THE NATIONAL GALLERY
SOFIA ARSENAL – MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Tsvetan Krastev
Games with Obviousness and Subjective Limitations
23 January – 1 March 2020
Opening on Thursday, 23 January, at 6:30 p.m.
SAMCA, 2, Cherni Vrah Blvd.
The exhibition of video art, subjects, text, installation and documentation of performances includes works by Tsvetan Krastev created from the early 1980s to the present. This is his first solo performance in Sofia, and is curated by Pavlina Mladenova. The artist is visiting SAMCA as part of the Autobiography Project of the Museum of Documenting Contemporary Art.
Tsvetan Krastev lives and works in Varna, which turns the sea into the main charger of his visual ideas. By ‘reading’ his surroundings, the artist absorbs the objective truth, deconstructs it to the meta-level and presents it in his work through a series of irrational elements and unfamiliar definitions to the extent that the meaning shifts and the possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. It is a game of subtly reformatting obviousness and manipulating its subjective limitations through trans-eccentric and often humorous interpretations. During this game, imaginary associations and idiosyncratic rules are applied. They often reflect the sense of provocation and ironism of the situations framed by daily routine that would go unnoticed in their original context.
Tsvetan Krastev was born in 1961 in Varna. He graduated in 1980 from the Secondary Art School in Kazanlak. He works in the field of conceptual art, creating land art, painting, performance, installations, video art, and others. He was one of the founders of the legendary club, ‘Var(t)na’ (Varna, 1996), along with Veselin Dimov and Vladimir Ivanov. One of the founders and organisers of the Quarantine International Short Film Festival (Varna, 2014), he has participated in numerous exhibitions, festivals, biennales and forums of contemporary art in Bulgaria and abroad.
For further information:
Pavlina Mladenova: +359 878 643 638
Nadezhda Dzhakova, Head of Department, SAMCA: dzhakova@yahoo.de