Igor Josifov

1st prize at the IX Biennale of Young Artist at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, Macedonia

2011-11-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Igor Josifov - most successful young artist at the IX Biennial of
Young Artists: Nature morte
Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, Macedonia

For the second time, the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje awarded for
the most successful author and work, presented at 9th Biennial of
young artists, opened in September this year on "Still Life". Award:
Exhibition at the Museum in 2012 was awarded to the young artist Igor
Josifov for the work titled Izgubeni Tela, decided by the jury : Antoni
Maznevski, president, and Mira Gacina and Blagoja Varoshanec. The
works of Josifov, the commission considered as the most convincing
achievement, concluded that although the show has more parts with high
values. The award, Igor Josifov will realize by the funds approved by
the Ministry of Culture.

Igor Josifov (Kavadarci, 1986), graduated from the Academy of Art in
San Francisco (2009). Solo exhibitions in San Francisco (2007, 2008,
2010), Berkeley (2009), Chicago (2010), New York (2010), Paris (2011),
Shirjah (2011). He participated in several group exhibitions at home
and abroad (Oslo, San Francisco, Miami, Berlin, New York, Berkeley,
Chicago, Tirana, Paris and Shirjah). Part of the project is the Marina
Abramovic The Artist is Present at MoMA, New York (2010). Artist
residence in the Watermill Center, New York (2008). Lives and works in
San Francisco - Paris.

Igor Josifov - solo exhibition at Galerie EGP in Paris

2011-05-30T17:06:00.000-07:00

Igor Josifov Galerie EGP Art culture paris,art culture France,evenement culturel,agenda culturel paris,actualité art culture,photo art,agenda design,exposition design,éditeur design,spectacle danse,spectacle danse contemporaine,festival danse,marché art,exposition art contemporain,galerie photo,exposition video,art numerique,livre sur l’art,catalogue art,galerie art contemporain paris,musee art moderne contemporain,centre d'art contemporain,

2 dimensional - Chic Art Fair in Paris

2010-10-29T08:04:00.000-07:00

"2-Dimensional"
duration; 8 hours
http://www.swide.com/luxury-magazine/Faces/Artists/Igor-Josifov-at-The-Chic-Art-Fair-Paris/2010/10/21

"2-dimensional" is a performance installation where the delicate relationship between the artist and the viewer is explored. The performance artist, Igor Josifov, will lie underneath a plexibox set into the floor of the space and be visible under pedestrian traffic during the opening for the Chic Art Fair in Paris.

As the public walks over the plexibox, they will literally come into contact with the artist on a clear, 2-dimensional surface.
As the public views their own role within the art world, they can simultaneously view the expressions of the performance artist as he is being walked over. The value and role of the artist is brought into question through this installation, but the unique vantage point of the artist also alludes to the perspectives and positions of vulnerability from which artists can view humanity.

Galerie E.G.P

http://www.artegp.com/artistarnalworks.php?cod=7

outfit and corset custom made by Narimah Jalaludin
http://www.jalaludin.fr/index

Chic art fair
http://publikart.net/chic-art-fair-lart-contemporain-en-bords-de-seine
http://www.chic-artfair.com/

artnet link video:
http://www.artnet.fr/magazine/expositions/GLORIEUX/CHIC.asp

2dimensional

2010-10-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

A performance by Igor Josifov

Opening of the Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago

Igor Josifov’s performance 2-Dimensional ushered viewers into the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing and provided a critical transition for a new generation of artists. The inaugural opening for the Modern Wing catered to a younger generation with Young Modern, an evening reception complete with catering, dance floors, and complimentary drinks. Igor’s concept for this event was simple: to literally present the artist’s work in a space that was flat, inanimate, and disconnected.

