Public Art Project: PERFECT MATCH

26 and 27 January 2001

The opening of the Perfect Match will take place on January 26 (from 18.00 to 22.00 p.m.) in the space of the main City Shopping Mall in the center of Skopje.
The City Shopping Mall (or City Trading Center) was built in the late seventies and was one of the rare shopping malls in the region at that time. Interestingly enough, although at that time the values of this society were not turned towards consumerism, the Mall was vivid and successful until the middle of eighties when the first private shopping centers started to be built. It took about ten years until the government started to sell or rent certain sections to private firms and thus enabled the re-flourishing of the once popular ritual of afternoon shopping fever. Since the architectural structure was flexible enough the space transformed from big department stores to small boutiques that today make the City Shopping Mall one of the main targets of the new rich class of businessmen of Macedonia.
The transformation of the Macedonian society and the process of transition of the economy from socialist and state controlled to a stage where it will be directed by the market, influenced not only the production and market relations but also the relations between different genders. That influence was the starting point for organizing the public art project Perfect Match.
20 artists from different countries in the region are included in the project
"Perfect Match". One part of the project is going to be designed as Internet project that gives opportunity to the art works to have longer life than the duration of the exhibition. Namely, a special web site is going to be designed for some of the projects that deal with the relation between the advertising of art and cyber sex.
It is very important that the other parts of the project are not limited to only one space. In contrary, although one of the venues is going to be the Open Graphic Art Studio at the Museum of the City of Skopje, the artists are invited to produce public art projects for the site that is connected with the main theme: the City Shopping Center. Thus, the artists will participate in the life of the city entering the realm of their investigation and creation more directly.
The themes are derived from the changes in the relation between the genders in the conditions of transition when the problems of freeing of the market, and the political and social turbulence are reflected in the ideals and everyday life of the artists and theoreticians and of different communities. There are going to be presented works realized in different media: photographs, photo-installations, objects, video art projects, and three performances.
The shopping is taken as a metaphor of the eternal desire of the people to find the perfect match through advertising anything: from clothes to their personal life. Thus, the opening of the exhibition itself is imagined as an invitation to the audience to shopping in the City Shopping Mall.