Paintings that confront identity, vulnerability, transformation and the fragility of the human condition.

Milan Andov was born in Skopje in 1974. He trained first at the “Lazar Licenoski” High School of Art in Skopje, specialising in graphics and graphic techniques, then studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, in the class of Professor Dimče Nikolov, in graphic techniques and graphic design.

He showed an exceptional aptitude for drawing and painting early, winning prizes and two scholarships while still a student, and graduated in 2005. He lives and works in Skopje.

His paintings confront identity, vulnerability, transformation and the fragility of the human condition. The destruction and disintegration of the individual has been his subject for more than two decades; the figure is his only instrument for it.

“The fundamental motif in Milan Andov’s paintings is the human figure — male and female alike. The figures are positioned in an empty, bare and undefined space, but the artist is more concerned with the study of the body itself. It seems as though the figures are placed in that space after they have been subjected to torture, disfigurement and dissection.”

“Who are these faceless people, we ask ourselves — these bodies with misshapen extremities, human beings so deformed yet striving to become something quite different than a human being? Perhaps, they may be — us, after all?”