Maja Kirovska and Angel Miov in Chifte Hammam
Game of (pulling the) strings… The explication of Angel Miov’s latest project, ironically titled “Pull the strings…”, offers several open interpretations of the title itself, but also of the artistic material with variable context and meaning in modern life.
In the first place, the double meaning (or ambiguity) that is suggested in the title alludes to: the art aesthetics of the material that the artist used in the creation of his works – strings of synthetic material (curtains); the process of making the work itself (simultaneous strokes, pulling multiple lines at once), but also to the metaphorical meaning that this phrase contains and denotes in everyday speech.
The leading artistic expression of Angel Miov starts from the classical approach to creating a work of art and the use of basic painting (more specifically drawing) principles that start from the line as a tool and symbol. Drawing multiple lines simultaneously creates different situations of which part is random and some are consciously approved by the artist. The linearity is emphasized by the free abstract lines, but also by those “disciplined” ones that create various stories/displays.
Hence the eternal question “What does it mean to draw? How does one achieve that?” ( Vincent van Gogh, Letters) is marked as an open process, transcendental and immanent, offered to the audience that is invited to participate interactively in part of that game, in order to experience the process that is constantly changing and never ends.
It is precisely this process of creation as a most intimate part, which is emphasized in order to feel the triad of artist – process – work, and to present the process as the most intimate and most fun part of the creation of the artwork, as a part separate from the idea. Although initially it has a classical approach, the project contains a conceptual ready-made approach, expressed through the use of various ready synthetic materials and objects – in the beginning these are drawings with fringed fabric (curtains), then ready objects (hats, objects of plexiglass), photographs, videos, texts, objects, but also natural materials (glue, pigments) that lead to the construction and reconstruction of the work made of ready materials.
The final result is a mosaic of seemingly chaotic situations, intertextual relations, absurd stories and aesthetic values that refer to Eko’s “forest of information with countless symbols”, in which there are no crystal clear and unambiguous ideas, because the information process is parallel (intertwined) in the postmodernist situation of millions of stories, unfinished sentences that suggest something other, were everything is touched by curiosity and is left to free interpretation.
The erotic moment, as a part of this open story, points exactly to the witty moment in all its absurd omnipresence. The different moments and references (the colonel action painting, the neo-Dadaist stories, the symbolism…), through the illustrative quality of the retro characters and drawings with “modern” applications, are a sublimate of all the ambiguous information (strings) in this interwoven picture.
The thematic interest that prevails in the works of Angel Miov is examining the processes and it relies on the drawing as understanding and other media as displaying/ recounting of things. The completion of this process is incorporated in the engaged moment which, in the stories of Angel Miov, is expressed through the attitude of constant and cynical questioning of today’s “autonomy” of the work, whereby the aesthetic polyvalence multiple interpretation are conditioned by the freedom of form and expression, the hyper-production of works and events, vague and complex. which necessarily impose on and radicalize experiments with language and form their ambiguous meaning, as well as their ephemerality.