Opening on Wednesday, 16 October, 6 p.m.
Curator: Iaroslava Boubnova
Among the most acclaimed artists in Bulgaria, Kalin Serapionov is closely associated with unleashing the potential and development of the vast possibilities of video in the context of art. He is focused on its potential to hold attention, form an image and generate suspense with no narrative techniques and literariness of the subject.
Serapionov was already devoting himself to video back in the 1990s, independently studying the possibilities of cameras using magnetic tape and the VHS format. Today, he steps confidently in the domain of digital technologies, with a markedly critical attitude to the clichés that impose themselves in their ubiquity.
In his oeuvre, the artist explores different patterns of communication and human relations, communities, characters, behaviour and interaction. His works hold the gaze at length, sometimes evoking states resembling meditation. The well-calculated effects of the spatial designs of the video installations shape an active field of shared experience. The overall image is generated through subtle direction of the action and behaviour in the frame, scrupulous camerawork and video editing, and a purpose-built audio environment.
The exhibition ‘Before Our Eyes’ is of a retrospective nature, presenting some of Kalin Serapionov’s emblematic works. The outrageously ironic video, ‘The Museum—Cause of Meeting and Acquaintance’ (1997), was among the earliest, filmed almost 30 years ago in the building that is hosting the current exhibition.
The analytical ‘trilogy’, the friendly banter in ‘The Hot Soup and My Home Community’ (1998), the strict frontality of the portraits in ‘Main Course’ (2006), and the baroque opulence of ‘The Dessert (with the Cherry on Top)’ (2020), all form not only a group portrait in the making of the local professional community, but also reflect the impact of technological growth on its self-image.
The city frequently serves as a culture medium for Kalin Serapionov’s video projects. ‘In Addition’ (2008) asks randomly selected passers-by: ‘What are your hopes?’, and comments on their sentimental human expectations by placing the monitors with the video monologues in refuse containers. His observations of the statics of buildings and the dynamics of passers-by set the viewer’s suspense in ‘1719D’ (2006–07); in ‘As Far Away as Near’ (2012–13), the aggressive visual noise of luminous advertising is juxtaposed with the ever-hypnotic lunar eclipse; ‘You Get It?’ (2004) presents a triple portrayal, of two people whose telephone dialogue fails to achieve communication, dominated by the offensive third—the urban environment.
In the three channels of the video installation with the intriguing title of ‘Choose Training’ (2014), derived from the rituals of deciding on the complexity of training in the fitness gym, Kalin Serapionov has orchestrated the city’s interior and exterior lights to his own score.
Paying tribute to his classical art education, the artist has included both a portrait and an abstract composition in the exhibition. According to the traditions of modernism, the subject of the portrait is detailed in its title, ‘A Blonde Woman in a Red Dress and Bright Lipstick Is Talking on the Phone and Smoking a Cigarette’ (2016), and achieves the image of movement dynamics even dreamed of by the Futurists—by recording the wavelength range of colour graphics, 3D curves—and communicates through the language of the chosen video technology. The abstraction, ‘Used/Loosen’ (2022), is the constant dance of fortuity, composed and fixed on the surface of the monitor ‘canvas’.
Kalin Serapionov’s exhibition, ‘Before Our Eyes’, was specifically assembled for the traditional architecture of The Palace. Screens pulsating with colours and shapes, large-format thematic projections and portrait messages form the shared space of the entire video installation.
General sponsor: MFG Foundation. With the support of Beyond Data Bulgaria LLC and Gaudenz B. Ruf.
Media partner: BTA / Bulgarian News Agency.
Kalin Serapionov is born in 1967 in Vratza, Bulgaria. He graduated from the National Academy of Arts in 1996. He has been working with video since the late 1990s. He has participated in various exhibitions such as: Manifesta 4, Frankfurt (2002); Blood & Honey, Essl Museum, Vienna (2003); In the Gorges of the Balkans, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2003); Heterotopias, 1-st Thessaloniki biennale (2007); Sounds & Visions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2009); Indefinite Destinations, DEPO, Istanbul (2010); Site Inspection, Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2011); Grammar of Freedom / Five Lessons, Garage, Moscow (2015); Art for Change, Sofia City Art Gallery (2015); Forms of Coexistence, Structura Gallery, Sofia (2018); Festival of the Regions 2019 – Social Warmth, The Region Perg-Strudengau, Austria; Open Art Files: Notes and Footnotes, Kapana Gallery, Plovdiv (2019); 25 Years and 5 Themes Later, National Gallery, Sofia (2020); Shooting Ghosts, Blinkvideo.de (2020-2021); Farce – the Way We Live, Curated by Vienna, MAM Gallery, (2021); Self-splaining (a Triumph of Empathy), Manifesta 14, Prishtina (2022); About the Walls Nex to Me, ONE+ Gallery, Sofia (2022); The Drawing – Without Limitations, Structura Gallery, Sofia (2023); The Time is Now, Mala Stanica – National Gallery of R. N. Macedonia (2023); The Better Part of Us, Structura Gallery, Sofia (2024); Ego-System / Eco System, Varna City Art Gallery, Forum BINA (2024); Dog Days, Structura Gallery, Sofia (2024).
His works are in possession of Sofia City Art Gallery, the Art collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, private collections in Bulgaria and abroad.
Iaroslava Boubnova, National Gallery
