Kiro Urdin - Planetarism 2011

K I R O U R D I N

M a r c h , 2 0 1 1

p l a n e t a r i s a m

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One point

One art

everywhere,

everywhere,

everything in

every art

one

in one

point

art 3

P R E F A C E ART - COSMOS AND LIGHT OF THE SPIRIT “So God created man in his own image” Genesis 1:27

W

e can define Art as Cosmos and Light of the Spirit. It is a Cosmos opened to infinity, expanding in concentric circles, and constantly enriched with new galaxies. God excepted, nothing speaks so powerfully about man like Art, which produces the most precious product of all the products that he could have created and imagined: beauty, poetry, painting, sculpture, music, dance... They are all divine acts of the Spirit which are transcendent by definition, and they elevate man from the earthly towards the heavenly, towards the primal authentic source of his origins and existence.

And truly, Art is the most prominent sign that man did not reach his holy fire through blind evolution, but that it was ignited in every atom of his Spirit by the Creator Himself, as early as his conception at the beginning of Creation. Since then, that eternal fire, like a genetic code, has been left to us as a legacy and the most worthy property we have inherited from our Father in heavens. It is the most powerful evidence that He created us in his own image and likeness, not only physically, but also spiritually.

Art, being a gift, contains many other gifts and powers within itself. Among other things, it

also possesses healing powers, so welcomed by humanity thrown into suffering, thrown into the dark night of history, into a life groaning under the burden of evil, in which he builds a home on the foundations of pain. But even in such a life, man passes through the dangerous labyrinth of existence with the light of Art, which possesses the power of faith - of the same strength as the faith Jesus talks about in the New Testament.

And with it, same as with faith, man can move mountains. In that sense, we can understand William Blake who says that we don’t need only faith for our salvation, but also Art. It is needed because it radiates beauty and goodness, it radiates light in which man and mankind come to know their divine origins. As such, Art is absolutely transcendent and carries within itself the utopia of spiritual happiness, cleansed of any crude existential mud, social restraints or historic catastrophes. Art promises this utopia, which was, as a prophetic vision, was ingeniously sensed

by Dostoevsky: “Art will save the world”. It will perhaps happen when all human souls, like the beasts and stones lured by Orpheus’ music, come and drink from its spring. Dear God, may that day come sooner!

E.K. 5

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iro Urdin’s insatiable curiosity and his appetite for exploring have taken him to five continents, so as to paint, in each country visited, the same immense canvas: 48 sq. m., eight meters by six, split into two parts of 24 m2. It was unrolled at each stop, sometimes placed on a stretcher. Overwhelmed by the impressive nature of his environment, the ancient cultures and the unequalled riches of the world heritage, Kiro has covered his canvas as a symbol of his taking possession. Drunk with centuries-old fragrances and companionship of people from every race, faced with temples, and landscapes from all four corners of the world, he translated his circumstantial emotions. For two and a half years, dealing with problems, which would have been insurmountable for most of us, he filled his fresco with the spoils of his remembered images in situ, and with the breath of his sensitive thoughts. From Skopje, the cradle of all births, to the cannibals of Mindoro, from Kheops to the Pre-Columbian sites of Machu Picchu, from the Masai in Kenya to the Forbidden City of Peking, from Jerusalem ˗ where, upon hearing of the birth of his daughter Donna, he kissed the tomb of Christ and immolated, in fire, a large piece of the canvas ˗ to New York and Tokyo, and through all great European capitals, he travellled his long mystical journey under the banner of love and in search of his own limits.

This exhausting journey, with thousands of episodes and repeated perils, on a scale determined only by his lack of measure, was undertaken by Kiro obstinately, almost devotedly, his canvas on his back, in all weathers, frequently employing unusual means of transport, aiming only at infinity in his quest and at blossoming 8

of his serenity. He has brought back a synthesis haloed by memory and affect, woven from unattained dreams and fulfilled hopes, whose recipient, in other words, the canvas, was endlessly reworked as a dream of knowledge and of freedom finally materialized.

A hymn to happiness, an act of love, this work, bearing the title “Planetarium - one point everywhere, everything in one point”, and condensed in a remarkable short movie, nowadays belongs to the company Neways Electronics International in Holland, and decorates its entrance lobby with its blue background, an allusion to the cosmos, against which play the trances of his forms and signs like a promise of universal joy. It was a unique experience,“a turning point in my life”, an adventure out of the norm”, says Kiro.

At this stage, no matter how far back the analysis reaches, Kiro Urdin’s work is an affirmation of an authority without a decisive break.

Consisting of flesh and blood, it describes man in painstaking details; his solitude, his melancholy, his nostalgia and incommunicability. But the man only aspires to light and to a peaceful world. And if Kiro’s work lingers in the unconscious of people and things, this has to do with the contradictory fluxes in his sumptuous vital energy, in service of one superior reality. After many turbulences, every exhibition adding a new height to his reputation, Kiro Urdin, like James Joyce, remains that tender and wild individualist, whose conquering of the artwork, resisting new fashions and labels, resonates deep inside us long afterwards.

Gérard Xuriguera 9

Studio in Knokke, Belgium 10

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ART FOR THE BEING

During the 1960s, critics who voiced their opinions predicted that in the next five hundred years, modern painting would either be abstract, geometrical and unstructured, or would not be at all. Throughout Europe, exhibitions geared to the year 2000 were held, displaying only works by Abstract artists whose names have now passed into oblivion. They believed that the artistic revolution that had began at the time of Kandinsky and Malevitch was irreversible.

They had excellent reasons for thinking so.

If they were to be believed, the proliferation of photography had rendered the artist's representation of the visible outer world both outdated and pointless.

In addition, they noted that the level of knowledge in our century, knowledge which established the quantum theory and the theory of relativity as new disciplines of physics, provided a new understanding of matter which, according to them, made any ideas of deterrninism in science obsolete.

This is a far cry from the truth! Painting asserts itself in whatever way it fancies. Over the years, the painters have decided otherwise.

Some of them never broke away from realism, while others, ephemeral Abstract practitioners, returned to the figurative fold. This trend has continued down to the present day, when virtually no one devotes their efforts to the squares, circles, rectangles and other shapes of nonfigurative art. It pleases me that Kiro Urdin is concerned with this way of painting that people have claimed is finished. Because, first of all, I have never felt that Abstraction was ALL the art 12

of the present and the future — a position that I asserted persistently at the time. And because, most importantly, at this point in history, I feel that the figurative adventure is just beginning.

Interestingly, this adventure does not imply that we are returning, one way or another, to the old rules of representation, to the old themes of predilection, to art as a noble calling; on the contrary, it is heading in totally new directions that both recreate and reinforce the image.

Consider, for example, the image of the human figure. In his posthumous text, published in 1865, the philosopher Proudhon stated the following: “lt is always on the human figure that all art pivots."` Not on the square, the circle or the abstract shape, but on the human figure.

The latter can, in fact, show "man as a measurement of all things," as it did in Italian Renaissance painting, in which the human figure is an actor poised on the world stage.

Or it can depict something wholly different the "useless passion" to which Sartre reduced the human condition, or perceive man as the "master of his errors", a formulation so dear to the psychoanalysts of the Lacanian school. This image of man occurs both in Dubuffet's peculiar figures and in Giacometti’s long-limbed people, not to mention all sorts of second-rate works hanging on gallery walls.

The human figure plays a leading role in Kiro Urdin’s paintings. l am gazing at one of his pictures, depicting the profile view of a head, with a round skull and a pointed nose, like so many others in contemporary paintings. But 13

what fascinates me are the lines that criss-cross this face, lines that both tighten and loosen the facial features, blue, orange, and red lines that come and go in a kind of linear exuberance.

One line germinates, the other one traces outlines, another is there for the effect and yet another meditates on and rethinks the face.

Urdin’s painting contains reminiscences of Klee, i.e. there is profundity and childish glee, there is graffitti without reference to either sex or death, graffitti that is just a sheer outpouring of happiness.

The phantasmagoric Dr Gall, whom his followers hailed as one of the most brilliant minds of all time, and who, in the early part of the nineteenth century, founded phrenology, claimed that, starting from the shapes of skulls, it was possible to deduce various types of human beings — a wily schemer, a conceited bighead, a liar, a generous giver, a righteous individual, a honorable man... He performed his experiments indiscriminately, on portraits of deceased kings and princes, and on condemned criminals whose heads were delivered to him from the prisons after they had been decapitated. Hegel, who had met Gall at Jena, was surprised that it was possible to establish a relation between the human mind and bones, and the expression “having a bump for mathematics" is about all that remains of phrenology today. Over a long period of lime, phrenology was indeed the backbone of both painting and sculpture, to which it was thought to supply a decisive element in the accurate rendering of feelings.

In the scrawls, scribbles and smears of today’s art, what is at stake is more likely a phrenology of the imaginary. Here is another portrait by Urdin, a portrait of a woman depicted full face, with grey cheeks, her forehead abundantly splotched with red, her hair tossed by the wind of the brush. Is her face dissembling, generous, or mocking ? One spot of color is 14

biding its time, another covers something over, while yet another opens up and still another one finds its object. Beauty is only skin deep! What is shown is not the outer surface of the being, but its interior, or, more precisely, its interior viewed from the outside, decorticated, stripped and laid bare. The handwritting of a soul or of someone who has no soul: that is where we find ourselves. The term “free figuration” has been bandied about for some years now. As we know, this figuration stands aloof from reality, keeping its distances, both poetic and plastic. Noses are black and chins are green, and they are derived from comic strips and advertising art, as if the artist played the game of making fun of himself.

The result has been a profusion of works, but most of these are banal insofar as their images lead nowhere. The word "handwriting" was referred to above: the notion of handwriting must be defined, and it must be compared with drawings, which ultimately have a different purpose. Actually, a drawing is aimed at the outside world, whose objectivity it seeks.

Ingres called this the probity of art. Consider Leonardo da Vinci’s draperies, which mould a leg or a bust, which vary with the different textures of the fabrics, which swell, contract, and stand out against juxtaposed light and shadow.

Handwriting is simultaneously both before and after the object. Toulouse Lautrec wrote, Picasso also wrote.

kinds of things that are of an approximately identical size and move on four legs, and as such, it constitutes a substitute that rightfully becomes a horse and which can be given a name, can be cajoled and made to gallop through an appartment without needing any actual existence.

Gombrich notes that a stick cannot be said to be a sign that, from near or afar, infers the existence of a horse from the mere fact that it can be straddled. On the other hand, it is a key that is capable of opening a psychological lock, exactly as a trinket that is nice to fondle, or a down comforter that has become an object of affection, and which can replace in a child’s feelings a little brother or a doll. Handwriting belongs with the hobbyhorse; it is psychological, and it proceeds in the opposite direction from the pathways that lead to objectivity.

Even more so than around the face, all of Urdin’s art pivots around the image of the body.

One surface swarms, another surface proliferates, while another rubs up against a different surface.

His figures appear to be carrying the world in the hollows of their organs.

In one of his books, Stéphane Lupasco, who passed away last year amidst scandalous Parisian indifference, postulated the existence of three

cosmic materials ranging from the mineral to the spiritual. There may be unknown planets on which stone bodies grow, other planets formed entirely out of plant bodies, and still others that are immense spiritual bodies. I feel that Urdin’s figures, each time, traverse these three bodies and impart life to them. In our dreams, it happens that a stick or a root begins to talk to us. A volume speaks, a volume cries out, there are gravitations of volumes. In Urdin’s human figures, there is a collusion between these kingdoms and it attaches them to life’s mineral, vegetable, and spiritual origins.

