Milchо Manchevski: There

“Milcho Mancevski’s artistic approach to creating images constantly pushes the boundaries and avoids conventions. In THERE, he takes us on a journey that is as much about the act of seeing as it is about the sensory experience of the place.” This is what the Irish artist and dean of the “Buren” College of Art, Conor McGrady, writes about the forthcoming exhibition of Manchevski’s photographs. The event will also be the promotion of a book with photos from the “There” exhibition, by the “Antolog” publishing house.

In the book and the exhibition, 88 color photographs, created over a period of ten years, have been selected. Curator of the exhibition, Bojana Janeva-Shemova, says: “The uniqueness of Manchevski’s artistic photography is in the visual language, which reaches everyone because of the universal emotions that radiate from the interaction of the characters, the placement of the elements that build the composition and the color that sometimes leaves you breathless. Visual power is present in all his works, suggested above all by the compositional structure to perfection brought in some works through a purified and calm symmetry, in others deliberately broken in order to convey a different feeling. No matter how unpretentious the sequences from ‘There’ are at first glance, upon deepening, they slowly reveal layers of thought-out ideas, deep feelings, and strong colors of life as a whole.”

“There” builds on and expands Manchevski’s previous oeuvre of photographic works, “Street” and “Five Drops of Dream”. “In these projects, the visual texture of urban life manifests itself through compositional and narrative play, and this dynamic and experimental approach to image-making shapes ‘There.’ Color is a key defining layer in these works. It breaks out of fields of urban gray, saturates the perspective of an image, or functions as a central element in a compositional collage. In There, color provides this visual anchoring and flows like a stream through these images. There he rejects the borders – geographical, formal, and others. As such, “There” can be anywhere, and ultimately is everywhere,” says McGrady in the foreword to the book.

The exhibition is supported by the Ministry of Culture of R. S. Macedonia as part of the Annual Program for 2020.

With “There”, Mancevski promotes the new hashtag #никропнифотошоп (#nocropnophotoshop) with which he points out that his photographic works are neither cropped nor manipulated in post-production. They are moments of everyday street life aestheticized in the moment of capture. At the opening of the exhibition, the photo book “There” by the publishing house “Antolog” will be promoted.