All at Once
curated by Maria Vassileva
10.04.2019 - 18.05.2019
This project is the result of several months of collaboration between the three artists and concentration on their joint work through active conversations and exchange of ideas.
The title of the exhibition expresses the way the artworks were created – as a process of layering the accrued knowledge, energy and skills on the canvas – as well as the way they are revealed to the public – in full and all at once.
On a purely practical plane, the title also alludes to the fact that none of the displayed works was planned out, sketched and “tested” in a drawing or in another medium. All artworks appeared “at once” – as in a ritual trance connecting the beginning with the end. Actually, what is important is neither the beginning nor the end, but that vast matter which determines those two points.
The main emphasis in the exhibition is on the very process of art-making. The focus is more on “the journey” than on the end result. There is a fascination with materials that borders on fetishism. The paintings are replete with corporeality. It is this that unlocks a series of other codes in the perception of the works – from historical references to references to the present. Faith in materials and in painting is opposed to the general instability and insecurity of the contemporary world.
The artists are interested in the type of painting that explores the territories between the mind and the external, material world. Their works react strongly to all changes in the ever more dematerialized visual environment. Smartphones and computers influence not only the visual perception of the surrounding world (by modifying colour and light) but also the internal order of things (through the way information is stored, organized and presented).
In the works of Radoil Serafimov, Rudi Ninov and Stanimir Genov there is no opposition between the abstract and the real. They offer a conceptual interpretation of reality. Their presence in a common space adds another level of perception and continues the dialogue. The time enclosed in the paintings finds an exit in the intersecting lines between them. Information continues to be exchanged.
Radoil Serafimov was born in 1988 in Gabrovo,where he lives and works. He graduated in Painting from the St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo in 2012.
In 2013 and 2016 he had solo exhibitions at Orlovska 10 Gallery in Gabrovo. He has taken part in national and regional exhibitions, such as Studios, Stubel Gallery, Sofia (2018); Art Start, Credo Bonum Gallery, Sofia (2017); The First Seven Years, Contemporary Space, Varna (2017); Scale 1:1. New Social Realism, Gallery of the Union of Bulgarian Artists, Sofia (2017); Placebo– National Autumn Exhibitions, Plovdiv (2017); The Dispute about Reality, Gallery of the Union of Bulgarian Artists, Sofia (2017); Save the Dreams– 148 Contemporary Artists from Bulgaria, Venice Biennale, Imago Mundi Project (2015); Caution: Wet Paint!, Sofia City Art Gallery, (2015); Young Art as an Object of Desire, Rakursi Gallery, Sofia (2014).
He is the recipient of the Edmond Demirdjian Foundation Award for promising development and devotion to art in 2014 and of an Award at the Spring Salon of Gabrovo Artists in 2016.
“I’m interested in the accumulation of paint and its movement as a mass. Without any clear idea of a concrete end result, I immerse myself in a process of constant searching and reformatting. Daubing around with paint and immersing myself in this act frees me from previous self-imposed regulations, placing me under new ones. The layering of movements and paint on top of one another brings the viewer closer to a process and its temporal stoppage as an end result. What’s important to me is that the painting should have an unpremeditated emotional charge expressed in a dynamic or static form.”
Rudi Ninov was born in 1992 in Teteven, Bulgaria. He earned a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2015. He is currently continuing his education in the class of Amy Sillman and Nikolas Gambaroff at Städelschule, Frankfurt, Germany.Among his recent solo exhibitions are: Flatlands, American University in Bulgaria (AUBG), Blagoevgrad (2018); Lines to Tales, UniCredit Studio, Sofia (2018). Group exhibitions: SCULPTURE NOW, Credo Bonum Gallery, Sofia (2018); Close Encounters, Institute for Contemporary Art, Sofia (2017); What Do You Represent Now?, Plan 5, Stockholm (2017).He is the recipient of the AUBG Contemporary Art Award (2018); National Scholarship of the Cultural Perspectives Foundation (2018); Stoyan Kambarev Foundation Award (2017); Edmond Demirdjian Foundation Award (2016); Neville Burston Award for painting (2015).
“I’m interested in the painted surface as a platform, map, or screen on which the mental process is somehow internalized, reconfigured and then manifested in different ways of ‘recording’ that can often be compared to writing. Writing as an embodiment of the line – an atavistic instinct of navigating in space, of movement and self-consciousness.”
Stanimir Genov was born in 1982 in Sofia, where he lives and works. He recieved BA in Painting at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia (2006) and MA in Painting at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia (2018). Solo shows including:”Some thoughts does’t move” (2018), Gallery Cu29, Plovdiv; „Bouquet“ (2017), Vaska Emanuilova Gallery, Sofia; „Avalanche” (2016) Contemporary Space, Varna; “It just happened” (2016), Dvoreca Balchik; “Outside” (2014) Galley of UBA “Shipka” 6, Sofia; „Exhibition“ (2015) Galley “Vladimir Dimitrov – Maystora”, Kyustendil; „Paintings“ (2012) Gallery Yuzina, Sofia; “Clear!“ (2011) The Fridge, Sofia; “Excuse Me“ (2008) Gallery Pistolet, Sofia;Group shows including: „Forms of Coexistence” (2017) Structura Gallery, Sofia; „Shifting Layers / Young Art at the Museum“ (2017) Sofia City Art Gallery; „Caution: Wet Paint!“ (2015) Sofia City Art Gallery; „Process in Progress“ (2015) Gallery Baeckerstrasse 4, Vienna;
“The main subject in my work are personal experiences. Placing myself in a working atmosphere built around the focus on small fragments of those experiences, I aim to re-experience them through the painting process rather than to describe them. This attitude allows me to somehow interrupt the logical path of my thinking and to enter into more surprising territories. I don’t aim to depict something but rather to amuse myself by what I’ve just depicted, so the result is more of a self-formed image than an artefact of the imagination.”
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