ABOUT THE WORK

Crucifixion

Tempera on canvas, 2021

In Crucifixion, the traditional Christian image is stripped of its narrative elaboration and reduced to an austere, almost spectral presence. The figure of Christ emerges from a dense field of muted greys, its vertical axis becoming the structural and psychological centre of the composition. Rather than depicting the event through explicit drama, the work approaches the Crucifixion as an image of suspension—between suffering and transcendence, body and spirit, presence and disappearance.

The restrained palette and heavily worked surface lend the painting the character of an archaeological fragment, as though the image has survived through layers of time, erosion, and memory. Flecks of colour and traces within the ground interrupt the otherwise subdued surface, suggesting wounds, remnants, or fragments of an image that can never be entirely recovered. The almost dissolving contours of the body intensify this sense of impermanence.

Here, the Crucifixion becomes less an illustration of a biblical episode than a meditation on the enduring symbolic power of sacrifice. The elongated figure appears simultaneously corporeal and immaterial, while the surrounding emptiness transforms the cross into an axis between earthly suffering and the possibility of transcendence. Pijanmanov's treatment recalls the historical persistence of sacred imagery while placing it within a contemporary language of fragmentation, absence, and existential contemplation.

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Pijanmanov has simultaneously maintained an active role in the broader construction and preservation of Macedonian cultural memory. As an editor, curator, writer, and organiser, he has initiated and contributed to exhibitions and monographic projects devoted to Macedonian artists and regional art history. His curatorial work, including projects examining the artistic heritage of Strumica, positions his practice within a wider cultural continuum, connecting individual artistic production with the histories, institutions, and communities that sustain it.

His work therefore resists a singular definition. Pijanmanov is at once painter and storyteller, image-maker and researcher, scenographer and sculptor. Across these forms, however, a consistent sensibility emerges: an attraction toward the liminal states of human existence and toward the capacity of images to preserve what is otherwise destined to disappear.

In this sense, his oeuvre can be understood as an extended meditation on remembrance. Figures, landscapes, symbols, texts, and fragments of cultural history recur not as fixed monuments to the past, but as traces continually undergoing transformation. Pijanmanov's art occupies this space between disappearance and persistence—between the inherited image and its contemporary reawakening.

Nikola Pijanmanov

ARTWORK TITLE: "Crucifixion"
Year: 2021

Medium: Tempera on canvas, 6000 × 6000 px

Born in Strumica in 1981, Nikola Pijanmanov occupies a distinctive position within contemporary Macedonian art, developing a practice in which painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, theatre, literature, and the sacred converge. Educated at the Lazar Lichenoski School of Art in Skopje and subsequently at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, where he graduated in the class of Professor Rubens Korubin in 2005, Pijanmanov has, over the course of two decades, constructed an oeuvre defined by a persistent preoccupation with the human condition.

At the centre of his work lies the figure—not merely as an anatomical or representational subject, but as a vessel of memory, suffering, desire, mortality, and transcendence. His images frequently inhabit a threshold between the visible and the symbolic. Bodies emerge, dissolve, fragment, and endure; landscapes become psychological territories; and familiar religious and literary archetypes are transformed into meditations on existence. There is an unmistakable sense of the archaic within his visual language, yet it is never simply nostalgic. Rather, Pijanmanov approaches inherited imagery as a living vocabulary through which contemporary anxieties can be articulated.

This tension between inheritance and transformation is fundamental to his practice. His paintings and graphic works carry traces of Byzantine and Christian visual culture, the Macedonian artistic tradition, literary mythology, and the expressive possibilities of modern figuration. These references are not employed as historical quotation but as structures of memory—fragments through which questions of faith, death, identity, and the persistence of the human image are continually reconsidered.

Pijanmanov's artistic trajectory has unfolded through an extensive series of solo and group exhibitions in Macedonia and abroad. His projects have been presented in major cultural spaces in Skopje, Strumica, Veles, Prilep, Bitola, Ohrid, Belgrade, Paris, and New York. Particularly significant are his 2022 residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and his 2024 residency in New York, experiences that expanded an already international artistic practice while retaining a strong connection to the cultural and historical landscape from which his work originates.

His engagement with theatre constitutes another important dimension of his oeuvre. Working as a scenographer and visual artist, Pijanmanov has developed environments and visual concepts for productions drawing upon works by Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Byron, Strindberg, and other major literary figures. In these projects, painting ceases to function solely as an autonomous object and becomes part of a larger dramaturgical space—an image capable of shaping atmosphere, memory, and psychological tension.

The same expansive understanding of the image extends into book illustration, illuminated manuscripts, poster design, fresco painting, and monumental public sculpture. His interventions in public space—including murals and large-scale metal sculptures—demonstrate an interest in the relationship between the artwork and collective memory. Here, the private language of the studio is transferred into communal space, where the image becomes part of the cultural landscape itself.