The artist was dressed in a new tuxedo and his body lay in case. The case’s top platform was in-set with a clear plexi-glass and allowed for a full and complete view of the artist’s body, underfoot. The case was built into the doorway and led viewer’s into the Modern Wing from the museum’s original building. His head rested in the space of the newly constructed Modern Wing while his feet were, figuratively speaking, grounded in the past among more traditional works. Steps allowed viewers to walk over the artist and, in presenting such work in an unconventional and interactive context, allowed viewers to see the artist’s body in place of a material work of art. Finally a split-screen on the other end of the platform allowed viewer’s to see their reactions side-by-side with the unresponsive face of the artist.

The work literally encased the artist’s body and created energy with viewers through the potential for a direct engagement. Although the artist was visible and lucid, the case rendered the artist’s body as intangible. Rendering the artist’s body under a clear platform alluded to concepts of objectivity, mortality, and disconnection. This installation was unique for an institutional context where most works are hung on a wall, displayed on a pedestal or cordoned-off from the viewer’s touch. Constructing the artist’s work under the art viewer’s path also reinforced conventions of the artist role and function as inferior and decorative.

The energy potential for this work yielded surprising results. The artist remained perfectly still in the case and connected with the eyes of each person who passed over the platform. This was a work of art that looked back at you. The response of viewers ranged from aloof to surprised. Passing into the Modern Wing, gentleman escorted ladies quickly over the artist’s face while other women shrieked or giggled.

Later in the evening, attendees were more adjusted or perhaps, influenced by the event’s revelry and festivities. Jealousy and lust took a more concrete form as men cursed the artist or stomped on the glass. Ladies posed for pictures with the artist underfoot, laughed hysterically as they flashed their legs open in stride and one women intentionally threw her purse contents onto the case, revealing multiple openings in her dress. Despite all provocations, the artist remained fixed on the eyes of the individual.

This performance required minimal action from the artist. As a construction, the work revealed how ill-prepared an institutional audience is for art in unconventional contexts. In fact, the design of this installation also provided an energy potential that brought the behaviors and responses of the viewers directly into the light of the work of performance—raw, spontaneous, and unfettered. In a perfect example of psychoanalytic projection, the inhibitions and insecurities of a high-brow, private art class became the focus of the work. The final result is a performance where the established art community communicates frivolity, trivial reactions and an insubstantial resistance towards challenging, new work and necessitates a new era for the role of artists.

Michael Ryan Noble

http://www.swide.com/luxury-magazine/Faces/Artists/Igor-Josifov-at-The-Chic-Art-Fair-Paris/2010/10/21

"Lost bodies - dying artist"

2010-04-10T12:28:00.000-07:00

Igor Josifov and M. Ryan Noble

"Lost bodies - dying artist"

Galicnik, Macedonia

12 - 17 Aug 2009

Igor Josifov and M. Ryan Noble collaborate in an experimental performance and photography series, Lost Bodies/the dying artist. The photographic process is a performance that involves the artist’s bodies, a 35mm camera and culturally specific locations as collaborative objects. Each of these objects are equally engaged and responsible throughout the process of creating the final images.

Previous Lost Bodies series were performed in locations throughout the United States. The locations for these series resonated with Ryan’s experience as a native of the U.S. and are considered significant parts of his cultural body: the subjective experience of local traditions, history, and rituals. The Galicnik series is of critical importance to the development of this work in that it provides reference to Igor’s cultural body as a native Macedonian artist. During the artist’ residency at the Galicnik Art Colony they explored local traditions with a focus on the Svadba (wedding procession) and Teskoto (dance of the hard-way) and culturally-significant environments including plateaus, canyons, and the town’s cemetery.

The Lost Bodies/dying artist series explores concepts of art-making by alternating roles of photographer/model during the artists’ immersion into material aspects of culture. The artist’s exposed bodies, basic camera mechanics, and natural properties of the environment are all elements in contributing to a newly formed image. Each of these elements are reduced and objectified to their most fundamental qualities and through the vision of collaboration, new life is formed and a unique image transpires. These images are moments of cultural transformation: they draw parallels between regeneration in nature and culture and effectively juxtapose the ephemeral qualities of photography with the preservation of spirit.