In the postwar years, abstract painting — which had already become the most indigent of all academicisms — dusted off and took back the shopworn formula of art for art’s sake. Closer to our times, the same thing can be observed with free figuration, which, in most cases, is only an empty shell. In contrast with this, I prefer it when an artist’s work carries, and carries far, as Urdin's works do. His paintings are carriers of being. Art for the sake of the being or art for beings. I believe that this is what first strikes the beholder in these works and what thereby constitutes their owerhelming interest.

Jean-Louis Ferrier

Both inside and outside us, drawings seize rhythms and pulsations that express what is real within us in an essential encounter that is anything but free, rather arbitrary in consequence.

A few years ago, in a short article, the English art historian E.H. Gombrich endeavoured to pinpoint the meaning of the wooden hobby horse, which can often be merely a broomstick topped by an improvised head, lying on the floor of a child’s room. It belongs to the class of hobbyhorses that includes all 15

Planetarium, Jerusalem

Studio in New York

Atelier in Paris

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Planetarium, St. Michael

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Medicine (oil on canvas)

Communication (oil on canvas) 22

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JUDGE THE SUBLIME, THE REST IS ERROR-FREE.

Mythical Animal (oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm)

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A New Continent (oil on canvas, 196x146 cm)

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Green Lagoon (oil on canvas, 120x150 cm)

Theatre (watercolour, 75x110 cm)

Wide Open (watercolour, 106x75cm)

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Spirals of Love (oil on canvas, 190x130 cm)

Interior of an Exterior (oil on canvas, 120x150 cm)

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Synthagm (watercolour, 25x35 cm)

Amazon (oil on canvas, 176x128 cm) 32

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Futuristic City (oil on canvas, 200x300 cm)

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Love, Before and After

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Courtesan (oil on canvas, 200x300 cm)

Blue, Red, Black (oil on canvas, 120x150 cm)

Cabaret (oil on canvas, 160x100 cm)

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Connection (watercolour, 105x75 cm)

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Gabon, (oil on canvas, 73x92 cm) 42

Volcano and Love (oil on canvas, 110x150 cm) 43

Small Titan (watercolour, 35x35 cm)

Andalusian Dog (watercolour, 35x44 cm) 44

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Cartier (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

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Jazz Musician (watercolour, 40x60 cm) 48

Rugby Player (watercolour, 55x75 cm) 49

Green Garden (oil on canvas, 200x300 cm) 50

Red and Black (oil on canvas, 150x200 cm) 51

Crystal World (watercolour, 55x75 cm) 52

Amazon Queen (watercolour, 55x75 cm) 53

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Classical Music (watercolour, 100x151 cm)

Modigliani’s Model (oil on canvas, 72x92 cm)

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Moment of Craziness (watercolour, 55x70 cm)

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Look (oil on canvas, 80x100 cm)

Reality and Imagination (oil on canvas, 80x100 cm)

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Seduction (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

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Blue Dream (watercolour 55x70 cm)

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Dogon Woman (watercolour, 77x115 cm)

Drama (watercolour 180x105 cm) 62

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Woman and Peace (watercolour, 55x75 cm) 64

Feeling of Surprise (watercolour, 58x85 cm) 65

Scala de Milano (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

Pharaoh’s Cousin (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

Music and Objects (watercolour, 55x75 cm) 66

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Emerald (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

Profounder (watercolour, 100x150 cm)

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In Bed (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

Noble Woman (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

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Black Roses (oil on canvas, 200x160 cm)

Flying Animals (oil on canvas, 100x80 cm)

Festival de Cannes (oil on canvas, 110x150 cm)

Space and Lines (oil on canvas, 120x180 cm) 72

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Steps of Time (oil on canvas, 200x400 cm) 74

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Gentle Gift (watercolour, 55x75 cm) 76

Mystic Bird (watercolour, 55x75 cm) 77

Free Abstraction (oil on canvas, 300x200 cm)

Round Expression (oil on canvas, 200x200 cm) 78

Supernatural (oil on canvas, 118x160 cm) 79

Oceanica (oil on canvas, 400x290 cm) 80

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Walking (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

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Dogon Man (watercolour, 36x36 cm)

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Together Forever (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

Zoutland (oil on canvas, 80x80 cm)

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Africano (watercolour, 50x50 cm)

Brooklyn Woman (oil on canvas, 82x100 cm)

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Black Eye (oil on canvas, 100x120 cm) 86

Fire of Love (oil on canvas, 90x135 cm) 87

Blue Transparency (oil on canvas, 80x100 cm) 88

Love at First Sight (oil on canvas, 120x150 cm) 89

Dialogue (watercolour, 80x100 cm) 90

Ritual (watercolour, 55x75 cm) 91

Night Club (watercolour, 30x40 cm) 92

Full Moon (oil on canvas, 72x92 cm) 93

The Tower of Babylon (oil on canvas, 80x100 cm)

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In the City (oil on canvas)

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Kaleidoscope (oil on canvas, 65x85 cm)

Logic (oil on canvas, 82x100 cm)

Romantic Garden (oil on canvas, 70x92 cm)

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Spring Signal (oil on canvas, 160x135 cm)

Cosmic Synthesis (oil on canvas, 140x120 cm)

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Yellow Secret (oil on canvas, 300x200 cm)

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Exotic Garden (oil on canvas, 130x150 cm)

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Link (oil on canvas) 102

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Children’s Game (oil on canvas, 160x185 cm)

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Returning to the Past (oil on canvas)

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Secret Love (oil on cavas, 145x113 cm)

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Venetian Woman (oil on canvas 82x100 cm)

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Synthesis (oil on canvas 40x55 cm)

Black Kingdom (watercolour 35x25 cm) 108

Nucleus (watercolour 35x25 cm) 109

Movement (oil on canvas, 82x100 cm)

Wires (watercolour, 25x35 cm)

Blue Abstraction (oil on canvas, 81x100 cm)

Patch of Grass (oil on canvas 70x90 cm)

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Modern Dance (watercolour, 160x130 cm) 112

Round World (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

Rythm and Rhyme II (watercolour, 55x75 cm) 113

Child’s Dream (watercolour, 55x75 cm) 114

My World (oil on canvas, 110x135 cm) 115

Discovery (oil on canvas, 150x120 cm) 116

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Dogona (oil on canvas, 400x300 cm) 118

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Blue Segment (oil on canvas, 70x90 cm)

Galapagos Turtle (oil on canvas, 110x130 cm) 120

Classical Dance (oil on canvas, 80x100 cm) 121

Osmosis (oil on canvas, 180x160 cm)

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Space and Lines II (oil on canvas, 120x180 cm)

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Emma (oil on canvas, 140x160 cm) 124

Softness (oil on canvas, 130x160 cm) 125

Mysteries of Luxor (oil on canvas, 170x138 cm)

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Past (watercolour, 33x25 cm)

Petrified Egg (oil on canvas, 120x150 cm)

Love Roses (watercolour, 33x25 cm)

Dots and Lines (watercolour, 33x25 cm) 128

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Another Galaxy (oil on canvas, 130x170 cm) 130

Bolivian Crystal (oil on canvas, 120x177 cm) 131

Orion, detail 132

Orion, (oil on canvas, 138x158 cm) 133

Experimental Music (oil on canvas, 120x150 cm)

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Lost World (oil on canvas, 200x200 cm)

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Balance (oil on canvas, 80x100 cm)

Two Phoenixes (oil on canvas, 110x140 cm) 136

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Source of Life (oil on canvas, 300x200 cm)

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Crystal Man (oil on canvas, 135x165 cm) 140

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Green River Woman (oil on canvas, 120x150 cm) 142

Enamoured Heart (wathercolour, 75x55 cm) 143

Green Abstraction (oil on canvas, 100x81 cm)

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Blue, Red, Black, (oil on canvas, 120x150 cm)

Signal of Love (oil on canvas, 100x80 cm)

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Dream (oil on canvas)

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Document (oil on canvas, 150x100 cm)

Curious World (huile sur toile, 120x150 cm)

Solitude (oil on canvas, 146x114 cm)

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Spring Day (oil on canvas, 60x80 cm) 150

Europe (oil on canvas, 200x600 cm) 151

Woman from the Equator (oil on canvas, 100x80 cm)

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Galician Red (oil on canvas, 160 x 120 cm) 154

African Souvenirs (oil on canvas 140 x 120 cm) 155

In the heart of the Volcano (oil on canvas, 80x100 cm) 156

Green Cubes (oil on canvas, 80x100 cm) 157

In Brasil (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

Cuzco (oil on canvas, 130 x 158 cm) 158

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Joyous Encounter (oil on canvas, 110x140 cm)

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Two Dogons (watercolour, 25x35 cm)

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Shapes of Love (oil on canvas, 80x80 cm)

Pacific (oil on canvas, 80x80 cm)

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Coral Life (watercolour, 75x105 cm) 164

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Vivid (watercolour, 75x55 cm)

Spirits (watercolour, 30x45 cm)

Granada (watercolour, 75x55 cm) 166

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Extravagance (watercolour, 75x55 cm) 168

Brain (watercolour, 170x130 cm) 169

Structure (watercolour, 33x25 cm)

Illusion (watercolour, 61x101 cm)

Butterfly (watercolour, 75x55 cm)

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Volcano Plus (watercolour, 24x35 cm)

Alien (watercolour, 24x35 cm) 172

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Blue Galaxy (watercolour, 105x75 cm)

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Space Unity (oil on canvas, 300x200 cm)

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Humanoid (oil on canvas, 130x150 cm) 178

Atlas (oil on canvas, 100x130 cm) 179

Experience (watercolour, 50x40 cm)

Nero’s Son (watercolour, 25x35 cm)

Guest (watercolour, 35x45 cm)

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Round Shape (watercolour, 35x24 cm)

Zen (watercolour, 75x55 cm) Step (watercolour, 35x24 cm)

Sexy Fruits (watercolour, 75x55 cm)

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Border (watercolour, 55x75 cm)

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Connected (watercolour, 35x25 cm)

In Another World (watercolour, 25x35 cm)

Deep in the Ocean (watercolour, 50x40 cm)

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Embrace (watercolour, 25x35 cm)

In Bed II (watercolour, 35x25 cm)

Red World (watercolour, 25x35 cm) 186

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Lucy (watercolour, 35x25 cm)

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Act (watercolour, 25x35 cm)

Congo (watercolour, 25x35 cm)

Unknown Creature (watercolour, 25x35 cm)

Blue Creatures (watercolour, 35x45 cm)

Electronic Game (watercolour, 35x45 cm)

Contradiction (watercolour, 25x35 cm)

Lady (25x35 cm) 190

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Myth (watercolour, 35x25 cm)

Harmony (watercolour, 35x25 cm)

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Coral World (watercolour, 35x25 cm)

Erotic Feelings (watercolour, 45x35 cm)

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Magic Circle (watercolour, 35x25 cm)

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Ice Fingers (watercolour, 35x25 cm)

Malaga (watercolour, 35x25 cm)

Rhino (oil on canvas, 150x170 cm) 196

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Essential Things (oil on canvas, 160x130 cm)

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Anniversary (oil on canvas, 130x150 cm) 200

Message of Love (oil on canvas, 82x100 cm) 201

Cosmic Breath (oil on canvas, 135x160 cm)

Last Supper (watercolour, 35x25 cm)

Closed Circle (oil on canvas, 80x100 cm) 202

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Elegance (oil on canvas, 150x200 cm)

Pink House (watercolour, 100x82 cm)

Blue Garden (oil on canvas, 120x150 cm) 204

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Organic Feeling (oil on canvas, 140x160 cm)

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Alliance (oil on canvas, 230x170 cm)

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Circumstance (oil on canvas, 100x140 cm)

Red Cross (oil on canvas, 159x138 cm)

Simplicity (oil on canvas, 100x80 cm)

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After Love (oil on canvas, 120x200 cm) 212

Avignon (oil on canvas, 117x172 cm) 213

The Forbidden City (oil on canvas, 160x110 cm)

Synthesis II (oil on canvas, 92x72 cm) 214

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Red Sea (oil on canvas, 330x200 cm) 216

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Intelligence (oil on canvas, 170x140)

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Galapagos (oil on canvas, 159x138 cm)

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Design: Mihajlo Moteski Color correction: Mishko Tutkovski 222

The Himalayas (watercolor, 143x97 cm)

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Now (watercolours, 70x55 cm)

Marbella (oil on canvas, 100x170 cm) 224

Blue Period (oil on canvas, 160x130 cm) 225

Between Two Times (oil on canvas, 480x120 cm)

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Kiro Urdin will start a new project in 2011, 100 oil paintings on canvas, each canvas with dimensions 200x300 cm.

