TANCEV

Zlatko Tancev was born in 1972 in Skopje, in the Republic of Macedonia. Since 1995, he has been living and working in Paris, France.
He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, where he focused on several disciplines including engraving, drawing, painting, photography, and design.

Tancev’s work is characterized by a fusion of realism (often hyper-realistic rendering) and abstraction. One recurring motif in his paintings is vintage cars — objects from earlier eras that serve both as subject and metaphor. Through these, he explores the tension between past and present, as well as the atmosphere and “spirit” of time. He uses oil on canvas as his primary medium. His technique often juxtaposes meticulously detailed, realistic or hyper-realistic sections with freer, more expressive and abstract brushstrokes.

He has held solo exhibitions in places including Skopje (Macedonia), Korčula (Croatia), and in the Pantheon Museum Basel (Switzerland).
He also participated in group and collective exhibitions in France (e.g. Paris), in Tunisia, and elsewhere.

Tancev aims to engage the viewer in a moment of interlace between the realistic and the abstract: a kind of suspended time in which the two extremes are interwoven. He wishes that the viewer, by observing his work, might “steal a little piece” of the artist’s vision.