registers how aesthetics is fundamental to war. The senses become a key site through which war is pursued and also become its targets. Machine sensing, as much as human perception, is involved. We see this in the amount of data circulating online as well as its speed and distribution. This sheer mass transforms sensation and experience; something further intensified through information warfare and campaigns of mis- and dis- information, as well as the automation of warfare itself. These developments redistribute articulations of crises fueled by military conflicts and form part of the theatre of war whilst also being part of the everyday news agenda.
This exhibition focuses on relationships between contemporary digital technologies and the production, distribution, interpretation, and use of images and evidence of war in order to explore the nexus of aesthetics and violence. The exhibition highlights six exemplary projects working on the investigation and analysis of such conditions. Each work may suggest ways of understanding this condition and even reworking it by calls for justice and the forming of evidence.
Artist Biographies:
Lawrence Abu Hamdan is an independent sonic investigator or ‘Private Ear’. His investigations focus on sound and linguistics and have been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and as advocacy for organisations such as Amnesty International and Defence for Children International. Abu Hamdan received his PhD in 2017 from Goldsmiths College University of London and was a joint winner of the Turner Prize in 2019.
Beirut Urban Lab is an interdisciplinary space at the American University of Beirut. The Lab produces research on urbanization to document and understand transformation processes in Beirut, Lebanon, the region, and cities more broadly. Strongly committed to visual scholarship, they have created geographic databases, interactive platforms, and multiple mappings of urban systems and phenomena over several years, with the ultimate aim of exploring different strategies and imagining alternative models of recovery.
The Centre for Spatial Technologies is a cross-disciplinary research practice, specialising in spatial analysis, visualisation, and modelling based in Kyiv. They have documented and analysed many of the acts of violence taking place in Ukraine.
Forensic Architecture is a research agency based in London that since 2010 has reworked the tools of architecture and art to establish new forms of human rights investigation. Their work has been used as evidence in courts internationally and been shown in leading art institutions worldwide.
Kumjana Novakova is a research-based filmmaker, working also as film-curator and lecturer in cinema and audiovisual methodologies. She is a co-founder of the Pravo Ljudski Film Festival in Sarajevo, and acts as its chief curator. As an author, her research lays between cinema and contemporary video art, researching relationships related to power, war, memories and resistance. Currently Kumjana lives between Sarajevo and Skopje.
YoHa, (Matsuko Yokoji and Graham Harwood) are an artist couple working in the south of England. They have often worked on the ways database technologies produce different kinds of social conditions. For this project, and some others, they worked with Matthew Fuller, co-curator of this exhibition, to develop an approach to the dataset. Matthew Fuller is a cultural theorist who works on art, science, politics and aesthetics. He is Professor of Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Curators: Matthew Fuller and Tihomir Topuzovski
Graphic design: Denis Saraginovski
Exhibition design: Jovan Ivanovski
Curators of the exhibition:
Vladimir Janchevski / Blagoja Varoshanec / Iva Petrova Dimovski
The exhibition entitled Findings: Works from the Spanish Collection in the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje marks 30 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Spain and North Macedonia. The exhibition is the result of the cooperation of the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje and the Embassy of Spain in the Republic of North Macedonia and is part of the celebration of the National Day of Spain on October 12.
After the catastrophic earthquake that shook the city of Skopje in 1963 and the establishment of the Museum of Contemporary Art-Skopje in 1964, the contribution of Spanish artists is also notable, which over the years has resulted in a remarkable collection of donations through direct contacts. The collection has been further expanded, and artists from Spain are also included in some of the contemporary exhibitions.[1↓]
The MoCA-Skopje collection holds a total of over 5300 works, among which the Spanish collection has a significant impact with 42 works by 19 artists, such as Ángel Duarte, Manolo Millares, Mil Lubroth, Rafael Canogar and others, as well as 8 works by 4 artists of Spanish origin who lived and worked abroad and are included in other collections such as the French and the Brazilian: Doroteo Arnáiz, Joan Rabascal, Isabel Pons and of course Pablo Picasso. Donor artists are the bearers of a creative continuity throughout the 20th century.
