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LPE: May 07 – 31, 2007

Exhibition An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away by Atanas Botev

The exhibition aims at criticizing the anomaly of the public healthcare that may be the most serious problem of the country (unlike the other areas of the social life, the healthcare can not allow the improvisation – since every improvisation equals fatality (loss of life). Beside the fact I had more that once experienced those problems, that is why I was provoked to threat this issue.

The exhibition is conceived as a three dimensional video installation consisting of the following: a dirty hospital glass locker containing the Hippocratic oath displayed in low light (this is obviously the nearly homophone to the word hypocritical, pointing out the discrepancy between the Hippocratic oath and the disregard of the medical ethics); a panel with attached clips from the newspapers (stockpiled during these past three years) illustrating the everyday blunderings in the public healthcare (bribery, corruption, wrong diagnosis, bad hygienic conditions, irresponsibility, and as a consequence, the fatality); the video screening of clips taken from the local TV stations news, and representing bizarre accounts from the public health sector.

All this dire feeling is partly subdued by the reproduction of the famous painting of Magritte, Le Fils de l’homme upon which stands inscribed the above mentioned title:

“An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away”

This, actually, is an old English proverb which is not only a humorous remark about the interdependence of food and health, but also a ground for concluding that this may well be one of the possible solutions in avoiding the medical horror institutions an the “men in white”

Atanas Botev

 Atanas Botev (1973) graduated and completed his MA studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje. In 2006 he attended two artist-in-residence programs, in Cite Internatonale des Arts in Paris, and ISCP (international studio and curatorial programme) in New York. Besides the graphic arts, he is painting and doing comic books. He is the author of the storyboard for the film The Secret Book (together with Marjan Kamilovski). Botev is also active in the field of graphic design: poster for the Skopje Jazz Festival 2005, CD covers for the music albums by Alek Pejovski and Pikolomini, postal stamp – hundred years of FIFA, numerous illustrations for children’s magazines and book etc. He has won The Annual Reward at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje, the award 26th of July awarded by the Foundation Franck Hardcord Manning; the Annual Award for Young Visual Artist Denes / Today 2006; and the Award from the sponsors of 4th International Exhibition of Comics in Belgrade. He has six solo and many group exhibitions in the country and abroad.