NPP: April 10 – 19, 2007
Exhibition NMP Skopska Street
The exhibition is realized in partnership with: NMP, Line [I+M] initiative and movement, press to exit project space and Open Graphic Art Studio – Museum of the City of Skopje.
Skopska Street is initiated by the curator Elena Veljanovska. In the realization of the curatorial concept were involved: Elena Veljanovska and Antonio Dimitrov (Line [I+M] initiative and movement), Hristina Ivanoska and Yane Calovski (press to exit project space), and Atanas Botev (Open Graphic Art Studio – Museum of the City of Skopje).
The exhibition was financially supported by the artists and press to exit project space.
Skopska Street, a former main artery of the city of Skopje (today only some 100-odd meters long) is the leitmotif of the exhibition. In a photograph by Ana Jakimska, an NMP member, we can see the remains of that old part of town blending together with a new, urban, post-earthquake architecture. It cuts the city in two and creates a new urban structure, leaving an occasional trace of the old town. The show attempts to present a new group of artists and mark the changes occurring in the city today, which some day are to be part of a past urban culture.
The traces that the artists leave behind, working in public spaces, change the city’s countenance and the visual culture of its passers-by. Utilizing these spaces as their own, free of the rules and limitations of galleries, they make up their own protocol and their own development line. Thus, parallel galleries are created, with no lesser merits than spaces intended to promote current artistic outcomes. The city, in fact, transforms into an open gallery. Authors and critics alike still feel ambivalent towards this sort of artistic creation. Experience, however, has shown that the process is inevitable when establishing new cultural phenomena. The NMP authors have been, with different approaches, for three years leaving their marks all over real and virtual Skopje, precisely in such public areas. Group endeavours are more common to the younger generations, as alternatives to the already established social and aesthetic norms and criteria. They have proved to be most inspirational and crucial in introducing new aesthetic values. The demand for organizing like-minded individuals in groups must need result in change. NMP is still a fairly new group, so its future is still uncertain. At this time, however, its modus operandi is to absorb a number of individual energies and forms of expression. NMP is a fusion of tendencies of a generation still building on its visual and audio articulation. The idea for this particular show originated from the need for timely follow-up and archiving of such changes, and the support aims to present this line of work to a larger audience.
The common ground is precisely the exhibition, which is to take place on two different locations on the same day. The locations chosen have different positioning within the city itself. The first one, the press to exit project space, directly in passers’ faces in the most dynamic part of town, and the second, the Open Graphic Studio – the Museum of the City of Skopje, hidden behind the symbol of the old Skopje, envelop the busiest core of the city. Their respective positions and physical features impose different atmospheres, in which authors of diverse sensibilities are to be presented. They represent the two faces of the city, the real and the imaginary, and fuse together audio and visual experiences on both locations.
Elena Veljanovska
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