Performance 228

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Poetry, Aforisms and Film Scripts Written by Kiro Urdin Translated by Graham W. Reid and Peggy Reid

AFORISMS

• Destiny decides on friendship, man on enmity.

• You can tell the day by its morning, but the year by its last day.

• The ultimate end of the end is to reach itself.

• As a footballer I was a national hero, but there were eleven of us.

• Africa is black, Europe is white unless it sunbathes.

• I thought I’d stop the clock this year but it’s already 31st December.

• Don’t root for me too loud, they’ll think I paid you more than the others.

• Friends are like teeth, they fall out one by one.

• Be patient, nobody’s waiting for you.

• The world has always been deceitful, but it has more accomplices now.

• I’m looking for a woman I can read at once while she translates me lifelong.

• You want to meet the author? Read his text, he’s in it.

• Man wants to become immortal, surely that means the death of the planet?

• Success on success – blindness.

• The circle you belong to is the coop you’ll end up in.

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• Either you run with the times or they trample on you.

• Power today is won by a majority of votes – and the number of promises that won’t be kept.

• History repeats itself, its authors the victors.

• Since we understood each other at once, we have less and less to say to one another.

• Between life’s first minute and its last – time flies.

• Work like a slave, think like a thinker – even if you’re a slave.

• I can’t be touched – least of all by those who can’t hurt me.

• Nothing at once, everything in the meantime.

• There’s nowhere we can reach as long as we all want to be in the same place.

• Change your tense. Use the future if things don’t go right in the present.

• Feel good in your own skin, under it the years decide.

• You’re the same as your neighbour, but the converse could also be said.

• Don’t be forever shooting at me, some of your bullets are blanks.

• Humanise the success that means everything in life.

• Everyone dreams their own life’s dream, reality is life beyond the grave.

• To read that you know better than I do, I’d have to be literate.

• Tread somewhere else, the truth lies beneath your feet.

• Advert: Wanted – a parasite that gives blood willingly.

• Step by step, foot by foot.

• We’ll be equal before the law when the judges are too.

• Men went to Mars. The Martians said, ‘What robots!’

• Equality between men and women is merely biological, in life she is everywhere.

• Men live penned in prison, animals at liberty in zoos.

• Understand the solitude of those who live within you and you’ll be a human being.

• Depending on myself, I depend on others.

• Even under a king’s crown it’s a man who makes the decisions.

• One page of love, several novels of life.

• We’ll become what we are.

• If only life were a bible, containing nothing but truth.

• An absolute rule – no one is an exception.

• Times past were better – so were we.

• A recipe for a long life: live less each day.

• Interest is like a pipe of peace; it must be shared for peace to rule.

• You say it’s all one to you; have you thought that ‘all’ is plural?

• The fool who keeps company with the wise is not such a fool after all – nor is the wise man who keeps company with fools very wise.

• Take your time over the first step, the second follows by inertia.

• The earth’s in a tight place – everything’s on the increase.

• Now is better than next time.

• A stranger at home, a stranger abroad – a citizen of the world.

• Wine can’t breathe because of the cork, but without it, it goes sour.

• First kitsch, then avantgarde.

• It’s no laughing matter being the tree of life in a forest fire.

• Write a word every day, in the end you’ll have a novel.

• Carnivores are bad because they eat meat, herbivores good because they graze on flowers.

• If you don’t go on you’ll get to where you left off.

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• What kind of laughter is a sneer?

• The gift of genius is public comedy, it raises a laugh.

• I’m looking for a way to tell you everything to your face – have you time to listen to any of that?

• No one is last as long as love at first sight exists.

• Women and luck are alike, both changeable by nature.

• As long as you’re pacific, you’re the greatest ocean.

• Until you begin to apologise, you’ve done nothing wrong.

• Of nine chances, we’re the tenth.

• Let’s chain Prometheus, the forest has begun to blaze around him.

• The universe is endless, time without a beginning.

• All present applauded the speaker, even the author of his speech.

• Stay in one place – you have to die somewhere.

• The meeting of evil spirits is postponed – they can’t bear standing on a sound platform.

• I’ll spend my time with you if you’ll leave me alone.

• Art has become universal – what someone can do, anybody can.

• Shorten the next journey to the next step.

• Look at success after an interval of time – isn’t there something grotesque in it?

• I write freely, expecting the verdict to be liberating.

• If you don’t live among friends, you too will become an enemy.

• Politicians today have nothing to be pardoned for; they’re not guilty of anything.

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• The equator is at your feet, with your next step you’ll be North or South.

• Think differently about the same thing.

• You’re living dangerously – one day you’ll hit the headlines.

• My friends know me better because they look me in the eye more often.

• What sort of friendship should we opt for: a day’s, a year’s or a lifetime’s?

• A foolish thought in a play on words isn’t so any more.

• Tomorrow is the day of our first encounter, today of our last farewell.

• A little every day and already a lot more.

• I follow in your footsteps but your feet leave no prints.

• People are blind in two situations – when they love and when they hate.

• The world has changed, everyone has begun to look like everyone else.

• Because we all give, everyone gets something.

• From where on the globe should I set out to reach my goal?

• Leap over what doesn’t deserve to be walked over.

• Better to conquer yourself than have others defeat you.

• The Achilles’ heel of the footstep is its print.

• Since we understood each other at once we have neither a past nor a future.

• Be extreme, the average is middling.

• A new sort of racism – party colours.

• Seeing birds fly freely, the emigrant would like to be a migrant.

• Who loves, overdoes things; who overdoes things is not loved.

• Ruler, is the middle class content? The upper class will never be.

• Man’s ecological error – overpopulation.

• Three kinds of slave: the slave to power, the wage slave and the credit slave.

• Distance yourself from yourself, you’re close to evil.

• Sure of yourself, sovereign everywhere.

• Punishment is most often revenge, but when punishment errs it dreams of pardon.

• I’ve a feeling I’ve seen you somewhere!

Yes, don’t you have a feeling you need me for something?

• I stand the way my affairs stand.

• Everything depends on the election, who will pay for it?

• The younger generation likes autumn, it sees the older as a deciduous forest.

• Don’t miss the moment if your future’s in it.

• I stand the way my affairs stand.

• Of all consequences, the first is the longest.

• The world’s become tragicomic, nobody laughs outright without a tragedy.

• The actress understood too late, to be a fashionable success she should be naked.

• You’re my first love; at the start I was the last to be first.

• Spring’s arrived, the flowers are in bloom, but no one’s taken a sniff at me.

• After the first comes the average.

• Of all womankind, the motherland weeps most honestly.

• As long as there was capitalism and communism there was the cold war; now the world’s in flames.

• Better days are coming, so man will be even worse.

• The nation and nationalities will be richer, everyone working on his own account.

• The tax we pay from birth is life, the interest our years.

• I’ve learned nothing from myself, all my life I’ve learned from life.

• Talk openly but in an open space – words eco.

• The difference between profit and profiteers: profit is divided, profiteers multiply.

• Brief announcement: full stop.

• I say the same thing all the time, in this I differ from others.

• Be in touch with your soul, the body’s fickle.

• Judging from my instinct, they’re right to call me an animal.

• Macedonia is immortal: it’s surrounded by deathless foes.

• I’m always the first to do wrong, that’s why I’m so experienced.

• Either be it, or stop going on about what you want to be.

• Why shouldn’t I gossip about my friends? My enemies know in advance what I’ll say about them.

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• He who is born with everything he needs has no need of himself.

• The bad novel became a drama, all the characters started to ham it up.

• I am the avantgarde, I trample all before me.

• Whoever wants to rule should be a realist, the female sphere is not amenable to that.

• Be civilised, abstain.

• The price goes up when we are paying, and falls when others do so for us.

• I’ve no need of a visa, my friendship has no frontiers.

• Think freely about freedom of thought.

• The glass in your hand is fragile, the water in it heavy.

• Why so many smiling politicians when they persuade us we’re living in difficult times?

• I was sacked, I’d no electricity, my child had neither bread nor milk. The first snow fell! I went out for a walk boiling inside.

• The wise man counsels the foolish as long as he doesn’t trust him – then he laughs at him.

• As long as your chances are sinking, you swim well.

• Between the frontier and the marriage bed there’s a foreigner.

• According to the statistics, crime has decreased – but just wait till the next election.

• Wise plus wise, wiser; foolish plus foolish, more foolish.

• In childhood death is an illusion, in middle age a reality, and in old age an everyday occurrence.

• The easiest woman is the inquisitive one, she’ll give herself to convince herself.

• In life we either weep or laugh – the rest is the daily round.

• When everything’s in motion, it’s hard to escape being trodden on.

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• Where there’s punishment there’s fear, where there’s fear there’s deceit.

• After the good times comes reality.

• When a rich man swims in a sea of cash, he thinks it’s an ocean.

• The difference between the unfaithful man and the unfaithful woman - she has the greater choice.

• If you’ve decided to go all the way, distance yourself.

• Enough! - so that it doesn’t get boring.

• When it’s certain the force that’s heading for you will win, face another way.

• Who’s more in the right: he who usurps another’s right, or he who wants to keep the right for himself?

• Don’t limit the movement of those who follow you.

• Write down what you said, but use fewer words.

• Seize the moment when you’re in fashion, for fashion’s moment doesn’t last long.

• Don’t irritate the mouth whose tongue expresses itself crudely.

• To live healthily, you should eat well - to live longer, eat less.

• Have we ever asked ourselves what happens behind the man who always wants to be in the foreground?

• Judge the sublime, the rest is error-free.

• What do cows think of silicone breasts?

• Be in the middle; don’t underestimate the one below you, or overestimate the one above you.

• Finally the tastes of artists and consumers have coincided - paint and consume a Big Mac, Coca Cola or spaghetti.

• If somebody serves you as a model, don’t undress in front of them.

• I’m in a fix: should I take the queen, or checkmate the king?

• Fill the mouth that constantly criticizes you, and the same mouth will shower you with praise.

• Why shouldn’t I sell myself, if someone’s prepared to pay more than I’m worth?

• Swim in the sea of love; later you’ll start to drown in it.