Although it is a smaller collection compared to others, the works from the Spanish Collection qualitatively represent an essential part of the MoCA-Skopje collection, as a representative overview of the achievements in art in the 1960s and 1970s, embedded in the basic concept on which the Museum is based. This is also confirmed by the fact that works by Spanish artists were regularly exhibited in Museum’s permanent exhibitions (1970,[2↓] 1982, 1991, 2014), within the exhibitions of Donated Works, as well as within the exhibitions of a selection of works from the Graphic Collection (1972, 1983, 1988, 1991).
During the decades long communication between the two countries, several collaborations in the field of fine arts have been achieved. Other important guest exhibitions have been held in MoCA-Skopje, among which the exhibition of the Spanish Informel in 1983,[3↓] stands out for its importance, being an event that caused great interest and opened a debate regarding the dominant artistic discourse.[4↓] Works by Spanish artists were also included in the most important guest exhibitions such as the recent ones at the Kunsthalle Vienna (10 April 2023 – 28 January 2024),[5↓] and the National Gallery in Prague (21 March – 29 September 2024),[6↓] which include works by Picasso and Rabascal.
Until now, the Spanish collection has not been separately presented, and this is the first more extensive separate overview, through an exhibition and the publication of a publication that includes the authors from the Spanish collection, as well as the authors of Spanish origin. We believe that their presentation is particularly important in today’s moment, in order to highlight the openness and aspiration of MoCA-Skopje for the promotion of international cooperation.
The exhibition titled Findings presents a selection of paintings, graphics, photographs, tapestries and mosaics, created in the period from 1937 until 2006, by several generations of Spanish artists who lived and created in and outside of Spain. A total of 39 works by 26 artists are presented, including 27 works by 19 artists from the Spanish Collection of MoCA-Skopje (R. Canogar, M. Millares, Lisa Rechsteiner, Luis Ortega, Gérard Lomen, Jose Luis Galicia, etc.), as well as 6 works by 4 artists of Spanish origin or born in Spain (Isabel Pons, J. Rabascal). In addition, the exhibition presents 6 works by 3 artists inspired by Spain (Albert Soulilou from France, Bruno Talpo from Italy and Ivo Veljanov from Macedonia). The exhibition is complemented by a selection of documents, catalogs and photographs from the MoCA-Skopje archive, which shed light on the context in which the MoCA Collection was created and document the Spanish contribution to this collection.
Through the presented works of important authors who are part of the world’s artistic heritage, this exhibition also imposes the basic intention of highlighting universal values and updating the need for further complementing the collection with works by authors open to modernity through an innovative and critical approach to art. This exhibition, which opens on the day when the National Day of Spain is celebrated, in the year that marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of MoCA-Skopje, is a reminder of world solidarity – on which the Museum is based – and the importance of international cooperation, which is the basis for coping with the common challenges of our time.
Exhibition Coordinator
Juliја Manojlоska
Conservation Team
Jadranka Milčоvska, Ljupčo Ilјovski
Visual Identity
Nada Prlja Serafimovski
The exhibition and the catalogue are realised with the financial support by the Embassy of Spain in Skopje.
[1] Such as Daniel García Andújar’s participation in the exhibition All That We Have in Common, MoCA-Skopje, December 2019, curated by Mira Gakjina and Jovanka Popova.
[2] Boris Petkovski, Exhibited paintings and sculptures from the MoCA collection. Publication from the perma-nent exhibition opened in the new building on November 13, 1970.
[3] Informel in Contemporary Spanish Painting, MoCA-Skopje, May-June 1983. Organizer of the exhibition: Victoria Vaseva Dimeska. Text: Ceferino Moreno.
[4] Vladimir Georgievski, Abstraction in art: Who needs the Spanish Informel?, Commentary (on the occasion of the exhibition Informel in Contemporary Spanish Painting, MoCA Skopje, May – June 1983) Published in Nova Makedonija, Skopje 04.06.1983; Untitled – Commentary from the column Cultural Life on the occasion of the debate between Vladimir Georgievski and the Professional Collegium of the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje, published in Nova Makedonija, Skopje, 11.06.1983.
[5] No Feeling is Final: Skopje Solidarity Collection, MoCA Skopje, Kunsthalle Vienna 10/04/2023-28/01/2024. Exhibition curated by WHW, in collaboration with MoCA-Skopje.
[6] No Feeling is Final: Skopje Solidarity Collection, MoCA Skopje, National Gallery of Prague 21/03/2024-29/09/2024. Exhibition curated by WHW and Rado Isztok in collaboration with MoCA-Skopje.