"being you, uses me"

2009-07-07T11:37:00.001-07:00

Being You, Uses Me
Igor Josifov and M. Ryan Noble

This is an interactive and experimental performance. Participation is welcome and encouraged.

• You are encouraged to verbally communicate with the “head of the artist” at any time during tonight’s reception.

• You may be in physical contact with the “body of the artist” but it will not respond to verbal commands.

The Alphonse Berber Gallery is pleased to present its most ambitious exhibition to date: "Being You Uses Me," the first in a schedule of performance pieces by internationally-renowned Macedonian artist Igor Josifov, joined by Bay Area artist Michael Ryan Noble.
Josifov and Noble use their own bodies as a canvas where the work and the human subject are inextricable, where art and audience merge, sometimes felicitously, sometimes problematically and provocatively. The artists’ performance makes use of the body as both a communal and an intensely private object and in so doing, compellingly communicates both personal and shared cultural experience. Josifov's interest in perception in the context of psychoanalysis informs his work, and he often encourages viewer participation in order to fully realize a piece. The act of viewing thereby shifts from mere spectatorship to ashared space inhabited by both the audience's and the artist's psyches. Each piece is a slowly evolving, dynamic creation, not predetermined but contingent on the site of its unfolding.
Igor Josifov's solo shows include: "Manumission" at the Museum of Contemporary art in Macedonia, "Face it" at Toomey Tourell Fine Art in San Francisco, "2-Dimensional" at the opening of the Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago and will perform for the "Marina is Present" exhibition at the New York MoMA in 2010.
Michael Ryan Noble is a guerilla-style performance artist who collaborated with Igor as a resident artist at the Watermill Center in Southampton, New York. He has a Masters degree in Art Therapy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

photo: Alex Hemmerich

Manumission book by Igor Josifov

2009-04-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

Manumission

By Igor Josifov

Book Preview

PPP mental prison

2009-04-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

Performance the Bridge's Tunnel space, NYC
March 6th, 2009
Duration: 3 hours

Past Present Permanent (mental prison), Macedonian-born Josifov will perform at the Waterfront, 222 12th Ave, during the Bridge Art Fair in NYC. Thursday, March 5th, 2009. Performance from 7pm until 10pm.

Igor Josifov will focus on his most important and primary medium — his body, to communicate his own experience and comment on the general concept of self. Part of the project will involve an installation of blurred silkscreen faces, enhanced by the echoes of rhythmic corporeal sounds. The sound is from the last voice mail received by Josifov from Renata G. The artist Renata G remains in a coma with a traumatic brain injury sustained March 9, 2008, as she rode her bicycle to work on her pending show at California College of the Arts. Josifov will shave his head and have a line tattooed on his scalp between the two halves of his brain, representing absent memories and loss. In this ritualistic performance, Josifov will mark the one year anniversary since the accident. Allowing him to work through the mental stages of the shocking loss of his collaborator in life and work.

Purification process

2009-04-13T13:00:00.000-07:00

Performance at the Bridge's Tunnel space, NYC
March 27-30th, 2008
Duration 45min each day
1st Day- Words of memory
2nd day- Images of memory
3rd day - Lost identity

Face it -Manumission - performance 1h 30' -Toomey Tourell Gallery - San Francisco, CA. 2008

2009-04-13T01:22:00.000-07:00

Face It is a visual representation reflecting the continuous conflict between Christians and Muslims. Macedonian artist Igor Josifov, presents a multi-media exhibition – performance art, video and photography, expressing the history of the conflict between Christians and Muslims that has existed in this region for centuries.

