Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska
All Things Flowing
Spatial installation with mural, metal and terracotta sculptures, textile paint on linen, and oil on canvas; 16 x 6 x 3m.
20.4.2023–28.1.2024
Commissioned for No Feeling Is Final. The Skopje Solidarity Collection, Kunsthalle Wien, curated by WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović). Photo: www.kunst-dokumentation.com
22.03.2024–29.09.2024 Travelled to the National Gallery Prague, Trade Fair Palace, Prague, curated by What, How & for Whom / WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović) and Rado Ištok. Photo: Adéla Kremplová, National Gallery Prague.
All Things Flowing features three main segments: a 9-piece motorised sculpture inspired by Oskar and Zofia Hansen's "Open Form" theory, a large-scale mural with overlapping layers of the "Archetype Open Form" typography, and a 10-meter-long folded linen painting accommodating a series of terracotta sculptures. It is conceptualised as a visual and discursive juxtaposition of lesser-known sculptures and paintings by Aneta Svetieva and Dushan Perchinkov from Skopje's Museum of Contemporary Art solidarity collection we have selected and curated in dialogue with our practice.
This spatial installation, titled All Things Flowing, proposes another look at the history of Skopje’s Museum of Contemporary Art. In 1966, 89 architectural projects were submitted to the open call for building the new museum. Among them, one stood apart – the proposal by Polish architect Oskar Hansen, known for his theory of the “Open Form”.
The architect imagined a transformable exhibition space, able to fold entirely and then unfold in various combinations, with hexagonal elements lifted by hydraulic-powered rotating telescopes. Oskar Hansen imagined the gallery would rise and unfurl toward the sky whenever a new exhibition opened, and otherwise be hidden below ground.
This ambitious proposal formed the initial template for the motorised sculptural installation, and the large-scale mural of specially devised typography engaged in dialogue with works from the MoCA Skopje collection by two Macedonian artists: the painter Dushan Perchinkov, and the sculptor Aneta Svetieva. Perchinkov’s paintings invoke an early modernist tradition of abstract geometric patterns, operating outside the Western canon of modern art, while Svetieva’s unrefined and expressive terracotta sculptures speak of an almost anthropological understanding of Skopje’s history.
All elements in the installation recreate a landscape that has been destroyed and reborn over and over again. Combining Oskar Hansen’s vision of the museum with these two Macedonian artists from the collection, we purposefully look toward a possible retelling of the local history of art, reimagining the story of the museum, and envisioning a present bursting with potential.
Installation view:
Front left: Yane Calovski, System (inspired by Process and Art: Competition Entry, from Oskar Hansen's MoMA: The Museum That Could Not Be), 2023, consists of 8 individual sculptures, 3 moving up and down, a floor-based installation with 17 metal elements and 3 linear actuators.
On the wall: Hristina Ivanoska, Archetype Open Form: All, All, All Things Flowing!, 2023, Wallpainting, mural with pigment and graphite.
On the wall from left to right: Paintings by Dushan Perchinkov: The Sea (1963), Remnants from a Summer Night (1967), and Blooming Island (1967).
Front right: Yane Calovski & Hristina lvanoska, Spell Bound (after the poem "Spell Bound" by Todor Chalovski), 2023, floor-based installation with pigment, graphite on linen, textile, metal. Small painting on the wall by Dushan Perchinkov: Motive from a Suburb III (1971). Terracotta sculptures by Aneta Svetieva: Massinger (Herald) (1970), Untitled, from the series River (1984), Bathing Woman, from the series River I (1985), Bathing Woman (Pigeon) (1987), and At the Beauty and the Beast (1993).