Participants:

Angel Stanev, Emil Popov, Ivan Russev, Svetlin Russev, Stanislav Pamukchiev

 

The whiteness and purity of a new gallery is probably the most appropriate space for a Christmassy exhibition. The first show at the Sise (now Krug Plus ) stakes on security – a circle of popular artists unanimous in their ideas (three sculptors and two painters), prone to meditation and peering beyond the material. The air is hushed and then whirled up in the exquisite horizontal flutes of Ivan Russev’s marble columns. Although circulated quite often, they are emblematic of their author and possess the universal quality of creating various rhythms and entering diverse relationships. Radiating sacredness… Emil Popov’s bronze imprints are reminiscent of the circle of human life. In terms of subject-matter his still life with bread can be read as both Paschal and Christmassy – bread, a glass of wine, a thorny crown… Angel Stanev presents small wax models for large plastic works. This change of scale brings something intimate and nostalgic especially when nutshells and bunches of grapes are parts of the compositions… They automatically change the scales of our perception, too, thus leaving us unprepared and fascinated by the suggestion of Large Sketch in White with its smashed bell dragged away in some direction by a snapping disk… Svetlin Russev and Stanislav Pamukchiev, on their part, are very sparing when introducing the painting texture into the “space-plasticity” harmony. Russev flanks Angel Stanev’s Large Sketch in White on both sides with two heavy, categorical canvases (a still life and a portrait) which exchange additional transcendence. Pamukchiev presents two of his ash canvases. Any time I find myself in front of them, I remember my grandmother who would cure me with ash water and put some on cuts, too… Beginning is clearly the painting from which the very exhibition is born. It reminds us of petrol geysers, volcanic lava, ash mud, puddles… A tough beginning. His other work is Ash Man with its corporeality reduced to ashes. The little painted Morphs stand in their glass fish bowls in a special way. The signs, the alphabet of his dusky world. They make us turn around and return to Emil Popov’s bronze imprints, thus elegantly closing the eternal “material-non-material” circle.

Maria Landova