In his ongoing series of prints titled “Dream,” Endi Poskovic (IG: @endiposkovic) explores the boundaries of print media via the expanded process of visualization, art making, and storytelling. The artist integrates analog and digital drawing to produce large-scale laser-engraved and hand-carved woodcuts. Implementing a shallow rubbing method reminiscent of Japanese water printing, Poskovic explores nuanced ways of carving and printing his block plates. Thematically, Dream investigates the nature of composite narratives in which real and imagined visual signifiers intersect to create images reflecting personal history and larger social and cultural narratives.
Poskovic’s “Dream” is an allegorical tale that the artist describes as a roman à clef about displacement, exile, memory, and his faith in the orthodoxy and power of visual storytelling. The visible constitutes a poetic language evocative of mystery, affording the thematic iconography in his work to maintain its presence in the apparent opposition between reality and illusion. In this expanded process of visualization, printmaking, and storytelling, a new context emerges.
Poskovic is Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design. His works are represented in the permanent public collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of the Arts, Fogg Art Museum-Harvard University, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Royal Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts, Centre National des Arts Plastiques Cairo, University of British Columbia, Jincheon Museum, South Korea, and numerous others.
Born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poskovic was educated in Yugoslavia, Norway and the United States. Having studied music from an early age, he toured as a professional musician throughout Europe and the Middle East before pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies in art, earning his M.F.A. at SUNY-Buffalo in 1993.
Poskovic has exhibited prolifically in international forums from the Shanghai Print International Biennial, China, to the Krakow International Triennial, Poland, and the New Prints Series at the International Print Center New York. Recent comprehensive solo exhibitions of Poskovic’s work have been organized by Surnadal Billag A/S, Norway (2022), the University of Split Art Gallery, Croatia (2022), Changsha Yu Xiang Cultural Art Center in Hunan Province, China (2017), and SUNY-Fredonia Rockefeller Arts Center (2014).
Poskovic is the recipient of notable grants and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, John D. Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Center Italy, J. William Fulbright Commission Senior Research Fellowship to Poland, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and many other international organizations.
In addition to his position at the Stamps School, Poskovic also holds joint appointments at the University of Michigan’s Center for Japanese Studies, the Copernicus Center in Polish Studies, the Center for European Studies, the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies.
