Vitto Valentinov solo exhibition
11.05 - 06.06.2022
Opening: 11 May, 17:00 - 21:00
© cover photo by Yana Lozeva
Matter and touch
This exhibition comes as a result of a need for a stronger connection to the physical. For months, I carefully collected small objects from the streets I walked, from my kitchen, among my son's toys, from flea markets and hardware stores. I collected objects that attracted me by their physical presence. There is a pleasurable sense of touch when I hold them in my hands, and am in touch with their weight or lightness, their rough or smooth surface, temperature, density or transparency. The experience of the real, here and now, as opposed to the virtual, the digital, the simulated. Our growing online presence, precipitated by the Covid-19 crisis, has further intensified my need for physical communication.
Systems as situations
In this exhibition I work with found objects that become elements of systems. I consider systems as situations. Elements are never autonomous units, they are always in relationships, in states of dialogue, contact, conflict, opposition, repulsion or attraction. My aim was to create unusual relationships between these found pieces of matter. These relationships between them are the works themselves - often in empty space as well as in the mind of the viewer. There are no narratives in this exhibition - there are situations and scenes. The dramaturgy here is in the action, not the story.
Functions of language
In recent years, I have been creating installations with audience participation, through which I have been building conditions for communication. Each installation was a new type of unusual expressive means of communication between the participants. I am interested in language as a system for transferring information from one form to another. In this exhibition, I reflect in the context of encoding information into a new language. Every material - because of its shape, surface or size, is like a letter in an alphabet. The combinations, repetitions and spacing between them shape the words, punctuation marks and pauses in a sentence.
Debris
In this exhibition, many of the building blocks are pieces of material that are often broken parts of larger things. I try to create new stable configurations out of this increasingly desolate and fragmented world by connecting the parts and giving them different meaning and significance. These fragments are no longer lonely and abandoned, but part of new relationships and dialogues.
ABOUT VITTO VALENTINOV:
Vitto Valentinov was born in 1977 in Sofia, where he lives and works. He creates mostly installations, often with audience participation. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts, (1991-1996) and mural painting at the National Academy of Arts, (1997-1999), after which he graduated from the AKI Academy of Arts, (1999-2004) and the DAI Dutch Arts Institute (2004-2006).
In 2006 he made his debut with the short film "Falling on the Fovea", made together with Kristina Janachkova, with which he participated in the exhibition "The Projection Project" at the Museum of Contemporary Art MuHKA, Antwerp. The same year he returned to Bulgaria and specialized in film directing at NATFA (2007-2009). Valentinov has participated in numerous exhibitions in galleries, museums and festivals, including Biennale de Kunstvlaai 2006, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Sofia Design Week 2012, Sofia; Contempo - International Art Festival 2014, Varna; TEDxBG 2014, Sofia; Space SSEE Gallery, Daejeon, South Korea; CEC Artslink Residency Program in New York and Cincinnati, USA; Sofia; SAMSI - Sofia Arsenal Museum of Contemporary Art, Sofia; SGHG - Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia; Sariev Gallery, Plovdiv; Vienna Contemporary 2015 - Focus Bulgaria, Vienna, Austria; Goethe Institute, Sofia; The New New - Art Science Tech Festival, Thessaloniki, Greece and NEXT Balkan, Belgrade, Serbia.
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