Mirror by Gjorgje Jovanovik
Reception for the Artist on Saturday, July 20th from 6 to 8 pm
“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. “All media are extensions of some human faculty—psychic or physical. They effect four simultaneous processes: the medium can enhances a human function, retrieve some lost practices, make other practices obsolete, and transform itself into a new function.” (Marshall McLuhan).
The project entitled “Mirror” starts from this famous thesis of the Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan, reflecting the omnipresent dilemma about the truthfulness of the media content.
The project consists works/drawings on newspaper pages, used by Jovanovik as a background on which to draw and intervene with drawings and messages, changing the context and attempting a creation of layers of new different meanings and a reality different than that presented or intended on the newspaper pages. He combines these drawings with sketched and collaged objects dedicated to worldwide stories selected about fake news, as well as with examples of art projects where fake news were used as artistic strategy.
In the world of media and social networks, we are bombarded with more and more disinformation and fake news. The latest information and communication technologies have only facilitated and accelerated the sharing of such information and the consequences are far-reaching. For these reasons, the World Health Organization has used the portmanteau ‘infodemic’ to describe this mass sharing of fake news.
„Fake news” and disinformation that are completely or partially incorrect are purposefully disseminated to influence certain political decisions or to simply get as many clicks as possible on the social networks. Fake news are spreading with great speed becoming one of the greatest problems worldwide, in the digital world especially. The users can no longer recognize credible information. The following question arises: why are ‘fake news’ so successful? Psychologists might be able to offer one possible answer. They explain that people want to know the reasons behind the world events and when they receive wrongful information that offers simple explanations for some events, they accept it as factual, and when they come across a different explanation (which might be the correct one), they are uncomfortable and lose their sense of certainty. In such cases, they experience this new information as a threat to their understanding of the event and are motivated to endorse the explanation they have received first.
In his project, Jovanovik problematizes the concept and phenomenon of media communication in our contemporary space and time, attempting in his works to articulate a call for a more critical attitude towards all that media serve as reality or a fact. One’s media literacy depends on one’s awareness about one’s real position within the media landscape, which expands rapidly, and one’s readiness to analyze the dramatic changes within the public sphere itself.
Gjorgje Jovanovik (Skopje, 1980) Graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, St. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje in 2003. In his recent work, the question of the integration and disintegration of the contemporary man has been his preoccupation. He re-examine interpersonal communication in the context of the general situation of redefining universal values, man-society relations, and consumerism as a key factor of modern life style, politics as a factor of disintegration of the cities, states, and families… Also, the element of self-reference is present – a re- examination of the self in inner or extensive contexts of decaying old, and creating new values. Using no limits in media he has worked on installations, performances, objects, videos, collages, and paintings in order to achieve a transformation of the artistic dimensions of his individual expression by following up the fluidity of the contemporary context.
Selected solo exhibitions: Bitter Sugar, Museum of Contemporary Art, (Skopje, 2023), The Beheaded, Prima Center Berlin, (Berlin Germany,2020), Chocolate Drops, Gallery Hoast, (Vienna, Austria, 2018), Radio Free Skopje, internet radio project, CAC Gallery, (Skopje, 2015), Invention for You Wonderful People!, Museum of Contemporary Art, (Skopje, 2014), The Confession of a Cake Monster, Studio Golo brdo, (Rovinj, Croatia, 2013), Fragmented Archive of the Artist from the Country in Transition, MC Gallery, (New York, USA, 2010), It’s Complicated, Gallery Centrum, (Graz, Austria, 2010), An Off-Day for Mister Euzebio, Open graphic studio – Museum of the City of Skopje (Skopje, 2008), The Walk of Mister Chenk Through the Divided Continent, (Skopje, 2005) Cultural Center Tochka and MKC, ctr.
Selected performances: There is no money for which I will not work,performed in the frames of the group exhibition All That We have in Common at the Museum of Contemporary Art, ( Skopje, 2018), The Confession of a Cake Monster performed in New York, Vienna, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Prishtina, Rovinj and Skopje (2008-2013), The Recession of the New Year’s Eve, Cultural Center Tochka, (Skopje, 2008), Performances with the group Svirachinja, (2006-2014), Sales-man of Male Tear, City square “Macedonia“, (Skopje, 2006), The Depression of the New Year’s Eve, “Ramstore” Shopping Mall (Skopje, 2005), ctr.
Selected site-specific installations: Hip hip hooray, (Baden Baden, Germany,2014) – project in public space, Home Party, (Skopje, 2011) – project in public space, For Bitola with love, space in front of the officers’ house, (Bitola, 2012) – project in public space, The Phantoms of Skopje, City square “Macedonia”, monument of Mother Teresa, Tavern “Jole”, Cultural center Tochka, str. “Ilindenska” – building no.9, (Skopje, 2007) – site specific installation, Whistling Buildings, “Goce Delcev” printing house, plateau of the First private bank, “Tipo” shopping mall, (Skopje, 2007) ) – site specific installation, ctr.
