Tapeti - Wallpapers and Artworks from the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje and evn collection

With the advent of Modernism, space is reduced to background, turning neutral, silent, almost invisible. The “White Cube” was the plain stage set for an art seeking to rid itself of ornament and décor. Contemporaneously, the 20th century saw the emergence of pavilion-style architectures with glass facades that let views unfold and interior and exterior flow into one another.

The museum in Skopje also shows such architectural characteristics of Modernism, as does the EVN Headquarters in Maria Enzersdorf near Vienna, Austria. For the stairwell of the Austrian building from the 1960s, an exceptional concept, launched in 2018, was developed: Artists were commissioned to create purpose-designed wallpapers for various walls, creating islands for exhibits of selected works from the evn collection. The collection, in existence since 1995 and curated by the collection’s Art Advisory Board, places its focus on international contemporary art.

For the 2026 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, this setting is taken on the road for the first time ever and transplanted into a different environment. Mobile walls, featuring selected wallpapers and artworks from the evn collection, combined with works from the museum’s collection, are installed on the ground floor. They cut through not only the building’s cubic floor plan but also the modern notion of neutrality and objectivity. The folding screens present themselves in the space like sculptures and, at once, as carriers of images. They open up and close, reveal and conceal.
This creates transitions instead of boundaries, dialogue instead of demarcation. Different voices, colors, and textures, times, and ways of thinking encounter one another. The once austere clarity transforms into a labyrinth of impressions—multilayered, open, and in constant change.

Tapeti brings together works of art of different provenance. Themes, subjects, and artistic attitudes of several generations intersect and inform one another, making visible the universality of art and art production.

Curators: Brigitte Huck, Heike Maier-Rieper, Markus Schinwald, Thomas D. Trummer, Blagoja Varosanec