The exhibition Borba (Struggle)/Kampf by graphic artist Zoran Mishe opens at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Berlin on 14 March. It is a sequel to the initiative by the Cultural Institute in Berlin, the National School of Fine Art Iliya Petrov and the Debut gallery which presents the teachers from the school with solo events in the German capital. The first joint event was exactly one year ago, with the opening of the exposition Timelessness Diaries by artist Tsvetomila Hristova.

As of today, the hall at the institute will be home to the creative “struggle” of a contemporary artist against the status quo and conservatism. In a world of everyday battles and destruction, Zoran Mishe translated these words into the domain of philosophical concepts by way of artistic images which take us to the depths of the human being, of the creator.

Zoran Mishe was born in 1984 in Ohrid, North Macedonia, but made his home in Bulgaria more than 20 years ago. He graduated graphic art from the National Academy of Art in Sofia and currently teaches graphic art at the secondary school of fine arts in Sofia. He has so far had five solo exhibitions and has taken part in dozens of general exhibitions in the country and abroad – in Austria, Romania, Switzerland, Italy, China, Spain, North Macedonia, Serbia, the US, Czechia and Japan. 

And even though he has won international awards at exhibitions and biennials in Spain, Italy, Serbia and Bulgaria, Borba is actually his first solo exhibition abroad.

“I am a graphic artist, graphic art is a technique and a technology that works with prints, and it is a way to “print” the memory that will live on and not get lost,” Zoran Mishe said some time ago in an interview with the BNR. He is founder and part of a studio for contemporary graphic art – PRINT NEST – a creative “island” for a group of like-minded artists from the National Academy of Art who want to guide graphic art into the new century.

The current exhibition in Berlin is a sequel to the 2022 general exhibition by PRINT NEST studio in Sofia, and at the MKC gallery in Skopje, North Macedonia. At it, Zoran showed large-format works on the subject of “struggle”, and then, specifically for the Bulgarian Cultural Centre in Berlin, he added smaller fragments – abstract figures and compositions to supplement the idea of the “silent” contrast between technologies, time, planned and expected events and the questions that are always with us: Why do we have to fight? Why don’t we just go with the flow? The struggle to resist the temptation of starting something new.

The exhibition Borba/Kampf, with curator Olympia Nikolova-Daniel is on at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Berlin until 5 April.

Text by Vessela Krasteva

Translated and posted by Milena Daynova

Photos:Debut gallery, Union of Bulgarian Artists, Ani Petrova, Facebook/Zoran Mishe