The artist's performance was staged between the two iconic photographs where the subjects are wearing 'horse blinders' which have now become 'human blinders'. Each leather blinder, has been etched and burned with Christian iconography and Muslim motifs separately

"In the beginning of my performance I use the head as the primary medium for demonstrating a certain emotion. In the first part I wear the Christian mask and put myself into the state of mind that would reflect a Christian point of view and ideology. After that I wear the Muslim mask with the same mental transformation. I use the energy projected by the audience, absorbing their anxiety, confusion and restlessness . It's a thick and heavy atmosphere as is the subject of religious differences. The performance merges this all together into one larger energy….
people are now forced to think. I remove the mask and then turn my back and cut the shoulder blades on my back with a razor blade. It is my desire to become neutral….to be in between religions as I stand between the iconic photographs.

The incisions cause blood to drip in almost a wing-like nature. The performance begins to feel almost messianic in its message. They have a metaphoric meaning of freedom from both religions.
In fact from all religions."

2009-04-13T01:21:00.001-07:00

Manumission, a performance by Igor Josifov, executed in computer-simulated space, can be regarded as a miniature video essay on the inexorable human alienation in the immenseness of this world.

The action takes place in a single fixed scene: right from the beginning two identical masks/faces are shown in a frozen frontal fashion. This presentation associated with the body as a “form of identity” takes its time, putting us in a somewhat uneasy state of expectation. Soon, however, the masks/faces are set in motion, each gradually moving in different directions. Little by little the silence is disturbed by soft noises, which portend a face-to-face encounter, but the masks/faces never meet each other, as there is a dark line between them, dividing the scene into two sections. Movements are sped up in a somewhat mechanical manner, accompanied by stronger sounds of motion, which give the space of action an intimate quality. The “final act” acquires a grim intonation with the masks’ dramatic removal. The act of transformation/metamorphosis is brought to a close by the expressive unmasking with an uncertain ending and outcome. The central motif is the act of transformation and liberation of the human “captive mind” and soul. The leather belts of the mask, which itself brings numerous primaeval and modern associations, show simplified symbols of the two major religions – Christian and Moslem – giving the performance individual features (“Macedonian lifestyle”) as well as universal qualities of a metaphor of human efforts to overcome internal inhibitions that encumber or prevent dialogue.

The performance, which is carefully thought out and has a message to convey – “to raise the awareness of the people” – also contains a less comprehensible side with the penetration of irrational elements. The ending has a cathartic and liberating effect, but it also leaves you with a feeling of new-found distress. The simple visual form involves more complex stimulations; the mask that “functions” in a contemporary type of society is reminiscent of an animated modern Janus and can be associated with the comment that “the tardy face of Homo Ludens needs transformation in order to discover himself” (Oto Bihalji Merin, 1970).

The artist makes use of the mask presenting it as the oldest form of alienation, as the basis of the modern representation of Man as a creature that has lost all immediacy. The “heads,” shrouded in intimidating mystery, suggest a specific relationship between the mask and the face, and also between the individual and this nightmarish world. In this way the work of art establishes a dialogue with the viewer (Bruce Nauman), pointing to its relation to several models ranging from primitive to contemporary art (for example, the mechanical head of Raoul Hausmann, the Dadaist; the surrealist and expressionist art of Bacon, Lüpertz, Reiner and Paolozzi; the action Purging from Sin (1973) by the Dvizhenie (Movement) group, or some of Beuys’s performances). The work of this young artist is perhaps the closest in its sensibility and has been influenced the most by Marina Abramović and her unique explorations into the “borderline states” of the spirit and body.
Igor Josifov’s performance offers elements of transformation and liberation that can get through to the individual’s conscious, but it gives no answers nor does it take definite points of view. We are left with the feelings of both “having freed ourselves from a burden” and of psychological tension (whose roots can be traced back to Freud’s psychoanalytic school), asking ourselves the question: “What is the essence of human nature concealing behind the mask (not even Laurie Anderson’s clever analysis provides a clear answer), Man’s goodness and hope, or his Kafkaesque metamorphosis into a gigantic insect?”

Vladimir Veličkovski, Ph.D.