Art Today Association / Center for Contemporary Art

Art Today Association presents:

Ninth edition of Week of contemporary art 2003

Reflections

The project presents young artists with their artworks in the context of the contemporary society, global changes and identity. The name of the project /Reflections/ is simply signal and it gives an opportunity for broad presentation without limitations. The project presents visual art /installations, objects, video, photography/ as well as performance, theatre, music in their experimental forms. The invited authors /15/ are up to 35 years of age and realize their artworks in the premises of the Center for Contemporary Art – Plovdiv, Ancient Bath.
Opening of the exhibition on 8.09.2003 and will continue until 8.10.2003.

Curator Emil Mirazchiev

Angie and Hristo : "Human Rubbish"

The artwork provokes reflection about the fragility and vulnerability of the human body that can be dismembered, can be part of many manipulations, scientific experiments and can be turned into a rubbish.
On the opening - a performance where a man in white overall, rubber gloves and a grotesque mask on his face simulates lading and carrying of the sacks. The man who loads – rough, callous, he himself preserved the wholeness of his body, because of the character of his activity he resembles the objects that he carries. He has lost the humanity and turns into rubbish.

Isin Onol : "Light Shadows"

Isin Onol : "Light Composition "

Iva Vacheva

“Self-consciousness” is a black and white, one channel video, 2.25 min, VHS hi-8. I hold the camera with one hand and shoot from the perspective of my own fears. I am the one who is running away and who is chasing me. This conflict is mental, everything happens in my mind. The fear grows from the tangible nightmares that startle me from everywhere with animal sounds. My flight turns into paranoia and panic until the moment when I have been overtaken by myself and I am forced to look at my eyes.

Marina Popska

Kosta Tonev

Mila Stoeva

Daniela Sivikova

Ivan Toshkov

Julian Tabakov

"... and I put on my dress, entirely my design. It is simply perfect, nothing can be seen through it, but everything can be guessed...“
From a letter X of Marquise de Merteuil to Vicomte de Valmont
"Dangerous liaisons”, Choderlos de Laclos
“To have – to wear – to be: a face that pushes into stones turns itself into a stone“
“The myth of Sisyphus ”, Albert Camus
Man always strives for being more than he actually is. This striving receives physical dimensions that often reach vulgarity. For Julian Tabakov, more famous as a scene-painter and producer, the clothing turns into a metaphor for this striving and into a way to show the hidden faces of human nature. Those faces that clothing, as an archaic cover, hides and bares in the ambition for self-expressing.

Maria Popova

Self-portrait of my restraints

The work is composed of series of paintings. Their prime source is the pixel photography. I want to visualize the thing that restrains me while I am thinking of the creation of my artworks. My idea analyzes the subjections between technique and aesthetics / I mean the aesthetics as a theory of forms of the beautiful/ as a result of my four-year education in the Academy and my whole aesthetic education received from my parents.
The technique is oil painting. I use it as I feel my subjection of it: thinking of one or another idea I always imagine it realized with the means of painting. Because the technique is not any more determinant for a creation of an artwork. I use the digital photography as a prime source and as a restriction for the image. On the different canvases I have painted parts of hair, face, blouse. I increase the pixels until I get an abstract image that gives only aesthetic sensations. Thus I visualize the substitution art-design. It is known that the beautiful is not a guarantee for art. The work „Self-portrait of my restraints“ is on the edge of the realization of an inner situation, encouraged by the outside conditions of the environment and my willingness to change it. I hope in this work there will be nothing more than technical skills and aesthetic subjections.

Vania Valkova