Untitled (2025)

Zoran Georgiev

Watercolor drawing in a frame: 40x40x10 cm, packaging foil, styrofoam, plywood, wooden slats, metal screws, 507х507х205 mm

  • Herbarium Collection - Collection - Untitled - Zoran Georgiev
  • Herbarium Collection - Collection - Untitled - Zoran Georgiev

For the exhibition Herbarium, I present a watercolor drawing, placed inside a custom-built transport crate made of plywood and wooden slats. The crate itself is displayed, while its contents remain hidden from view. The lid bears the instruction “open this side”, yet it stays closed.
The project explores themes of preservation and invisibility. A large part of contemporary art exists in this very state — stored in archives, private collections, freeports, or museum depots. The artwork exists, but it is not visible. This latent condition raises the question: When does an artwork truly exist — when it is created, or when it is seen?
The crate becomes a metaphor for this duality — echoing the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat. The drawing inside both exists and doesn’t exist, depending on the viewer’s access. Hidden from sight, the piece inhabits a suspended state — between presence and absence, between object and idea.

Zoran Georgiev was born 1985 in Gevgelija, Macedonia. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He has MA in Painting from the National Art Academy, Sofia BG (2012). In 2014 he won the BAZA Award for Young Artists for which he had been shortlisted before a number of times. He won the Essl Art Award for Young Artist from Central and Eastern Europe in 2013 and in 2011 the Award for Painting from the International Foundation St. St. Cyril and Methodius. The same year he was shortlisted for the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award for New Bulgarian Art in Sofia. Zoran Georgiev uses various mediums in his artistic practice including object, installation, photography, drawing and painting. He works with a wide range of quotidian objects that have been re-appropriated, altered or rendered useless. His artistic strategy is distinguished by his ability to see the complex relationship between the ‘ordinary’ and art and to make it visible.

Website: zorangeorgiev.com