• There’s a philosopher with universal wisdom - he’s called Old Age.

• What would Tutankhamen’s attitude to silence be, when nowadays every ‘pharaoh’ has his own spokesman?

• No one is as young as his years, or as old as the years life has given him.

• How to prevent the inevitable, when it’s a part of what’s to follow?

• Line up in order, I want to set you right.

• I’m in form, my wallet’s shaking.

• What is the evolution of the line of least resistance when the whistle blows for an outsider, and when it blows for the favourite?

• We say that there’s nothing in space that means there’s no space.

• A king’s crowning success is his queen, the queen’s when both crowns are united on her head.

• Today a person no longer knows whether the world has become civilised or militarised.

• The end of all illusions - I’ve hit reality by mistake.

• What should one’s attitude be when someone has done something for someone else and the benefit is mutual?

• What would a novel look like with the first and the last pages blank?

• Is there an ordinal number for the consequences of a wrong decision?

• I’ve reached the peak of the pyramid, what’s the next point?

• When you’re on the list of undesirables, the only consolation is that if they scored you out they might mark your name with a cross.

• It’s a full moon tonight, should I think of sex or my wages?

• Producers of the world, distribute yourselves!

• Decide what your future route will be - the path you follow every day, or the road you should set out on?

• Write down what you said, but use fewer words.

• After Mt. Everest the next peak is Mars.

• Does anyone know where the epicentre of a shaky marriage bed lies?

• Money is a trial - spending deliveres the verdict.

• Everything happens quickly - except in sex.

• A kind od depresion - uncertainty.

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THE BULL

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August burned bright in the yellow of the sand while the music gathered the hearts of all eyes.

Trumpeters, trumpeters, the arena entreats you for quiet and for peace; The bull makes ready to dash out to his death and kiss the toreador who looks towards you, now before the fight begins, before the blade of silver flashes, look at the dusty whirlwinds that blaze in the eyes of the bull, How utterly beautiful he is, how black and how strong.

His might moves in clouds of black shadows and ripples over the arena like a serpent’s tail.

Here, left of the gateway, His hooves dig golden holes in the sand, His heart shatters into shards of ice at the sound of the trumpets, token of death.

Should he weep or meet death proudly.

In his soul knows he is closed in and alone, only the dust beneath his feet moves as it chooses.

A powerful light flashes for an instant in his sad eyes, he forgets the flaming red and his own blood, feels blinded and drunk on his childhood, remembers his mother.

Oh fields, oh fields, how green you were, how fair: butterflies everywhere, mounds of soft earth all round.

Oh fields of warmth and tenderness that charmed me!

He recalls how he ran for the very first time, and everyone saw how light and fleet he flew.

His mother wept with joy at her son how fiery and fine he was.

Ah, grass and butterflies, mounds of soft earth, bubbles of spring!

This ominous music drives death to run at me.

Look how the toreador lures me with his hidden sword, look at the shadows of death that gaze into your eyes, music, you’ve wailed long enough in my soul, you were born to life as I was.

If only I could have said farewell to my mother, have taken leave of her yesterday.

I know the fields would have wept at our meeting.

It’s the grape-harvest now and the wine’s being pressed.

Music, do you have a mother, or is death your dam?

If that’s the way it is I too will kiss her.

But wait - something grips at my heart, My mother has something to tell me before she dies, She dies tomorrow, I today - without her secret.

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The First and the Second (oil on canvas, 70x90 cm)

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Lady II (watercolour, 35x45 cm)

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Avatar (watercolour, 30x45 cm)

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Before (bronze, 30x70 cm)

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Magical Body (bronze, 50x 70 cm) 258

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NUMBER

P O ET R Y

RATS

This is the platform of the great rats, everlasting lords born into death, underneath trains and metallic screech of rails.

This is the platform of sorrow and love, of the great rats of the evil empire, of corridors that travel in trains of fog of the birds that fly one way along the corridors of fog, scattering the spirit of the wind.

Birds, corridors and passages of fog.

The lens of the eye peers anxiously here among the rats, the trains, the rails.

The fog announces to us and to you: No escape. It is lord and master of our entrails.

It is the shadow of our route.

Look, there are the poets who are just crossing the threshold of the entrance.

They want to be first to bid us welcome, last to say farewell.

The rails rattle askew at the tread, the tread of trains arriving and departing within us.

The new arrives, the old departs.

Here is the ball of love rebounding off the walls of life that no one can catch, can touch.

Here everything is secret and concealed, the platform of the great rats - a great secret.

How many platforms and trains to their souls, how many platforms and trains to our death ask the shadows of the guards of death born in them, ask the guards of all the secrets stifled there.

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After my death I’ll tell you how many decades I’m behind in writing telephone numbers in my notebook; it is grubby, long-suffering and old.

I write and write in it, rubbing nothing out.

My telephone notebook is a city of the living and the dead, the dead are born again and the same is true of the living.

It is a city of friends, loved ones and chance encounters.

Meetings there take place at any time of day.

Everyone starts out there with everyone and everyone knows everybody else.

New friendships are old, the old are new.

There everyone writes himself in without rubbing anyone out.

Noted like this the numbers are stamped on the skin of the day and together they write secrets they don’t even know.

Since sincerity settles into them all they merge and crowd together, stretched out they set inner roads in motion.

So number matches number and is fond of it, so number hushes number and comforts it, though when there’s no third number any more there’s no response from the number sought.

So the numbers entered will always be alive in themselves, and the fates of the secrets will last together in the travellers through the gentleness in their pure souls, and it will always remain so as long as the numbers stay in it, and as long as they can be told: Always be good to your souls and as long as my body moves I will be a river that flows in you all.

But when it is not so I too will become one of the numbers there.

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LIGHT

Viewers, listeners and readers, you are present on the day of wisdom, before you Plato is seated on the throne of the State, Shakespeare rhymes with Hamlet on the wall, Goethe christens his devil Mephistopheles, Sophocles weeps at Antigone’s birth, Pushkin challenges the Captain’s second daughter to a duel, Mozart using a lexicon studies the word note, Camus encounters the Outsider in himself...

Viewers, listeners and readers, around all these acquaintances of ours, immortal mortals and mortal immortals who live and die by their own and others’ wills please resurrect the applause of the public in front of all the microphones and fraudulent charts...

Viewers, listeners and readers, literate and illiterate alike, teachers, professors, deans, secret agents, spies and generals you are the living participants in the greatest sensation, you can see for yourselves that everywhere the halls are packed - in cities, on mountains, on oceans, and the cosmos has hired out its auditoriums the halls of speech, of laughter and of ridicule, all the halls on the sun are packed, and all the halls in every constellation too, every star has sent its representatives, chroniclers, reporters, correspondents, every black hole has sent its representatives only the meteors will be in the role of observers.

We are all waiting, they are all waiting while the temperature rises, cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, we all want, we all desire wisdom’s representatives to say something ...

Plato has split into three parts, Shakespeare has become a brick in Hamlet’s wall, Mephistopheles devilishly exiles Goethe to hell, 272

Pushkin is mortally wounded in order to win the heart of the captain’s third daughter, Antigone is transformed into the board of a stage at Sophocles’ tomb, Mozart’s dead body has been thrown like musical dust into an unknown grave, Camus did not know whether it was worse to be a Plague or an Outsider...

But the representatives of all the planets, stars, meteors and comets, black holes and atoms were impatiently awaiting the word of wisdom: they were born, they lived and multiplied without knowing what death is, so much did they want wisdom to speak out, but wisdom lived out its own life easily, joyfully and thoughtfully, it was a light that was travelling timelessly into eternity.

NOVEL

I am the text of an advertisement: Let’s write a novel together, folks, the novel of our first encounter, the novel of our first love, let’s write together the history of our souls, our hearts.

Clear spring water will be born of it.

Isn’t it good that everyone writes about everyone, everyone writes about himself?

From it the Bible will begin to read the souls of spring’s awakening and to hear what there is within the novel that is written in everyone and in all, in the novel that is written in the joy of its own letters.

Let’s write a novel together, folks, the novel of our first encounter, the novel of our first love.

Everyone should read me, everyone understand me, everyone should read everyone everyone understand everyone.

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VAGINAS

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Vaginas, vaginas... eternal sovereign rulers of all our Suns and Venuses, gardens of wantonness, queens of passion...

Blind theatres dance in your light!

Vaginas, vaginas...

Caravans of Moons and tender flowers rivers of life, volcanoes and lava.

Lightning flashes multiply in the lowering thunder, earthquakes kindle in the pain of passion...

Listen to the drumbeat of the heart that cries out, everything is blinded by your light, everything melts in the pearls of your smile.

You have woken spring betimes with the music of your passion and drunken monsoons secretly tremble in a trance...

Vaginas, vaginas, blossoming beauties...

Before you cruise the pale fingers of the pianist and the smoke that dies down in the face of the candle of the night, his fingers with miraculous secrets entice your body, thirsty for love and longing to touch it.

Seaweed blossoms from your love, the sea blooms and the fish.

But the light here does not flicker, does not know the fish, does not touch the flowers and the waters of the sea.

Let the sea remain a secret to itself,

everything seeks to be gentle, to be close to your grace.

Finally the moment of the speech of our soul arrives.

Tell us, tell, the truth is here: with what harp do the strings of your passion awake.

We, titans of space, fall like tiny snowflakes on your breasts, your bodies arrange a secret feast for us, no one will know, see in silver baskets we send you flowers, carnations, roses, orchids.

Along the mighty waters of the Ganges and Bramaputra, hasten, the Tower is being built, Babylon invites you to love eight times on all of its eight levels, the Tigris calls you,

the Euphrates calls you, Luxor calls you, the sphinxes call you.

Tomorrow the pyramids will be decked with the tombs of all the pharaohs.

Amon Ra will come with the sun inside him wanting to meet you, wanting to touch you in the darkness of the pyramids, in the caves of passion.

STANDARD The man was standardly mad.

When there were clouds in the standard The man was standardly mad.

How many madmen in clouds there were!

What the clouds wanted was standard rain, but the rain fell ever harder.

8 MARCH th

“Today is the Eighth of March,” was whispered among the flowers.

“Today is the day of passion, a loving embrace awaits you.”

CROSSROADS Will we ever understand it, our shared love?

We met at a crossroads, you gave me a flower, I gave you gentleness.

You set out on your road, I on mine.

And we have both travelled since that shared crossroads of ours.

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Romena (bronze, 18x96 cm)

Dogon’s Message (bronze, 38x96 cm) 277

Dogon Woman (bronze) 278

Primitive Couple (bronze, 35x30 cm)

The Winner (bronze, 35x60 cm)

Figure (bronze, 18x30 cm) 279

TIME STATION

Everything can fit in a point: space, silence, light, time.

Birth, time, death. But the point is time, which means it can live anywhere and everywhere. To be still, but also to be an elypsis on the path of a star, a constellation, the cosmos, the Universe‌ As long as all is in it, it can become nothing.

It can die.

But, if a point can die, it also means it can be reborn, because it moves constantly. In its motion, it grows constantly, becoming the biggest, becoming the Universe.

Therefore, it has to die again. In points. In a point. Multiplied into universes. Universes grown into a Universe. Universe - born in a point. Point transformed into the soul of time, so it can live in it.

And because of that it wants to freeze in time, endlessly turning‌around its imaginary axis.

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K iro U rdin ’ s F i l ms

Planetarism One point everywhere, everything in one point.

One art everywhere, everything in one art.

