ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice begins with painting, but treats painting less as an image than as a material event.
I work through processes of construction and subtraction: layering, folding, transferring, scraping, dissolving, covering and reopening the surface. Each work develops through a sequence of physical decisions in which the image is repeatedly built and destabilized. What remains is not the record of a single gesture, but the residue of a process.
Canvas, tarpaulin, aluminium, oil and resin behave differently under pressure. I am interested in that resistance. Industrial supports interrupt the conventional relationship between paint and surface; adhesion becomes unstable, folds become structural, reflections break apart, and the image begins to function somewhere between painting, object and fragment.
Reflection appears throughout the work, but not as representation. It is a condition of uncertainty — something visible and simultaneously inaccessible. Forms emerge, disappear and return altered. Surfaces can suggest water, geological strata, damaged screens or excavated remains without resolving into any single image.
I am interested in the moment when making approaches erasure: when another intervention could destroy what has already appeared. At that threshold, the painting becomes less an accumulation of gestures than an archaeology of its own production.
The work asks a simple question: what remains after an image has survived its own making?
BIOGRAPHY
Sasho Blazes (b. 1980, Ohrid, North Macedonia) is a contemporary artist working across painting, installation and sculpture. His material-based practice examines the unstable relationship between image and surface through processes of construction, transfer, erosion and disappearance.
He studied at the University of Arts in Bucharest, completing his BA in 2006 and MA in 2008.
Blazes has presented solo exhibitions internationally, including Extra Time, Gallery Simeza, Bucharest (2026); Dive in Me, Museum of the City of Skopje (2025); Lost in Reflection, Blue Gallery, Venice (2024); Diving to the Bottom, Abstract Project, Paris (2024); Between Lines, Galerie Stross, Graz (2023); Point of Illusion, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2023); and High in No Man’s Land, National Gallery of North Macedonia, Skopje (2022).
His work has also been presented through exhibitions and projects in Berlin, Istanbul, Bucharest, Paris, Venice, Graz, Washington, Ottawa and other international contexts.
In 2025–2026, his large-scale public installation SUNK was presented at Skopje International Airport. His work has also been included in international prizes, biennials and curated exhibitions across Europe and beyond.
Blazes lives and works in Ohrid, North Macedonia.
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2026
Extra Time — Gallery Simeza, Bucharest, Romania
2025
Dive in Me — Museum of the City of Skopje, North Macedonia
Dive in Me — National Museum, Ohrid, North Macedonia
2024
Lost in Reflection — Blue Gallery, Venice, Italy
Diving to the Bottom — Abstract Project, Paris, France
2023
Between Lines — Galerie Stross, Graz, Austria
Point of Illusion — Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
2022
High in No Man’s Land — National Gallery of North Macedonia, Skopje
Island of Solitude — National Museum, Ohrid, North Macedonia
2020
Obscured by Memory — Pinelo Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey
2019
The Colored Collection of Joy — Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Skopje
The Colored Collection of Joy — KIC Gallery, Skopje
2017
Lust for Nostalgia — PCB Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2016
Mirrors of Reality — Art Yourself Gallery, Bucharest, Romania
PUBLIC INSTALLATION
2025–2026
SUNK — Skopje International Airport, North Macedonia
EDUCATION
2008 — MA, University of Arts, Bucharest, Romania
2006 — BA, University of Arts, Bucharest, Romania