Ivan Moudov

Austrian Art (Ivan Moudov ) Lounge

The Bulgarian artist Ivan Moudov likes to create uproar.

Born in 1975 in Sofia, Ivan Moudov is one player on the Bulgarian art scene who simply cannot be ignored. In 2005 he tricked the entire countiy by opening MUSIZ, an imaginaiy museum, at Sofia’s Poduyane Station, creating turmoil across his homeland. In 2007 he exhibited his work at the Bulgarian Pavilion at the 52nd Biennale in Venice.

Moudov belongs to the new generation of artists who began studying after the collapse of Communism.

His work is shaped by post-socialist upheaval, and he inquisitively concerns himself not just with the mechanisms of social change, but also with mercantile systems. Ivan Moudov uses this constructive potential in his multi-media work and installations. He adapts the techniques of Marcel Duchamp, misuses them for his own ends, and is not afraid to extend this plagiarism to plain theft if it means he can realise his art. He uses his identity and personality to force his way into situations, helps himself to their language and instruments, lays bare the real conditions, and often disrupts the normal course of everyday situations in performance-based campaigns.

In one of his performances, he donned the uniform of a Bulgarian policeman to direct traffic at a heavily-used crossroads in Graz. By the time the real police had arrived, Austrian drivers had been forced to decide whether to submit to the authority of the man, whose uniform they did not recognise. For Playing the City, an art project lasting several days in Frankfurt, Ivan Moudov set up dustbins in publicly accessible sites adorned with the words “That waste will be disposed in Poland”, revealing the cycle of goods in today’s consumerist society.