As part of this year’s Skopje Summer Festival, four films by Kiro Urdin were shown in the Mala Stanica venue of the National Gallery of Macedonia by way of homage to this distinguished artist. The Skopje public had the opportunity of seeing his films Planetarium, Dogs and Trains, Dogona and Pishta.

The painter and film director Kiro Urdin lived and worked in Paris from 1974. He is one of Macedonia’s best-established and best-selling painters, who in the past decade has also been engaged in film making.

In the case of Kiro Urdin what we have is a different, indeed a rare artistic feat – or rather, the combining of two artistic feats into one: painting and film. Yet neither Kiro Urdin’s ideas nor his impulses end with the 282

camera or his paintbrush. He goes much further, exploring and interpreting life, filming it and painting it in all its radiance and its spectrum of colours. In world-wide terms Urdin is to be numbered among the leading cosmopolitan artists, globe-trotting documetors of the planet Earth.

It is in this sense that Dogs and Trains poses the question: What is it that is closest to art – that which cannot be understood or that which is impossible? This is how Urdin introduces the age-old topic of the link between art and life. He does not shy away from stating his own scruples about our modest capacities, our imperfections. On the contrary, he counters them with dimensions of his own reality, spontaneity, spirituality, timelessness and infinity, categories experienced to a certain extent but not fully comprehended. A painter need not necessarily travel far to portray his daydreams and imaginings, the pictures already prepared in his mind, but Urdin as an artist wants to feel the concrete, bare, vital experience of travelling, of space, of authentic knowing, to draw upon the diversity of civilisations, to

make contact with the essence of life... and of death. And what can be more disturbing, more thrilling and more enlightening than the wisdom of the Dogon people: a celebration in honour of death?

And yet this idea was conceived long ago at a time when the young Urdin was wandering through Montmatre, when the clochards of Paris were to be numbered among his friends, when he filmed Pishta, a poor soul, an urchin dear to God but now grown old, whose act of self-immolation could not be interpreted otherwise than as a celebration of the birth of death, a revelation and a liberation. So it was that, twenty-seven years after shooting the first sequences of Pishta, Urdin brought us Pishta the clochard’s departure for paradise. And Venko Serafimovski was to illustrate it discreetly and elegiacally with his own piano version of an ode to Bohemians, not in the style of Beethoven, but his own appropriate Ode to Street Innocents.

Two years later, when dogs and trains crossed paths, Urdin registered that magical and cyclical passage of fate: Illusion is a Mystery, Mystery is Reality, Reality is Illusion. And the obvious truth that we are all thirsty for water, but also the well known metaphor that only love thirsts for fire. And it is precisely that love, as the rudder guiding Urdin throughout his creative quest, that succeeds in kindling the fire of the world, in revealing the radiance of Earth’s globe, a radiance visible only from other planets.

Urdin’s films awaken in us our dormant sentiments of and need for companionship among people, remind us of the almost forgotten tactile forms of communications.

Urdin is something quite rare among creative artists: an obstinate optimist, an incurable apologist for beauty, art and life. Yet he is no ideologist of joy but a realist, an artist of flesh and blood whom this planet has taught to respect death, too, as much as he does life.

In this context it is only right and proper to mention those people without whom Urdin’s films might have been other than what they are: Ivan Mitevski – Coppola, as the director of Planetarium, the cinematographer Vladimir Petrovski-Carter and Venko Serafimovski, mentioned previously, the composer of the music/sound track in the majority of Urdin’s films.

For Urdin humanity is his motive, art his tool and love his message. This is Kiro Urdin’s Planetarism, the building of civilisational bridges between cultures. In shooting Planetarium he assembles on the screen, his canvas, traces of the sky over Berlin, the marble of Sacré Coeur, the milk of the shewolf of Rome, the ashes of Pompeii, the waters of the Ganges and the sands of Africa . . . all of these traces of this world on a single canvas, all thoughts in a single space . . . and the message is love.

Vlatko Galevski 283

P L A N ET A R I u M

f i l m , ru n n in g time 57 min Paris. A late November night, and it had not stopped raining for three days.

Through my studio window I watched the dark silhouette of an exhausted dog.

I

left Skopje in October 1973, and, once in Paris, I headed for the Paris metro. The air there was heavy and humid. It reminded one of the old age of the metropolis. In the pockets of my army jacket I had a bottle of water, my shaving kit, a few cans, a mirror and some other trinkets.

I spent three nights there with tramps and other vagrants. Every now and then a police officer or some other official would warn us that sleeping is not allowed in the metro. But none of us paid attention. On the fourth day I left my abode and headed for the Place du Tertre. In those days Paris was all charm and saga. It appeared as if it had transformed the proud Gallic idyll into eternity. I was under 284

Its slow stride revealed its old age. To the left stood a container full of garbage. I could catch a glimpse of my latest painting in the depths of my studio. I watched it silently. It was worn out and without soul. It looked like a squeezed mass hurled into space. I was helpless and lonely in my despair. I wanted to destroy it, to burn it up, but I did not have the strength to walk the distance from the window to the painting. the impression that everybody loved everybody. That afternoon, among other painters, I met a friend from home town. I spent the next three months in a cellar that he vacated for me, free of charge. He dropped by every day just to leave his painting gear there. The cellar had an earth floor, there was no electricity, no water, no toilet. It was damp everywhere. The mattress smelled of mold. After some twenty days I began to feel chest pains.

It must be tuberculosis, I thought. And yet I was lucky - I had a roof over my head. From time to time, during the night, an insect or rat would run over me... The darkness of the cellar gripped my soul like a steel clamp. But all this had already become part of my life.

Passing through many American cities, Michael and I arrived in New Orleans. I was running out of money. We were planning to spend the night in a deserted boat. However, a friend of ours introduced us to a lady who agreed to give us a room for three dollars. Madam Olson had been a Hollywood starlet in the 30s.

The walls of her apartment were plastered with photographs from her young days. The glory of her bygone beauty loomed over all those photographs. The apartment had three rooms. In each room there was a TV set and many lightbulbs. She immediately warned us that in her home they had to be turned on at all times. The

windows in all the rooms were walled up. The sight excited hopelessness. It seemed as if Madame Olson had painted a fresco of her loneliness in this sealed space. Were the lightbulbs and the TV sets which were always turned on the windows of her soul? And yet, during that night, as we were trying to get some sleep, it seemed that the old age of this lonely woman bounced off the walls of...

My dear child Today is November 6 1996. This morning I touched for the very first time the tomb of Jesus Christ and wept for the soul of my mother, of my father and of all poor souls. The Son of God, crucified and eternal, was above me on the cross. It seemed that the pain of Golgotha hovered above the candle smoke. Then I passed by the Wailing Wall, and the scent of eternity was in the Jerusalem air. That night I had a premonition. I realised that I must burn my Planetarium in eternal Jerusalem in order to resurrect the spirit of new offspring, Planetarium.

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Planetarium is the first painting in human history to be worked on all over the world P L A N ET A R I U M

T

he painting Planetarium consists of two panels, each covering 24 square metres.

The artist KIRO URDIN has dedicated twenty months to the execution of this work in different places of our planet: The Berlin Wall, Nerezi, Ohrid, Brussels, Knokke-le-Zoute, Bruges, Paris, Rome, Pompei, Pisa, the Suez Canal, London, Stonehenge, Athens, Cape Soúnion, the Tomb of Jesus Christ and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the Nile, the Great Pyramid in Giza, Kenya (Masai Mara), 286

New York, Machu Picchu, Cuzco, Bangkok, Peking (the Forbidden City) and the Great Wall of China, Tokyo, Kamakura, Nuenen and Eindhoven.

It presents the different cultures of the world and its different regions. It presents itself as a multimedia project, as an integration and synthesis of several arts such as painting, cinema, photography, music and video.

The aim is to bring together and unite artists from around the world into a new art movement called “Planetarism”.

THE P L A N ET A R I U M O R O N E M A N ’ S O D Y S S EY

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f to leave is to die a little, Kiro Urdin who arrived in Paris in 1973, bereft of everything, started his resurrection after three months spent almost in a tomb, a cellar lent by a compatriot, where he lived obscurely during his first weeks in the City of Light. In order to survive, he managed to paint portraits of tourists on the place du Tertre, tourists who wanted to see themselves in paint so as to believe they are characters. But doing this without permission meant that Kiro lost his work permit, and found his fate: since he was not allowed to paint to live, he decided to live to paint. So he chose this path, out of all the image-making arts in which he is adept.(he practiced law in Belgrade, and studied visual arts and cinema in Paris). But the masterpiece he is most proud of is not a picture, and he is only half its author: she’s called Donna, by virtue of a baptism, carried out in her father’s native land, in the church of Orhid in Macedonia, situated beside a lake shaped like the beginning of the word. A church with blue vaults lit up by frescoes, similar to the sumptuous frescoes in Nerezi, announcing Giotto as early as the 12th century. This inspired Kiro Urdin to undertake his project to create a heavenly vault for the end of the 20th century which he calls Planetarium.

One becomes godlike when one becomes a father: Kiro was ready to create the sky and the earth for his little daughter’s wide eyes, open to every mystery. And off he went, travelling the world, but not in order to bring back its images to lay at the feet of the child, because an abstract painter only ever shows his inner world. So as to show his secret heaven, he wanted to climb the topmost rungs of the art word, all the places where heaven is the subject matter. Determined to go under every sky, unrolling his canvas, to see if a few little stars might land on it.

And so he covered many of these sacred places on the planet, from the Pekinese Temple of the Celestial Peace to the Leaning Tower in Pisa, from the stones of Stonehenge to those of Machu Picchu, from the Egyptian pyramids to the one in the Louvre, from the Masai Mara huts to the pagodas in Kyoto or Nara, from the Buddhas’

golden smiles in Bangkok, to the petrified sighs of the children of Pompei.... All the famous sites saw this figure, like a carpet dealer, a man carrying his roll of immense canvas on his shoulder, and it was a flying carpet. The artist was seen at work everywhere, obsessed by his visions, painting endlessly, exalting his life, a merchant on his carpet starred by colours, even lying on this amazing shroud unrolled in Gethsemane, just before he got the idea of setting fire to this burden, which perhaps weighed like a secret cross on his shoulder: in Jerusalem he immolated this attempt at heaven, to find out what might appear in the emptiness between the burnt edges of the canvas holding all his journeyings.

When he is not at the ends of the earth, Kiro works in his studio, walking over ladders placed flat on the canvas stretched on the ground, as if once could climb horizontally, as if seeking to reach inner stars.

And now the vision has arrived home, in the Neways building where the two canvases are hung. One is finished, it looks more like a planisphere than a planetarium: strange coloured continents seem to float on the oceans of the blue planet, like a satellite vision, taken from a dream space ship, from which one could make that heaven come true. But maybe we only see what we believe.

The other panel of his work arrived, infinite, and Kiro finished it on site, tracing in red the huge networks of blood vessels of vital circulation around a circular central pocket, and in that belly one might discern a foetal shape. And here we find Donna again, starting to walk, having come along, wit her mother’s help, to place her little paint-stained feet on the canvas, so that her first steps could become imprints, taking part in the manufacture of the red work. Going over the course of her life, from her mother’s womb to her meeting with the blue painting, the whole earth travelled by her father to find her. From the far-off interiors, where to come back is to live.

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Jerusalim

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China

Skopje

The Great Wall of China Japan

Thailand

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Machu Picchu

Pisa

Egypt

St. Paul de Vance

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Stonehenge

Pompei

Brussels

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Jerusalem

Kenya

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New York

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Stonehenge, Edwin Meulensteen and K.U.

