pioneri 
Mila Dobrevska, a rising Macedonian talent, spent five years in Ravenna, Italy, perfecting her craft in fine arts and mosaics. This year, she has impressive achievements to her name, including a solo exhibition at the Pioneri Gallery in Barcelona and participation in various group exhibitions. Additionally, Mila’s work was on display at the “A Fancy Evening Affair” at Pioneri gallery in Skopje. She’s based in Bologna, finalizing her master’s degree and preparing for an upcoming solo exhibition abroad.
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During the “A Fancy Evening Affair,” Mila unveiled an installation titled “Compositions and Reflections” and introduced “Private Game,” a large-scale painting influenced by the visual motifs of the installation.
The term installation art is used to describe large-scale, usually mixed-media constructions, often designed for a specific place or for a temporary period of time. And this piece entitled ‘Installation of Compositions and Reflections” is just that, a large scale arrangement of nineteen little paintings for a temporary period of time – an exhibition in this instance ‘A Fancy Evening Affair’ in the space of Pioneri Art Platform.
The works are as the name suggests a mixture of compositions – abstract rectangular painting that suggest an occurrence of a figure or some kind of intimate setting, and reflections – and quick and instinctive square paintings that represent memories of people and faces that the artist has seen, met or loved. While those are the pieces that arrange the installation, the interesting part of it is that they assemble a larger face. Stylized in the manner of the artist, the installation looks just like one of Dobrevska’s drawings. If you step back, you start to recognize the facial features. There are eyes, a nose and a mouth, in an almost pixelated manner of arrangement.
This ‘Installation of Compositions and Reflections” is as the artist described it – a visual representation of a period in time, a series of memories trapped and incensed for all to see. Some circumstances or conditions, something that once was, but as the time has passed these instances just remain as a fond recollection. We might never know what this exactly means for the artist, however we can find our own story in the vague outlines of the people represented.
This artwork presents an abstract portrayal of a woman. We as the viewer are not sure of the age of the women, whether it is a young girl, an established woman or a loving grandmother. Intricately crafted from unconventional use of the material, we see three layers of impasto oil paint where until the third is applied you cannot distinguish the figure. Sitting still she symbolizes both innocence and vibrancy, yet maternity and resilience.
The name of the piece could be an indication of the woman’s portrait. “Private game” as it is called, explains a lot of the anonymity of the figure and the artist’s practice. Dobrevska does not like to explain her subject matter, leaving all the imagination to the viewer. The open interpretation combined with the abstract approach invites us to find our own subject matter, our own female that we have a private game with, innocent or not.