An especially notable chapter of Pijanmanov's interdisciplinary practice is his collaboration with the Macedonian bands Mizar, Anastasia and Traga, for whom he has produced multiple album covers. Mizar occupies an exceptional place in the cultural history of Macedonian music, and their work has come to represent an important expression of the country's alternative and experimental musical heritage. Pijanmanov's album imagery for the band extends his longstanding engagement with symbolism, ritual, darkness, and transcendence into the realm of music, creating a visual counterpart to Mizar's distinctive sonic world. The collaboration demonstrates the permeability of his practice: the same concerns that animate his paintings—myth, spirituality, mortality, memory, and transformation—are capable of moving seamlessly between canvas, stage, printed page, and album sleeve.

ABOUT THE WORK

The God We Carry, 2026
Digital illustration, 6000 × 6000 px, 300 dpi

In The God We Carry, PALACE OF THE STRANGE transforms the human spine into a symbolic procession of gods, with each vertebral section taking the form of a distinct divine face. Drawing from religious iconography, ritual masks, and Southeast Asian folklore, the work presents the spine as both a physical structure and a metaphorical vessel for belief. The repetition of eyes, faces, and ornamental forms creates a sense of accumulated spiritual presence, suggesting that the gods, myths, and beliefs we inherit become part of our own structure. Through its vivid colour and symmetrical composition, the work explores the relationship between the body, faith, identity, and the unseen forces we carry within us.

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Through this fusion of Southeast Asian cultural references, contemporary popular imagery, and symbolic storytelling, PALACE OF THE STRANGE continues to construct a visual world where ancient beliefs are not preserved as relics of the past, but transformed into strange and contemporary forms.

PALACE OF THE STRANGE (POTS)

ARTWORK TITLE: "The God We Carry"
Year: 2026

Medium: Digital Illustration\Graphic Print, 6000 × 6000 px

PALACE OF THE STRANGE (POTS) is an independent Malaysian artist and illustrator based in Shanghai, China, whose practice is deeply rooted in folklore, mythology, religious imagery, and the darker narratives embedded within traditional cautionary tales.

Growing up within the culturally diverse environment of Southeast Asia and later living across different parts of Asia, POTS developed a visual language shaped by the region’s complex relationship between popular culture, spirituality, ritual, and folklore. These influences appear throughout the artist’s work, where traditional symbols and mythological references are reinterpreted through a contemporary and often unsettling visual vocabulary. Rather than treating folklore as something belonging solely to the past, POTS approaches it as a living cultural language—one capable of reflecting contemporary fears, desires, contradictions, and social anxieties.

Central to the practice is an interest in the moral structures found within traditional stories: the relationship between good and evil, desire and consequence, punishment and rebirth, and the belief that actions inevitably carry consequences. Animals, human figures, spirits, religious symbols, masks, and other archetypal forms are frequently brought together in unexpected combinations, creating images that appear simultaneously familiar and otherworldly.

The name “Palace of the Strange” refers to an imagined space where inherited beliefs and contemporary realities coexist. Within this space, ancient visual languages are fragmented, rearranged, and transformed into new symbolic narratives. The resulting works often operate like modern myths—visually seductive yet carrying an underlying sense of warning. Beauty and unease exist together, inviting the viewer to look beyond the surface of the image and consider what may be hidden beneath it.

POTS’s practice extends beyond standalone illustration, encompassing visual work for independent musicians and bands, VJ and live-performance projects, exhibitions, and works held in private collections. Across these different contexts, the artist maintains a distinctive approach in which folklore becomes a means of examining the human condition and the consequences of what we create, desire, consume, and destroy.

ABOUT THE WORK

In "Leten Den", Mirko Vujisić presents a contemplative portrait immersed in a luminous summer landscape. The figure’s introspective gaze contrasts with the radiant sky and richly textured surroundings, creating a quiet tension between inner reflection and the vitality of nature. Vujisić’s expressive handling of paint, particularly in the textured surface and warm, earthy tones, gives the portrait a tactile quality while evoking the atmosphere of a fleeting summer moment.

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He has held 23 solo exhibitions in North Macedonia and abroad, presenting prints, drawings, and paintings. He has participated in more than 80 group exhibitions of printmaking and drawing nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in Moscow; Kanagawa, Japan; Tempe, Arizona; Richmond, Virginia; Greensboro, Maryland; Australia; Belgrade; Podgorica; Sofia; Varna; Sarajevo; Cetinje; Split; Novi Sad; Malmö; New York; and Banská Bystrica, where he received a prestigious printmaking award.

Throughout his career, he has received numerous national and international recognitions and awards for his achievements in teaching, artistic creation, and exhibition activity.