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“KIRO HAD BEEN INSPIRED BY OTHER CULTURES, WHICH LED ME TO ENVISION A DANCE PIECE INSPIRED BY THE THEMES OF MULTICULTURALISM AND HARMONY. I DON’T WANT TO DEFINE CULTURES, BUT RATHER TO SHOW THAT OUR DIFFERENT STYLES OF DANCE CAN MERGE TOGETHER INTO ONE HOMOGENOUS GROUP.” DEBBIE WILSON “THE GLOBE AND MAIL, TORONTO, FEBRUARY 2003”

Choreography : Debbie Wilson Set design : Kiro Urdin Music : Venko et Vasko Serafi mov Photography : David Hou

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dance

Debbie Wilson has been creating works as an independent producer in both Ontario and Quebec since 1990. In 1994, she embarked on a new path as founder and Artistic Director of the OMO Dance Co., for which she has created a growing repertoire of critically acclaimed works.

Omo Dance Company is a dynamic, multiracial company that engages and excites its audiences through Debbie Wilson’s critically acclaimed choreography, and through collaborations with outstanding composers, artists and designers. OMO’s wide appeal to both dance-related and popular audiences has garnered Debbie Wilson the “Best Local Choreographer” award in the Toronto-based NOW Magazine’s readers’ poll for 2000, 2001 and 2003. OMO has shown an impressive annual increase in audience attendance, and is one of Toronto’s most prolifi ccompanies.

Th e performance Planetarium Multimedia Project was presented to Toronto, Skopje, Heraclea, Ohrid, Ankara, Chicago, Geneva, and during the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the United Nations.

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Ohrid

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Gen e va , 6 0 t h UN A nni v ersary C el eb rat ions , P l an e tarium Ball et and F i lm 26 June - 24 October 2005, Geneva

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here were they to go. By water or by land. There was sunshine everywhere. Every day.

And stars too. Sometimes mothers collected the stars in wooden vessels and gave them to their children. To the north was the River Niger, and it seemed to the oldest Dogon that at the time of his brother’s funeral Nomo was whispering to him and making it known to him.There, in the north, lies Bandiagara.

On the river bank the crocodiles are waiting to carry you across to the other side. To the chaos on the steep, stony bank. There are the rocks of the Tellem, the bird people, the great wizards of the realm of spells. Indeed, they appear from time to time as a sandstorm with a herd of wild animals or with the white fox.

That’s how the Dogons got to Bandiagara.

Here in the massif of the Yugo the first Sigi began, in honour of the first one to die. The masked dancers danced every sixty years recalling the moment when death was first born. Olobolu, the dancer with the big snake mask, leapt about with a marvellous lightness while his soul was full of Ama, Nomo and the eight ancestors.

It seemed as if the prayer of the oldest Dogon was issuing from the great mask as he lifted up his arms towards Nomo and the other ancestors. He prayed that rain would fall, that the fields sown with onions, rice and corn would be watered. That the pregnant women would have easy births. They believed in the power of the almighty, who had succeeded in 318

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uniting space and time. He knew from what his grandfather had told him that only the body can die, the spirit not, that it was a part of Ama. Neither could it die, nor be born.

He gazed at the sacred paths. The spirits are here, around us. They see us, they love us, but they also punish our sins. That’s why you must always take care. Everything has a soul.

Even death. Life and death live side by side, like the earth and the sky. e went barefoot all his life. He felt H neither stones, nor sand, nor thorns. His skin was as hard as the drought. The eight totems protected him from everything. Even from thirst. Less and less rain fell. Sometimes, in Bandiagara, during the days of the Tellems, the great wizards, there were herds of antelopes, lions and leopards. But they’d all vanished because of the drought. The plants, insects and birds too. The sand had become their graveyard. Everyone was praying for rain. Even the dead. From time to time the Tellems appeared as a sandstorm, accompanied by their vanished herds, or in company with the white fox. But the Dogons remained here, their spirit survived. The rice continued to grow and ripen to harvest. The onions too.

The skilled hands of the Dogons went on fashioning figurines and masks.

The mornings, when the darkness still clung to the landscape, the infants, grown one with their mothers’ backs, mutely watched the first blows of the mattocks. The fields had to be sown. The first rains had only just fallen. And their older

brothers and sisters were still sleeping without a care in the world under the mantle of the stars.

Then his grandfather went on with his tale: Before the time of Doyogu-Seru, the first man to die, death had not existed. That was why the Dogons made the great snake mask, in honour of the birth of death. When you were born - continued his grandfather - the rains dried up for three years. The sun grew bigger each day. By night new stars emerged. It began to seem to the Dogons as if they slept on stars, there were so many of them. The women stopped wailing over death and instead of weeping over it they wept over thirst. But the dancers were here, the masks, the figurines with their arms raised to Ama, to Nomo, the dead ancestors whose spirits, living here beside them, the eight living totems which protected them - the living power of Nyama.

Thirst gave way in face of that protecting power. So the plants did not dry up, the infants grew, only the birds didn’t fly, the air was too hot. Soon heavy rains fell. The livestock were watered after such a long time when not a drop of rain had fallen.

Dolo remembered when his grandfather had died. It was May. The masked dancers wove in a spiral around their house. The dead body of his ancestor was placed in a freshly hollowed-out tree trunk on the verandah, and in a trance the oldest Dogon explained, by means of mime, the symbols and the genesis of the cosmos. Night had long since fallen and it was as if the almighty Ama was riding on its shoulders. At one moment it seemed to him that the eight totems were sitting on his grandfather’s body, exchanging greetings with the spirit that had not yet left his body.

Dolo was captivated by the dancers, the masks, the figurines, by the mannikin of death, and the sacrifice was brought out,

that meant that Nomo was here too, Ama was there. And all the ancestors. Space had merged into a single point. The stars, wind, fire, water and time too. From the other side the sound of tools could be heard. One of the neighbours was completing the sculpture which was to be sacrificed. On the other side of the fence the children were drawing something incomprehensible. That morning they had hoped that the white fox would pass across the picture so that the holy ones could figure out the augury. And the children drew and played innocently and purely as their childlike hearts bade them.

Dolo recalled the words of his grandfather.

Death has a soul, he said, everyone has a body and several souls, and a living power, and is born and lives in water. It is everything. When a baby is born, it drinks water through the milk. Before death the old people ask for water. Everything is born in it: light, wind, earth, even fire. Plants, insects, birds.

The soul. Even the deserts are created by water. At night, when everyone is asleep, water is transformed into a bird with enormous wings that flies over Bandiagara. In the morning it vanishes with the sun. And when Ama decides the sand can be transformed into rain, the desert into a sea. Life flows for a time, joy returns, men love only water more than their women. But when it vanishes, fear puts in an appearance, pain, hunger, thirst...

Dolo felt happy at all this. His soul laughed.

Death seemed to him to be the shadow of Sirius, lying upon the body of his grandfather. He rejoiced in the dancers’ airy leaping.

And the spirits of all the other dead were there somewhere in the offing. At dusk they would have to set off for the marvellous land of the ancestors, to the realm of the holy spirits. Everything was everlasting that night, the spirits could neither be born nor die. he universe of immortality was gathered T into the eye of Ama. 319

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Yet his steps had their own purpose. They stepped out of their own accord. They were the steps of his life which was passing.

Streets without houses, without trees. Only walls and more walls. Paving-stones drawn from the womb of the underworld.

His music was the wind which journeys everywhere - and why not think of the wind as flights of music. The trees of a dessicated life . . . But wasn’t that all this a delusion? He thought of himself as a shadow moving along roads, through towns that no longer existed. In his soul there lived rivers, fish, clouds, birds, the winds and the scales. The scales, flights he ascended and descended. Now downwards towards life, now up into the clouds. He wanted to touch them, to be a bird, flying free in the wind. To become a cloud, his soul falling in the rain, bearing the seed of life.

P I S HT A

Nobody knows how the story of his life began.

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He had made up his mind to be a friend to everyone. To everything. Even if they proclaimed him an outsider. As an emigrant of the soul.

Had he really once been born? Did he have a mother, a father . . . a birthplace, a sky of his own? It seemed to him that his whole life had taken place in only one day. He didn’t even want to know about it.

He travelled on and on. Travelled to where he would never reach. Through the walls of his solitude.

And did the stars know this? How many nights he had spent under them! If only he could have come closer to them!

If only he could turn the waters of the rivers into alcohol! into steam! How much less painfully would his soul sail in that case! He understood it was his fate to travel in freedom, in time, without wife, without children, without a home.

But the streets stretched out in his soul like an endless road. Towns came to resemble each other. The highways too. Streets paved, muddy, twisted, colourful, broad, narrow. Streets with no horizon.

Yet at one moment he did think to himself: have I gone mad? Nothing is clear to me any more, and it never will be.

His memories were like a broken reel of film with strange, faint images. Some of the pictures were scribbled over with irregular lines, others damaged by the fangs of time.

How swiftly his youth and his whole life had passed. The cavaliers of the nocturnal life had long since gone for ever. But his decision had already been made.

The flight of three steps, the paving-stones, the wall. Here he found new friends once more.

Fate had drawn them to one place. Birds. Dogs.

Those bohemians of hunger and alcohol.

On the streets there was no water anywhere, not a drop. And they were parched with thirst, drunk with thirst. Each one of them was alone. Each of them lived for the others.

In his soul now lived all souls. The clouds, the rain and the steps. The steps he continued to take, ascending and descending in life. So was he not a constant traveller, fated to bear the hump of loneliness?

Why did he drink? Why did he sleep under the stars, winter and summer, in the cold and in the fog? More and more steps. Towns and cities. Endless paths and roads. The corridors of solitude . . .

Yet so it continued until he came across the three steps. He fell in love with them immediately. For ever. Passionately. His soul began to ascend and descend them. He quivered day and night. Breathless, timeless. So began their romance . . .

And so he began to speak. He talked and talked.

About himself. To himself. He wanted to announce something to the stars, to the steps, to the walls, to the flagstones, to the birds. To be close to them. He resolved not to go anywhere any more. To stay here. Just here. Now the three steps were the temple of the holy words to which he would go. Where he would tread.

He had not come here to leave again just like that. He had come to stay. He had fallen in love for the first time. At last the play of his life had halted to listen to the speech of the traveller who had said nothing. He talked and talked. He was convinced that the time that had flown past was a train seized-up on a rusty track. This was the point he had been searching for. Life.

The thirst for life. They were all thirsty, and not a drop of water in the streets. And so they were drunk with thirst. Why did the birds visit him so often?! Why did the dogs bark here?! Everything had its own significance. That is why he was forever thirsty. That is why he never stopped speaking.

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DO G S AND T RAI NS

• The enemy’s enemy digs his grave, the friend’s friend graves.

• If you’ve no more space to live in, restrict yourself!

• The first unfaithfulness is contained in the chances missed before.

• From what page of their life should the biographies of the generals begin?

• There’s no stupider creature than a man; he always thinks he ought to start first.

• Isn’t it a good sign when everybody starts to spit on works of art?

• Which is the part of an angle from which we can see equally?

• I’ve reached the station of time, the train goes on without me.

• What’s the difference between a fatal mistake and a femme fatale: the fatal mistake

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is one such, the femme fatale is the sum of several fatal mistakes.

• So which is closer to art - what others can’t understand, or what they can’t do?

