The Utopian City Project: ARTWORKS

The Artworks Art is often considered the most Utopian of all practices, for it is always constructing non-existing worlds that critically reflect on the present state of affairs. Since the Roadwork workshop series the Danube Foundation has invited local artists to produce artwork based on the his or her experience of the workshop. The artists are usually also part of the jury and therefore actively engaged in the workshops and in dialogue with the participants. It is our aim to bring together these pieces of art, and the collages of the different Utopian cities in one large exhibition.

Istanbul

Necmi Mutlu (1988) graduated from Bilkent University’s Fine Arts and Architecture Faculty where he studied graphic design. He’s been drawing all his life without really knowing what and how he draws. This exercise on paper, is a psychoanalysis to him. He recently moved to İstanbul to follow his dreams and projects, where he currently works at Manual Ad Agency as an art director.
He draws to the imaginary side of life. He’s open to other mediums as well such as the meaningless photography films he keeps and motion graphics he has done in the past. After creating an illustration, he loves saying something like “Today, I feel a bit like this”, “I’ve got these feeling inside”. He is very much into comics (especially Batman) (of course Batman!)...

Moscow

Stas Shuripa was born in 1971 in the Sakhalin region at the Far East of Russia. Lives and works in Moscow now. Since the late 90's he has shown his work both in Russia and internationally. Shuripa works mainly with painting and site-specific installation. His work explores conjectures between the tradition of landscape painting, production of space and aesthetic ideologies in early 20th century art, and medialisation of contemporary visual culture.

In 2004 he received an MA diploma from the Valand Shool of Fine Arts in Gothenbourg, Sweden. Previous studies include mathematics, theater design and history of art. Since 2006 he teaches at ICA and Valand School. Shuripa is also contributing editor of the “Moscow Art Magazine“.

Sofia

Andrey Vrabchev is one of the leading young sculptors in Bulgaria who works primary in the fields of public art and large scale sculptural installations. In his works he demonstrates a new view on the monumental genre. He works for private commissions, public art commissions and competitions.
Depending on his artistic goals he uses bronze, stone, steel and high technology materials. Andrey Vrabchev has a BA in Sculpture, MA Design from the National Academy of Arts Sofia Bulgaria and Diploma in sculpture from the National Secondary School of Fine Arts in Sofia Bulgaria.

London

Maaike Anne Stevens is a Dutch artist who lives and works in London. With a background in Exhibition Design, her work originates in interior architecture and the psychology of spaces and its visitors. Having graduated from Central St Martins College in London in 2008, she expanded her work to a more personal level using mixed media like drawing, photography and printmaking.

The main focus in her current work is to encourage people to separate observation from preconception. In the process of visual perception she captures the fraction of a second that precedes the action of categorising thoughts by disrupting holistic perceptual structures. This way she tries to alter daily perspectives in such a way that what you expect to see remains unfulfilled.

Maaike's work blurs the edges between the depicted scene and the world in which the artwork is being displayed. Placing all these layers in the same level, drawing one world into the other, the intention is to make reality look a bit more fictional and the depicted slightly more real.

Berlin

Karl Ingar Röys is a Norwegian artist based in Berlin, Germany. His educational background is in Law studies at the University of Tromsö, Norway and Critical Fine Art Practice from Central Saint Martins College of Art in London, UK. A nomadic lifestyle has led to an extensive international activity where he has exhibited his work in prominent galleries and institutions all over the world.
His artistic strategies are based in project-related experiments on image/film/video/symbols as subjective controlled conveyable instruments where contextual and narrative structures are reorganized in order to investigate underlying means of interest. The emphasis is put on deconstruction and reconstruction of meaning in a predetermined or institutionalized context where he explore and exploit the relationship between politics, economy and art.

Amsterdam

Matthijs Hoitsma (1981, Middelburg, Netherlands) graduated from Utrecht School of the Arts with honors. He has been working in film and television since 2001 and is interested and talented in several disciplines (directing, editing). He is currently working as an editor for MTV and writing a script for his feature debut. Aside from his visual work, Hoitsma is a musician and guitarist playing in various bands.
As part of the Utopian City workshop in Amsterdam he created a video installation about utopias and distopias. Currently Hoitsma leads the documentary project Utopian Europe: Generations for the Danube Foundation.

Zagreb
Marko Zubak (1979, Zagreb, Croatia), has been creating art from early on, playing in the family gallery on the island Rab. He studied painting at Accademia delle belle arti di Bologna, Italy starting in 1999. After three years he moved to Barcelona where in 2006 he obtained his degree at the Facultad de Bellas Artes de Barcelona. In the same year Zubak started a course of multimedia in CIPSA school and finished in 2008. During his study, he has participated in various collective expositions of etching in Italy and also has worked for various magazines as freelance illustrator in Italy and Croatia. His work includes etchings and photography, painting and drawing, digital image, sculpture and lately paper toys design. Zubak together with his mother runs his own gallery in the Croatian town Rovinj, where they both exhibit work from May through October. He created a large painting based on the Utopian City workshop in Zagreb.

Sarajevo
N.E.K.O.(eng. "s.o.m.e.b.o.d.y") is an urban culture youth NGO. It consists of only 4 members, co-founders: Sandin Medjedovic, Mirza Tahirovic, Miran Lazic and Ivan Saric. They have been active in Sarajevo since 2004. The main idea of N.E.K.O. was to make life for young people in Sarajevo more interesting by offering new cultural events and other activities. In the previous period they have organized concerts, graffiti festivals, skateboarding contests etc., but their main project is the international graffiti festival “BALCAN EXPRESS”, that they have been working on for the past 3 years, aiming to turn it into their main activities in the future. For the Utopian City workshop they created a 3 x 2 meter piece.