Selected videos: Five Stories About Freedom, 15’, (2020), Nomadic Identities, 25’, Our Democracy, 2’ 40’’ ,They All Wait for Me to Pay, 12’ 23”, (2013), Poin Zero , 3’ 44”, (2010), Sviracus, 6′ 49 ”, (2010), ctr.
He participated in numerous group exhibitions in the country and abroad, including: Mule variations, Cultural Center of Republic of N.Macedonia, (Istanbul, Türkiye, 2024), Precarity Has A Chance: Public Spaces In Movement (toward), Structura Gallery, (Sofia, Bulgaria, 2023), Manifesta 14, (Prishtina, Kosovo 2023), Once again, that would be too much: Mediation of (im)possibilities, Pogon, (Zagreb, Croatia, 2022), Bigger than Myself Heroic Voices from ex-Yugoslavia, MAXXI- Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, (Rome, Italy, 2021), Panic Room,Museum of Contemporary Art, (Skopje, 2020), THE THIRD SPACE, Art Pavilion, (Zagreb, Croatia), Gilbert Gaillard and the Chapelle de l’ancien Hôpital, (Clermont-Ferrand, France 2019), All That We have in Common, Museum of Contemporary Art (Skopje, 2019), All That We have in Common, MOMus (Thessaloniki , Greece, 2019), Guerilla of Enlightenment, THEY SHOULDN´T BE ABLE TO PRETEND THEY DIDN´T KNOW ANYTHING , Rotor gallery, (Graz, Austria 2018), PONOVO UPOTREBITI: PAST AS COSTUME OR INSPIRATION, Zacheta project space, (Warsaw, Poland, 2017), Razoblicavanje, CZKD , (Belgrade, Serbia, 2015), Where (Not) to Go, MC Gallery, (New York, USA, 2015), Nationless, MOMus, (Thessaloniki , Greece, 2014), Balkon zum Balkan, Stadlishe kunsthaus (Baden Baden, Germany, 2014), The Art of Failure: Affective foreigners, National Gallery of Macedonia – Multimedia Centre Mala Stanica (Skopje, 2014), The horses have short legs, Remont Gallery, (Belgrade, Serbia, 2014), Transfigurations, Czech Centre, (Prague, Czech Republic, 2014), Balkan?, Oslo 10 ( Projektarium IAAB), (Basel, Switzerland, 2013), Participation-Participatory Practices as Artistic Strategy, Tirana Express, (Tirana, Albania, 2013), 7th Francophone Meetings, (Nice, France 2013), 10th Biennale of Young Artists, , Museum of Contemporary Art, (Skopje, 2013), Ex-Ordinary, Collegium artisticum and U10 Gallery, (Sarajevo, BIH and Belgrade, Serbia, 2013), 800 revolutions per minute,Initiative Kooperacija, (Skopje, 2012), Re-locate , Rumeli Han, (parallel event of the 12th Istanbul Biennial (Istanbul, Turkey, 2011), Shelter, Shelter Island, (Hamptons, USA, 2011), Fragments – Macedonian Art 1991-2011, Museum of Contemporary Art, (Skopje, 2011), 4 Tuned Cities, National Gallery of Macedonia – Multimedia Centre Mala Stanica, (Skopje, 2010), 255.804 km2, Hilger Brot Kunsthalle, (Vienna, Austria, 2010), 255.804 km2, Mestna Galerija , (Ljubljana , Slovenia, 2010), 4th Performance festival, Mahmud Moktarh Cultural Center, (Cairo, Egypt, 2010), Bring your art, X Initiative- Dia Chelsea (New York, USA, 2010), “Denes” Young Visual Artist Award, Museum of the City of Skopje (Skopje 2009), Alternative film / video, “Memory”, International festival of new film and video, Cultural Center “Studentski Grad”, (Belgrade, Serbia, 2008), Tensions + Breaking Points – Pancevo Art Salon.08, Contemporary Art Gallery, (Pancevo, Serbia, 2008), XIII Biennale of young artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, (Bari, Italy, 2008), Cataclysm and Creativity: Art in an Age of Uncertainty , Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje and Weil gallery, Corpus Christi, USA ( 2007), Speak Up, Myymala 2 Gallery, (Helsinki, Finland, 2005), Real Presence Floating Sites, collateral event of the 51 Venice Biennale, (Venice, Italy, 2005), ctr.
He has participated on several residency programs: IAAB-Basel ,TICA- Tirana Institute for Contemporary Art,( 2013) Cité internationale des Arts, Paris, France, (2012) Watermill Centre, Long Island, New York and Apartment project, Istanbul, Turkey,( 2011) ISCP (International Studio & Curatorial Program), New York and in Graz, Austria as a fellow of the program of the Cultural City Network (2010).
For his practice, he has been awarded with the first prize for the best conceptual solutions for the project “Surrogates” organized by the Templum and Cultural Center Tochka – Skopje in 2004 , the Award for young visual artist Denes in 2009, the award for video at the international festival Alternative Film / Video in Belgrade in 2009, special award at the Akto Festival in Bitola, Macedonia in 2012 and the award of the 10 Biennial of Young Artist organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, Macedonia in 2013.