• • Love is like grapes, at first they’re sweet, then they grow bitter and in the end they ferment.

• When a person has ‘flu we cure it.

When a bird has ‘flu we slaughter it.

• Be free in your error, in it lives the human being that survives in you.

• What was the name of the man who helped you? Or have you long since forgotten?

• Make no comment on stupidity, it lacks all content.

• Think well and long - writing is a swift process.

• Everything has a short life, even eternity.

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Wa t e r and F ir e f i l m ,

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n astronome at Parenal in Chile, the largest observatory in the world, speaks about the latest dicscoveries about the Universe.

Then we learn about the first steps of the pre-historic man in the vicinity of Kilimanjaro, made 3,6 million years ago.

Then the main story follows. The flora and fauna as they have been created. Life as the primary postulate of the Universe on the beatuful planet Earth. The wondrous harmony between the animals and plants. The water and air as source of life. Fire as God’s gift from thunder. Then the main thing

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follows - the men. The one creation that is most conscious starts destroying it all. Even the fire, water and air can’t defend from him. Lest the animals, the plants, the trees, the forests, etc. Nature counteracts with harsh winds, floods, forest fires...

Is that the end? The vector of life on planet Earth points to that direction.

The last lion, elephant, zebra, insect, bird, tree, plant, egg remain... But it’s death to all of them, because they don’t have a pair.

Man wants to be immortal for eternity, but that’s death for the planet Earth. Isn’t it?

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Masai

Masai

Tanzania

Dragan Spasov - Dac

Terra Ferro

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Written and directed by Kiro Urdin Director of photography: Brand Ferro Editing: Vladimir Petrovski - Karter Music: Venko Serafimov & Vasko Serafimov Art Consultant: Ivan Mitevski

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erhaps in the branches of these trees is written the history of the sky and the earth, even the secrets of primeval man, who lived here. How strange their trunks are. Sometimes swaying, bowed, sometimes twisted, or splintered by thunder and lightning. Trees that grow, wither, fall into the earth without breaking the history of their lives. And time passes so swiftly here, as if it was smaller than a raindrop.

The grasses in it – herds of elephants, of gnus, mountains, subterranean rivers, the sky, the earth. Everything is everything and everything is in everything. The spirit of the savannah is on the move day and night like an unknown traveller, full of secrets. And while it moves it lives, like an amoeba, it fertilises itself together with its marvellous world. It is as if god had loaned it his own body so that everything should be contained in it.

Heavy rain may fall soon, or sandy dust be raised by every unwelcome vehicle as an evil omen of something that will happen. But in a short while everything will wilt, wither into its own peace and quiet.

The night knows how to halt it, to darken

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it all. And everything that exists in that darkness will be absent on the morrow.

The image of the previous day is already growing pale, and life comes into play once more.

On this continent of life two worlds exist side by side: the world of the sun and the world of the rain. Here nothing really dies, it comes to a new birth.

None the less the scorching heat does not want to know this, and in an instant everything can be extinguished, can wither in the leaden cloak of drought. Then time begins to consume itself, to die. But as soon as the rain falls, it’s as if none of this had ever taken place. The way of the rain, the way of the grass, the way of life. The dead ways are born once more: life beyond the grave at death’s crossroads, and a new birth on the paths of life. That is the magic wand with its two extremes: everything is born with the sun and the rain and everything dies without them.

The circle of life. The path of love. An every day that will not be repeated. Here each day is a fresh life. And every day is lived forever.

In the morning, when the savannah awakes, the dance of the day begins. Everything is in motion, it leaps up or amazingly halts for a moment and starts anew.

Can anyone fully describe the mis-enscene of this enchantment? The golden coverlet of flowers reminds us that it is spring, and that life is growing together with the grass. But also of the hell of the coming heat. The heat that knows how to lay everything low, transforming the savannah into a shapeless mass like a spreading fungus that wearily adheres to its own shadow.

Yet when the clouds descend and cramp the space between sky and earth – if an eagle takes flight, know that something is about to happen.

And what ever takes place in the souls of the hyenas. They run and they run, they leave, go away and return again, with tracks all round them, as if they had been born in them. Tracks and more tracks, crossroads of life rolling like a ball, and no one knows where it set out from or where it will end up.

From time to time the muted howling of a hyena, glancing suspiciously left and right, then carrying on. It continues along its own imaginary paths, or joins up with others if they happen to be travelling in the same direction.

But aren’t these paths spirits of the sun, the rain, and time moving below their feet , or is it only their anxious eyes that reflect life’s uncertainty. Occasionally the sound of the wheels of some vehicle will pierce them with fear, reminding them that everything comes from the sky and ends up under the earth as a first acquaintance and a last farewell.

At noon, when the sun is vertically above and the motor of the animal noises stops, there begins a weary silence in which only the trees breathe safely. Yet towards dusk it will seem as if that silence had never existed. The daily birth day of life will begin once more.

In this sequence of renewal perhaps some miraculous elixir will bring one back to the savannah, to the prehistory of the soul, to share a common home with every thing and every body else – without cities, streets or concrete, erasing the roads, crossroads, boundaries…

Only then will the savannah regain the skin of its wounded body.

And in doing so all that wild life full of love and uncertainty will be born again.

Then, when at the dead of night the shadows of the trees start to move once more, that world will not sleep but will wait with an open heart for the sun to be reborn.

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B I O G R A P HY

1945 Born in Macedonia 1969 Obtained a degree from the Faculty of Law at the Belgrade University

1995 Represented France at the French Art Festival in Tapei

1971-73 Worked as a journalist

1996 Illustrated the cover of the book by Jacques Delors “Combats pour l’Europe”

1972 worked as a chiefset designer for the telecasts “You with us too” and “Contact”, dedicated to the music composed by Beethoven, Verdi, Mozart, Chopin and Monteverdi

1997 Illustrated the cover of the book by Anatoli Karpov “Mes plus belles victores” 1997 Represented the Republic of Macedonia in Thessaloniki – Culture Capital of Europe ’97

1974 Studied at the “Academie des Arts Plastiques” in Paris

1995-97 Travelled around the world and realized Planetarium as a multimedia project which included paintings, films and photos

1977 Obtained a Degree in Film Directing from the ”Academy of Cinema” in Paris 1982-83 Painted the portraits of the participants in the renowned “Soirees Poetiques de Struga” series (Neruda, Montale, Orlov, Okai, Guivellic)

1998-02 Wrote 8 books of poetry and aforisms in French and English 2003 Planetarium became a worldwide ballet performance created by the choreograher Debbie Wilson

1984 Worked as an independent painter in different countries : France, USA, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Mexico, Belgium, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Taiwan

2005 Became a member of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences

1984 Wrote and published the book “Le dedoublement de la personnalite”

2008 Represented Macedonia at the Festival de la Francophonie de Moscou in Russia.

1987 Listed in the reference work”Le Dessin, le Pastel et l’Aquarelle of the contemporary arts”, published by Editions Mayer

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2007 Exhibited at the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Skopje and in Budapest

2009 Recieved and invitation by the City of Nuremberg, Germany, to exhibit at the National Gallery.

My earliest knowledge begins with my greatgrandfather, Constantine. I don’t know what my great-grandmother’s name was. They came from Salonica and had fourteen children, twelve of whom died one after the other.

The thirteenth was my grandfather, Vasil, and the fourteenth his sister, Tina.

My father was called Michael and my mother Makedonka, as is my daughter. But to begin with myself.

I am average in all things: of average height, of average weight, of average years and the colour of my hair is average. My mother and father were average too. And of course my three brothers and my sister are average.

I wasn’t present at the moment of my birth.

Time moved fast then. During the First World War my father was still a child, but even then he had made up his mind that I would be his youngest son. His wish was fulfilled towards the end of the Second World War. It was the month of May and three fortune-tellers told me that the flowers were still smelling of gunpowder. After that moment a good many

years passed and peace reigned everywhere.

Countries were transformed into flower gardens. There were no more wars, no more dead, wounded, starving... There was no injustice, evil or force. When I completed my studies everybody started to judge me. In order to improve my rating, I started with legal norms, and fell headlong into the loopholes in the law. There they convinced me that life beyond the grave can easily be buried.

Because I had little patience for documents I began to paint them and then to record them on film. This same fact ohad undesirable consequences that started to multiply. Their number increased so rapidly that there wasn’t room for them all any more. The only way out was to surrender my space to them. The consequences demanded that I should understand their causes. So on average I became a point, so that nobody noticed me any more.

Now my destiny depends upon the place where they insert me in their written texts.

But if anyone asks me what my wish is, my response is this: because I am a point I don’t want to remain in any one place but to be in perpetual motion.

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F I L M O G R A P HY

1978 Pishta - Film 35 mm, 12 min, - OSMOSA Prod.

1994 I love you, Iban, - Film 16 mm, 25 min. – MKRTV Prod.

1998 L’art de Kiro Urdin - Film 16mm, 20 min, - MKRTV Prod.

PRESS

DOGONA 2002 Film, 16 mm, col., 26 min., MKRTV Prod.Official selection - Festival de Lucerne 2005 - Rose d’Or 2003 Presentation at UNESCO, Paris.

2006 Train Dog – Film video H.D., 36 min, Osmoza Prod.

PLANETARIUM 1998 Planetarium - Film, 35 mm coul., 70 min.

– MKRTV Production,

WATER & FIRE

1998 Offiicial Selection – the38th Festival de TV de Monte-Carlo.

2008 Grand Prix - International Film Festival of Sarajevo, Bosnia

1998 Film viewing at the Centre Georges Pompidou –Paris.

2002 Film viewing at Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico.

2003 Multimedia project, painting, photography, cinema, video, music, litterature and dance – OMO Dance Debbie Wilson Co., performance in Toronto, Heraclea, Ohrid, Skopje, Chicago, Geneva.

2008 Film video H.D., 59 min, Osmoza Prod.

2009 Winner “Best Director” and “Best Cinematography” - International Independent Film Festival of New York 2009 2009 Grand Prix, Europian Film Festival “Green Wall”, Bulgaria 2009 Grand Prix “ECO” - International TV Festival, Ohrid, R. Macedonia

Paris Match

Forum Artis, Modena Comercial Times Le Monde

Jet Society International The Great News Le Figaro

Kulturen Zivot Hsiung Shih Art Monthly Le Monde Diplomatique Honolulu Star Bulletin Mediterranee Magazine Herald Tribune

Mainichi Shimbun New York Times

Yomiuri Shimbun Aspen Daily News

Asahi Shimbun Vernissage

China post Dnevnik

Ehime Shimbun China news

NIN Eindhovens Dagblad

Independence Evening Post Aftenposten

Taiwan Pravda

Beaux Arts Magazine Toronto Star

L’oeil Daily World

Amateur d’art Libre Belgique

Gazette de Genève L’Hebdo, Lausanne

Gazette Drouot The San Juan Star

Tribune des Arts El Nuevo Dia

El Mundo

L’Echo Bruxelles

Knack De Tijd

Het Nieuwsblad The Globe and Mail Independent Film Quarterly

Aspen News

Rogalands Avis Art Press

Tableau Politika

Art Top Prive Halsingborg Arbetet Skånska Dagbladet Tribune des Arts De Krant van West The San Juan Star Aspen Star Le Soiar

2005 Winner “Best Movie” - International Independent Film Festival of New York in Los Angeles.

2006 Film viewing at the Museum of Skopje.

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B I BL I O G R a P HY

1986 Dubois, Jacques Kiro Urdin: Un message de fraternite, L’amateur d’ art, Paris, Sept. 1986, No.729, p.16 1987 Xuriguera, Gerard (Preface- catalogue) Kiro Urdin, Paris, Espace Delpha, 1987 Lalonde, Peggy, He has started a new dimension in watercolor, Daily Word, 21.01 1987 1988 Xuriguera, Gérard (Preface - catalogue), Kiro Urdin, Paris, E.F.F.A., 1988 1989 Importants tableaux abstraits et Contemporains, La Gazette, No. 20, 19.05 1989 D.D. Kiro Urdin un Réel Liquéfié, L’ Hebdo, Lausanne, 15. 06.1989,7975,p.14 J.-C.P. Kiro Urdin: L’aquarelle avec la force de

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l’huile, Gasette de Genève,Tribune des Arts, Geneve, 1989, No. 99,p. 17 Piguet, Philippe Kiro Urdin, Genève, L’oeil, Lausanne, 1989, No. 407, p.86 Geithus, Kjell Monmartre i Sandnes, Lokalt, 14. 09. 1989, p. 6 Reymond, Armande Matiéres Vivantes. Kiro Urdin à la Galerie Catherine Van Notten, à Genève Voir, Lausanne, 1989, No. 60, p.8-11 1990 Challenges New Expression – Exhibition by Kiro Urdin, Ehime Shimbun, 6.01. 1990.

