VENICE BIENNALE 2012: MACEDONIA PAVILION

Year | 2012 Type | Exibition Location |Venice; Italy Team | METAMAK KOLEKTIVB

How to think about today’s architecture, captured in the pragmatic flows of changing society? Can architecture once more be captivating, romantic, humanistic, visionary, and everyday at the same time? It appears that today’s architecture is becoming increasingly complex and ambiguous, and thus increasingly manipulative. It is lost in the cloud of the everyday. But how can architecture be seen again in its elementary correlations, geometry, form, use? To be derived from the specific, idiosyncratic, everyday, and face the timeless, resistant level. How to find the vertical of the everyday? The everyday that makes sense only if it is reflected in the sublime. This exhibition shows twenty-five architectural fragments, specific configurations separated from their specific frame, but united on a mutual base. Each architectural fragment is set up on an identical base (100 x 100 x 30 cm) with a reflecting surface. This way, the specific configurations will gain their reflection in a mirror. They are no longer merely part of a casual context, but rather particular images reflecting in time. The choice is a kind of autobiographic anthology of the contemporary Macedonian scene and emerges from the ideas, interpretations, and achievements of an informal company called Metamak – Architectural Collective. ...

Their specific approaches and formal and informal contacts reflect a segment of Macedonian reality. The realistic situation of the local architecture that gazes into the wished for, magical images of the international architectural scene can be seen in the works included. Contrary to the perfect images of international architecture, this is a fragmented state with regard to sense, representation, and realization. A type of local contemporary architectural archaeology of ideas, records, drawings, models, achievements. If seen separately, they are independent attempts to deepen the everyday experience in the reflection of the other reality. If seen together, they create a city of separate yet united objects with a mutual base of the reflecting surface, in which their images reflect as sublime memories.