Email: mirkovujisic@yahoo.com
Tel: +389 78 454 116

Mirko Vujisić

ARTWORK TITLE: "Leten Den (Summer Day)"
Year: 1992

Medium: Oil on canvas, 90 × 80 cm

Prof. M.A. Mirko Vujisić was born in 1957 in Macedonia (Yugoslavia).

He completed five years of study at the School of Applied Arts in Skopje, specializing in Graphic Arts, in 1977. In 1979, he graduated from the Pedagogical Academy. In 1984, he graduated as a member of the first generation of students at the Faculty of Fine Arts (FLU) in Skopje, Department of Graphic Arts, in the class of Prof. Dragutin Avramovski-Gute. In 1998, he obtained his Master's degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade under Prof. Nebojša Radojev.

In 1984, he received the FLU Award for the Best Academic Achievement in his major professional and artistic subject, Graphic Arts. In 1985, he received the Award for Best Student of the Generation at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. In 1989, he was awarded a Charter for Outstanding Academic Achievement between the two jubilees of 1949–1989, marking the 40th anniversary of the founding of the University.

His artistic practice encompasses printmaking, drawing, painting, and calligraphy. He is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje, where he teaches drawing, printmaking, and various printmaking techniques.

Alongside his teaching activities, Prof. Vujisić is actively involved in writing reviews and forewords, promoting exhibitions, and supporting and developing young artists through educational visual arts workshops both in North Macedonia and abroad.

Between 2004 and 2012, he visited the Centre for Visual Research – Academy in Belgrade seven times with groups of his students, each stay lasting two weeks, focusing on printmaking techniques such as algography and lithography. During this period, as part of the exhibition concept “Professor and His Students,” he organized two exhibitions—one at the Student City in Belgrade and another at the exhibition gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in Novi Sad.

ABOUT THE WORK

Black Hole-Abyssus in te spectat, 2023

Charcoal

In Black Hole, Bela Macka depicts a solitary man being consumed by the immense pull of a black hole, suspended between existence and the unknown. The work explores the tension between human vulnerability and the forces beyond our control, suggesting that the more deeply we confront the darkness, the more deeply it confronts us.

Charcoal, one of the artist’s preferred materials, becomes an important part of this idea. Its raw, grain-like texture resembles particles and atoms, giving the image a sense of matter breaking apart and being drawn into the void. The contrast between the fragile human figure and the vast darkness surrounding him creates a powerful sense of inevitability.

The work echoes the idea: “When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back.” In Latin, Abyssus in te spectat — “The abyss looks into you.”

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Her work has been exhibited in North Macedonia and internationally, including participation in Osten's World Gallery of Cartoons, where she received recognition as an Outstanding Cartoonist, as well as receiving the Best Debut Comic award at the International Comic Book Salon in Veles.

The White Cat (Бела Мачка)

ARTWORK TITLE: "Black01"
Year: 2023

Medium: LinoCut

Aleksandra Najdovska(Bela Macka) is a Macedonian-Australian multidisciplinary artist whose practice is situated at the intersection of political cartooning, conceptual art, graphic printmaking, and the conservation and restoration of cultural heritage.

Born in Sydney, Australia, with family roots in Demir Hisar, North Macedonia, her artistic development has been shaped by the meeting of Balkan cultural history and international visual culture, Politics and Religion.

Najdovska studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Arts, specialising in Conservation and Restoration. Her training in traditional printmaking and the preservation of historical artworks established a strong material foundation for a practice that would later extend into installation, digital media, illustration, video and political imagery.

An important period in her early professional development was her work with Deutsche Welle (DW) between 2017 and 2021, where she worked as a socio-political cartoonist, journalist and visual content creator through the Balkan Booster projects. Her work addressed questions of identity, political power, cultural memory and social change across the Balkans. Here, the graphic language of caricature became a form of visual journalism, allowing her to respond directly to the political and social realities of her time.

Alongside political cartooning, Najdovska developed a distinctive conceptual practice. Her 2018 solo exhibition HAOS in Demir Hisar brought together installation, graphic art, comics, digital media and graffiti to examine local political and social realities. In 2024, her solo exhibition Lorem Ipsum at Centar Jadro in Skopje expanded these concerns into broader philosophical questions surrounding modern existence, political and economic systems, spirituality, technology and the future of humanity.

Her practice is also deeply connected to the preservation of cultural heritage. She has participated in the conservation and restoration of medieval frescoes, archaeological mosaics, paintings and historical objects, including work associated with sites such as Stobi and churches in Ohrid and Veles. This dual position—as an artist concerned with creating contemporary images and a conservator concerned with preserving historical ones—forms an important characteristic of her practice.

Najdovska's work ultimately occupies a space between archive and intervention. Through printmaking she engages with the material history of the graphic arts; through conservation she preserves traces of the past; and through political cartooning and conceptual art she interrogates the present. Across these disciplines, her central concern remains the role of the image as a vehicle for memory, criticism, social awareness and human reflection.