The project Minimarket by Oliver Musovik functions at several different levels. It was originally developed for the group project Graphic Art Experiment, for the glass window of the gallery of the Open Graphic Art Studio at the Museum of the City of Skopje where this project took place from 23^rd of December 1997 to 7^th January 1998.

The basic concept of the artist was to simulate a window of a common mini market in Macedonia, and I believe, in any of the non-developed countries. The project consists of many cheap yellowish sheets of paper that are usually used in the butcher shops, and elsewhere for wrapping, but also for announcing the sale of the products at lower prices when stacked on the window. This primitive way of “advertising” was realized by handwriting with thick marker and afterwards scanned and printed by computer. Thus, the first level of investigation was achieved in the field of the medium of printmaking, exploring the limits of the tools of the low and high technology that are already intervened in our society.

That is how the author came to the second level – the social issues of the artworks that deal with reality in the authentic context. This engagement of the artist was obvious from the very beginning when he conceived the project to be posted at the window of the gallery so that the artistic space was turned in a store that sells food products. The certain ambiguity was achieved in the scopic field of the viewers that were passing by, not knowing the original function of the space. Even I being present every day as a curator of the whole project was involved in the simulation process, since I was forced to answer the “typical” questions of the “consumers”: “How long will the sale last? Is it going to finish before New Year?”, “Where is the storage of the products?” [once when the people would enter and find out that it is gallery], “Why do you still keep the signs after the store has been removed?” etc..

At this point the third and in the opinion of the artist the most important level of significance is gained, the questioning of the worship of artworks as products in a consumer society. The gallery was turned into a mini market just to ironies the icons of worship in the contemporary society, which could parallel chicken legs, or paintings – each of them are evaluated in a similar way while being exchanged for money at the free market. The author questions even the only difference that could be made in the terms of Baudrillard’s distinction between the object and commodity wherein “the commodity is readable, in opposition to the object, which never completely gives up its secret, the commodity always manifests its visible essence, which is its price”.

The humorous energy and the paradoxicallity of the project was enforced by the sign “Inventory” on the entrance door of the gallery, which is a sign that the store – gallery is not open during the inventory period. In Macedonia it usually takes place at the same period as the real beginning of the project  - the last days before New Year when the consumer fever gets to the highest degree, so it was not by accident that many people who do not usually enter the galleries were coming and investing for a possibility to buy coffee, toilet paper, oil, poultry etc., cheaper than anywhere else, not to mention the story about the woman who thought that the gallery is bankrupted and forced to sell something else in order to survive.

Is this relation towards the everyday objects of desire, the common consumer needs, similar to the way that religious people adore the icons of the unapproachable God – could be the main question that the artist Oliver Musovik is posting in front of the audience which does not consists of gallery goers. His “iconostas” is devoted to the everyday people that under the pressure of the financial crisis, but also because of the advertisements, started to believe in new God: the product itself, whether it is an artwork or any other object which is salable.

Suzana Milevska