Paragraphie is the outcome of a dialogue between three artists who, over several months, conceived and generated knowledge as an attempt to position the artistic practice in the current age or rather, to understand what the position of the artistic practice today is and can be. The zine works as an atlas of compiled knowledge that aims to emphasise issues regarding the artistic practice that have been and still are relevant. Paragraphie is to be shared and discussed for further circulation and continuation of the issues. The material used to make the zine is both original and found (Google searches, screenshots, scanned books, online interviews …).
Through the exploration and usage of past knowledge about art and what an artist is, the project seeks a way to liberate art according to the rules its creation should have followed in order to be accepted by society. Incorporated in the context of the contemporary situation resulting from the longstanding cultural and political repression that inevitably led to the degradation of art and artistic values, the project reassesses the result itself and all the parallels to that point. It uses the form of a fanzine, combining it with an art book, web atlas, references and graphs as a source, and at the same time shows itself as a presentation from research to educational.
More specifically, this is a literal and less literal recording/mapping of relations in art, as well as art with society and man. Among other things, it speaks about the institutions that man creates and maintains in power constructs more powerful than himself. The concept begins with the same institutionalism of art with the question of who decides whether someone is an artist (research part); from here the question is sought through the etymology of the words for describing the artist and the art, it records them, assembles them into the form of an atlas, compares them with themselves and retreads parallels for refinement (investigative-experimental part). Finally, these results are entered with references as a comment by the artists in a collective artbook/fanzine called Paragraphie (materialization).
A day before the exhibition, on 14. 6. at 5 PM, Assemblage Atlas will hold a workshop titled re-Thinking Hierarchical Structures at the DobraVaga Gallery. Participation is free, apply at: lara.plavcak@kinosiska.si.
Assemblage Atlas is an art group of three young artists: Anastasia Pandilovska, Ana Jovanovska and Amir Karahasan, living in Amsterdam, Kumanovo and Skopje respectively. It was established during an art workshop called The Perfect Artist, organized by the AKTO Festival of Contemporary Art and the Faculty of things that can’t be learned (FRU) in May 2017. As a group sharing different personal art practices but similar opinions on a number of art and society topics, they had their first exhibition in Bitola, Macedonia, during the AKTO Festival, discussing and researching these relations.
Anastasia Pandilovska is an artist from Skopje with permanent residence in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy there in 2015. In 2016, she won the Eeckman Prize, a contemporary drawing award in Brussels. She has taken part in several exhibitions, including: Emptiness and the Infinite Space # nr01 (2017, Netherlands), Mémoires d’images récurrentes (2016, Belgium), Drawing in communal matter with Nam Chi Nguyễn (2016, Netherlands), For Spaces (2015, Finland). In January 2018, Pandilovska started a research project with the Lectorate Art & Public Space, which is focused on the importance of culture as commons when dealing with public space affected by political regimes and complex histories. Exploring the closeness with our environment, Pandilovska’s work is focused on the latent narratives of everyday life. Attracted by the things surrounding us, the way in which they appear in an instant, animated and active, she seeks ways to devise these moments and show their importance. Just to remind us that we may not have fully exhausted their meanings.
Ana Jovanovska was born in Kumanovo, Macedonia. She got her Master’s Degree in Art from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje (2016). Obtaining a scholarship, she attended École supérieure d’arts & médias de Caen/Cherbourg in France (2013–2014). She is a recipient of the Best Graphics Award Dragutin Avramovski-Gute (2013) and the Grand Prix at the VIII Youth Spring Salon from NGM-Mala Stanica (2015). She participated in the XI Biennial of Youth, NGM-Mala Stanica (2015), featured her work at Imago Mundi (2016) and was nominated for the Young Artist of the Year Award (2016). She has published the book Collection of False Memories (2013–2016), the zine Along the Traces for PrivatePrint (2017) and the zine “Paragraphie” with Assemblage Atlas for the AKTO Festival of Contemporary Art (2017). Her participative project Mirrors is still ongoing. She has participated in more than 80 group exhibitions in Macedonia and abroad.
Amir Karahasan is part of the Nama Kardel project with the artist Natasha Nedelkova. He graduated from the Department of Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje in 2014. He has participated in a number of group exhibitions and projects, including: What a Time to Be Alive (Spain, 2016), After YU, Imaginarium: Contemporary Video Art from Macedonia (Great Britain, 2016), the AKTO Festival of Contemporary Art (Macedonia, 2016), Transitional Notions in Decay, DRIMON Festival (Macedonia, 2016), etc.
Organisation: Kino Šiška.
