Maria Pavlovska’s OBJECT at AP Space – A Visual Language of Energy and Inquiry

Maria Pavlovska’s bold and expressive solo exhibition at AP Space, presented in collaboration with Monira Foundation and Mana Contemporary. A kinetic exploration of abstraction, presence, and philosophical tension. On view March 16–April 11, 2024.

Art has the power to expand space—not just physical space, but mental, emotional, and spiritual space. In OBJECT, her latest solo exhibition at AP Space, contemporary artist Maria Pavlovska invites viewers into a realm where black and white are not simply contrasts, but characters—forces in dialogue, tension, and resolution.

Running from March 16th to April 11th, 2024, OBJECT is presented in collaboration with the Monira Foundation and Mana Contemporary. This exhibition marks both Pavlovska’s formal representation by AP Space and her long-awaited return to New York’s contemporary art scene with a powerful, immersive body of work.

Maria Pavlovska has spent the past twenty-five years cultivating a singular voice in the global art world. Born in Skopje and active across cities including Ljubljana, Belgrade, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, New York, Manila, Miami, Venice, and Florence, she has built an international career on the exploration of themes like polarization, globalism, and existential urgency.

Her work is instantly recognizable—monochrome palettes, jagged and fluid brushstrokes, and a sense of kinetic urgency that feels like watching thought unfold in real time. Her pieces are held in museum collections and private holdings across Europe, Asia, and the United States, with previous solo and group shows praised for their philosophical clarity and formal intensity.

OBJECT is not just a title—it’s a challenge, a meditation, and a declaration. The series is composed of seven large-scale paintings, accompanied by three drawings, all produced between 2014 and 2020. Together, they function as both individual inquiries and chapters in a continuous visual novel—one that began with her earlier series Black & White, Trembling, Silence, and Doppler, and now arrives at a final, more distilled articulation.

The works are executed in her signature monochromatic style, using black, white, and gray with striking energy and rhythm. The canvas becomes a battleground—an arena for thought, tension, and transformation. Each line, each mark, is part of a larger questioning. These paintings feel alive, in motion, as if they are trying to break free from the surface.

The title OBJECT refers to multiple definitions: a tangible item, a target of thought, a source of emotional response. Pavlovska's works ask the viewer not to simply look—but to investigate, feel, and reflect. They are at once objects and subjects—visual records of inquiry and emotional testimony.

The OBJECT series has already gained critical acclaim. Two of the works—OBJECT 02 and OBJECT 04—received First Prize for Painting at the “Mixing Medias” international show presented by the Carole Feuerman Foundation in New York (2016). OBJECT 06 was also featured in the celebrated international women’s exhibition Senses and Perceptions in 2018, further solidifying the series' significance in the global conversation on contemporary abstraction.

Pavlovska’s voice is as compelling in words as it is in paint. She describes her works as “stories revealed to me in confidence,” visual poems that arise from “extreme situations” and emotional shocks. Her process is both analytical and instinctive—a translation of interior unrest into a refined visual language.

For her, every mark is meaningful. Every canvas is a confrontation with silence, restlessness, and reflection. “I embrace the artistic inner weaving with one breath of my restlessness,” she says. “The stories are about the world, the space in me and around me.”

Her work has been described by critics as “a battlefield between light and dark,” with compositions that feel suspended between thought and form, creating a powerful dialectic between process and result.

What OBJECT achieves is rare: a fully immersive experience where abstraction becomes narration, and where gesture becomes philosophy. The exhibition space feels less like a gallery and more like a psychic chamber—one where the visual vocabulary is both immediate and infinitely interpretable.

Pavlovska doesn’t ask the viewer to understand. She asks them to feel. To lean in. To slow down. To let the echoes of each brushstroke linger beyond the canvas—out into the space between us.