Corinne Timsit International Galleries, Elephant Man (reproduction, p.68), El Nuevo Dia, 14. 09.1990 Allegre Barrios, Mano La sensibilidad institiva de Kiro Urdin, El Nuevo Dia, San Juan, 16. 10. 1990, p. 88 Marili de Laosa Explosion de arte en San Juan, El Mundo, 7.

09. 1989 Debrune, Johan Meesterlijke Urdin bij Robinsons Knoke, De Krant van West – Vlaanderen, Brugge, 31. 8.

1990, p. 22 Ferrier, Jean – Louis Art for the being ( In) Kiro Urdin ( catalogue), Paris, TMI – Connivence Editor, 1990 Rey, Stéphane Figuration libre et Contagion de L’informel, La Libre Belgique, Bruxelles, 5. 09. 1990, No. 248 ( Culture, No. 44, p.21) Rubin, Ada (Preface - Catalogue) Kiro Urdin, San Juan, Corrine Timsit International Galleries, 1990 El Mundo, San Juan Puerto Rico, 23 Septiembre 1990 Ernesto J. Ruiz de la Mata De la materia, El Mundo, Puerto Rico, 30 Septembre 1990, p.6,7 Samuel B. Cherson Interesantes muestras de pintores de tierras, El nuevo Dia, Puerto Rico, 2 Novembre 1990, p.

104,105 Teodosievski, Zlatko Slikite na Kiro Urdin (Kiro Urdin’s Paintings), Kulturen zivot, Skopje, 1990, No. 9-10, p. 31, 32 1991 Galerie Paris, Art Top, No. 121, February – March 1991, p. 22 Exhibition - Kiro Urdin, Ars Nova, Japan, No.4, April 1991, p. 25 Close up, Ars Nova, No. 6, 1991, p. 15 (cover reproduction).

De Cnodder, Remi La puissance eruptive de la forme et de la couleur (preface- catalogue) Kiro Urdin, Knokke – Zoute, Robinson Gallery, 1991 Miljoenen – dans rond Pavaraotti, Prive, 14 Sept. 1991 Jet Society International, Paris, No. 31, 1991 (cover page reproduction: “ The Elephant Man”, 1989) Mathieu, Denis F. Kiro Urdin. A la poursuite de l’essentiel, Jet Society International, Paris, 1991, No.31, p.

10-11 Toebosch, Win

Kiro Urdin: Matiere, Mouvement, Emotion, Paris Match, Paris, 1.08. 1991, p. 92-95 Rey, Stéphane Amour des textes, des lignes et des coulleurs, Cortot, Cornelis, Urdin, Peire, naïfs, ensemble, L’Echo, Bruxelles, 24-26. 08. 1991 1992 Berg, Ulf Tecknare och temperament, Kultur, Galleri Flesser i Helsingborg, 20 January 1992, p. 28 Wagner, Stephan “ De hårda Åren Lärde mig ödmjukhen”, Helsingborgs Dagblag, 5.07. 1992, p.21 Xuriguera, Gérard Kiro Urdin: Un expressivite rebelle a dimension humaine, Paris Match, Paris, 20. 08.

1992, p. 10-13 Carlson, Larsolof Individuel frigörelse, Helsingborg, 10. 10.

1992 Jaustad, Hans Omsusat konstnärsöde, Kiro Urdin stäler ut på Gelleri Flesser I Halsingborg Arbetet, Malmo, 13. 10. 1992, p. 16 Kiro ar hett byte (cover page) Arbetet, Malmö, 13. 10. 1992 Toebosch, Wim (preface – catalogue) Kiro Urdin, Paris, Art Intenational Publishers, 1992 1993 Lång, Helmer Kiro Urdin och konsteins heliga eld, Skånska Dagbladet, Helsingborg, 27. 02. 1993, p. 4 Kiro Urdin, Dynamism, No.133 Japan, February – March 1993, p. 88,89.

Tedeschi, Fabio The architecture of colour and form, Forum Artis, Modena, 1993, No. 4, p. 24 Toebosch, Wim Kiro Urdin, Forum Artis, Modena, 1993, No.4, p. 24 Daval, Diane Kiro Urdin. Reality liquefied, Forum Artis, Modena, 1993, No. 4, p. 25 355

Ortizar, Isaac Le voyage de Kiro Urdin, Forum Artis, Modena, 1993, No. 5, p. 12 Kiro Urdin, Europ’ Art 93, Art Gallery Robinsons, Forum Artis, Modena, May 1993 Bojgienman, Estelle Soho: Itineraire d’un artiste tourmente, “ France – Amerique”, Paris, 16 – 22. 10. 1993, p. 17 Kiro Urdin, Nicaf – Yokohama, Gallery, 1993 Rey, Stéphane Figuration en tous genres et maîtres du passé, Kobe, Urdin, Daufin, trois complices, Cristallo, Pruitt – Early Piero Della Francesca et Lesieur , L’Echo, Bruxelles, 21 – 23. 08. 1993, No. 163, p. 11 1994 Kiro Urdin – Artist, Dynamism No. 139, Japan, February – March 1994, p. 72,73 Kiro Urdin exhibe en Corinne, El Nuevo Dia, 21 01 1994,p.76 Old City gallery hosts Urdin viewing, The San Juan Star, 27. 01. 1994, p. F3 Alvarez Lezama, Manuel Urdin’s works - a dramatic diary of his feelings, The San Juan Star, San Juan, 30. 01.

1994 ( Venue, p. 7) Cvolon Camacho, Dorreen M. Provocativo Kiro Urdin, El Nuevo Dia, San Juan, 3. 02. 1994, p.96 Kiro Urdin. Una sintesis personal, El Nuevo Dia, San Juan, 6. 02. 1994, p. 12 - 15 Vaseva Dimeska, Viktorija, Shinich Segi Kiro Urdin ( preface - catalogue), Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, 1994 1995 Piguet, Philippe Kiro Urdin, L’oeil, 1995 Xuriguera, Gerard, Parmi Les Contemporains, Le dessin, p.50, 1995 Kiro Urdin’s Painting Show China News, 1 December 1995, p. 6

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Nicaf – Jokohama, Gallery 3, 1995, p.57 The franch painter Kiro Urdin: Next time much more official in Taiwan, Comercial Times, 24 June 1995 Charity Exhibition, The Great News, Taywan,1995 Macedonian painter Kiro Urdin, China Post, 23 June 1995 Nancy, T. Lu Paris painter Kiro Urdin - paintings now on view, Life, 2 December 1995, p. 8 Press conference: Kiro Urdin, Independence Evening Post, Taiwan, 1995 1996 Kiro Urdin, Hsiung Shih Art Monthly No.299, 1996, p.64,65.; Art Exhibition by the World Famous Contemporary Painter Kiro Urdin, Taipei, p. 27 Vaseva Dimeska,Viktorija Descriptions of Kiro Urdin’s Influences, Delo, Skopje, 3. 05.1996 Petkovski, Boris Kiro Urdin (preface), Birth of a Painting in a Kiro Urdin’s studio, Paris 1996 1997 Boenders, Frans Around the world with Kiro Urdin (preface), Planetarium of Kiro Urdin, Neways Electronic International N.V., Amsterdam 1997 1998 Avec Kiro Urdin et Nall L’art est au Festival TV, Monte – Carlo, Mediterranee Magazine, 21 February – March 1998 Un “Planetariste” a Paris, Beaux Arts, N. 66, March 1998 Kiro Urdin – Planetarium , Gallerie Frank, Paris, 9 Fevrier – 27 Mars, Beaux Arts, Paris 1998 Rey, Stephane Kiro Urdin - Haute tension, Beaux Arts, 1998

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Venko Serafimov, composer

Brand Ferro, cinematographer

Marin Dimeski, photographer

Debbie Wilson, choreographer

Pablo Ferro, cinematographer

Vladimir Petrovski – Karter, cinematographer 358

Paul Walleyn, assistant director

Petar Dzurovski and Peter Suschitzky

Anne Wouters, cinematographer

Dragi Tanevski, cinematographer, and Ivan Mitevski, director

David Hou, photographer

Guy Brecksmans, photographer

Blagoja Kunovski – Dore, Billy Williams

K. U. and Guy Pas 359

Atelier

Atelier

Atelier

Brothers Vasil, Kiro and Kostadin Urdin, Paris

Atelier

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Atelier

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St. Michael

London

Atelier

Atelier

Atelier

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Jerusalem

New York

Atelier

Ohrid

Heraclea, Bitola

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Marin Dimeski, K. U., Viktor Ivanov, Ivan Mitevski,

Daniele Mayer, New York

Stonehenge

Gerard H. Meulensteen, president and founder of Danubiana, Muelesteen Art Museum Manila

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Tokyo

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Luciano Pavarotti, Mr. Pieter van Vollenhoven

K.U., Andrea Griminelli

K.U. Anatoli Karpov, Paris

Baron and Baroness Ricki and Sandra Portanova, Acapulco

Anatoli Karpov, K.U., Jovan Pavlevski

Gerard H. Meulensteen, The Neatherlands

Baroness Danièle Bacardi and Donna Urdin

Henry Kissinger and K.U., Acapulco

Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac Band)

Maui 366

Linda, Guy Pieters with Edwin, Gerard and Riky Meulensteen

K.U. frends, Paris

K.U. frends, Paris 367

Hawaii

Hawaii Philip and K.U. (Maui)

Acapulco

Geneva, 60th UN Anniversary Celebrations, Planetarium Ballet and Film

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Hawaii

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Kiro Urdin’s family, his daughter Donna Urdin with her sister Michaela and her mother Mirka 370

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Mihail Urdin, Kiro Urdin’s father (left) 372

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Editor: Edwin Meulensteen Preface: Eftim Kletnikov Text: GĂŠrard Xuriguera Jean-Louis Ferrier Vlatko Galevski Jean-Claude Canevet Translation: Graham W. Reid Proofreading: Marija Jones Photography: Marin Dimeski David Hou Guy Brecksmans Graphic design and page layout: Mihajlo Moteski Printed by Paul Vande Walle, VCP Graphics - Ideefix Copyright: Kiro Urdin, 2011