Studio Views and New Works
10.02.2021 - 06.03.2021
This is the first solo exhibition in Bulgaria of the Sofia-born artist (in 1965), who’s been calling Brussels his home in the last 30 years or so. Already presented digitally in May-June of 2020 as part of Structura Gallery’s online campaign, now his works will be displayed physically as well.
Nikolay Konstantinov had graduated from the Higher National School of Visual Arts La Cambre in Brussels in 1995. A research assistant since 1998, in 2019 he became a full professor in Digital Arts 3D at the same school. As an author he works in the fields of traditional and digital sculpture, and drawing.
The exhibition at Structura Gallery includes the artist’s newest drawings from the 2020-2021 period, as well as the long-running project Studio Visit, which he has been developing in digital three-dimensional reality for several years. As a juxtaposition, some non-digital plastic sculptures (which also include preliminary digital processes) from 2017-2018 are also being displayed. The artistic pursuits in both realities influence the author’s work and leads, in his own words, to unusual and surprising combinations. N. Konstantinov takes interest in the dynamics between the digital and traditional sculpture, in the opportunities they provide, but also in their inherent weaknesses. The transfusion between the two is among the fundamental issues that fascinate him.
Studio Visit is a virtual environment, which takes the form of a huge sculptor’s studio. The studio accommodates virtual sculptures and installations. The latter contain a substantial volume of text and can be characterized as autofiction. One of the specific traits of this long-running project is the attitude to the size and the space, as well as the monumental presence of text.
The series of drawings Escape from Troy once again shows the artist’s interest in the crossover of genres, styles and epochs. Taking as his point of reference Virgil’s epic poem Aeneid, as well as a multitude of sculptures recreating the lives of the heroes of Antiquity, N. Konstantinov devises his own abstract Troy – „the internal fortress of our stagnating and mechanical mental patterns, which must be destroyed and burned down like a cyclically re-emerging yellow flower“. (N. K.)
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