The REMAINS series was created in 1995 and 1996. Almost all elements of the composition are subsumed under certain mathematical rules. The series was inspired by a number of photos made as part of a metal fatigue research, a field in which there are high tensions and deformations, resulting in interesting forms and textures. Later, some images from the trivial round were added, but now subsumed under the main theme.

The idea was to aestheticize the remains i.e. things that are utilized and already useless and to examine if such an anesthetization on the ground of the “golden ratio” (used implicitly) will make them more “recognizable” or “close” to the spectator, i.e. However, in the work process, it turned out that trivial objects could carry additional and more complex meanings. 

The remains are things left of something else (that is already not in its initial state). Being a result of the change they put us directly into the time stream. If we imagine, what the things were like, how they slowly have or have been changed and how they will disappear, we become aware of the course of Time.

On the other hand, we could take these deformed objects, this tired matter as a metaphor of the end of the industrial society along with its pretensions and its impudence. Nothing and nobody has escaped the deep quiet gloom of Time, where only the Remains remain for a moment, before finally being absorbed by the Eternity.


The REMAINS series consists of two sub series - Soft Pastels and Watercolors, respectively. Please visit the project website to see all works.

Remains (1995 - 1996)

Biotope (from Ancient Greek βίος (bios) 'life' + τόπος (topos) 'place') is literally an area where life lives. More precisely, a biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific biological community. Taken in the broadest sense, a forest or sea could be a biotope but generally a biotope is often considered to be within the circle of human everyday life.

The Biotope series was created as a visualization of a large installation project representing a “city” of trash containers. The project deals with one of the most serious problems today – the problem with the waste that has already not only pragmatic but cultural and social dimensions as well. The increasing consumption leads to increased environmental pollution. The increased production results from the increased supply - consumption. The consumption has become a “social duty” that should keep the economy going. The consumer society has turned into a waste society. The message of the project is quite clear and does not need special explanations: we leave so much waste after us that the place we live in, our “biotope”, turns gradually into a dumping ground thus limiting our outlook and our movements. The coping with the growing amount of waste requires quick and intelligent decisions as well as socially responsible actions and behavior. It would be good if people reflect on these processes and on their personal attitude. I would refrain from further explanations, because I am convinced that an image reveals itself in a specific way that could and should not be completely verbalized.  

Biotope

The main compositions in the series are created with 3D modeling and simulations of physical forces and phenomena from reality.
 
The title of the series was inspired by a joke among the inhabitants of a secluded place in Upstate New York, which says: "If you want culture, you have to buy yogurt". This saying, mentioned by Louise Pirotta, a US artist, became the occasion for a small challenge between colleagues living in different countries.
Subsequently, I further developed the subject with new images, experimenting with various computer applications.
 
However, aside from the funny beginning, the exhibition refers to those associations, the symbol of which is milk as a primary nutrient and in particular the milk modified by microorganisms. These are the processes of fermentation and transformation, maturation, storage, nutrition, satisfaction of thirst / hunger, feeding with new energy - archetypal states that are essential part of the dynamics of life. In the works of the series, the yogurt is placed in the abstract spaces of sky or nothingness and is thus freed from any concreteness, which renders it the cosmic dimensions characteristic of myths.

More about  the series at its dedicated site:  https://yogurtculture.weebly.com/


* Louise Pirotta's original joke: "I live in an extremely rural secluded area of Upstate NY, pretty much cut off from the rest of the world. They say here if you want culture you have to buy yogurt."

Yogurt Culture 


The Creation series was inspired by the rocks on the summit of Cherni Vrah (Bulgarian for 'Black Peak') - the highest place of Vitosha Mountain (2299m) that lies near Sofia. The mountain is a wonderful place to take a break from the daily city life and I go there once a week during weekdays when there are not many people. Taking a rest at the summit I have drawn some sketches of rocks that later were used as base for oil paintings, for some of which additional materials (gauze and straw) were used to give them some extra material look. The series consists of  two movements: the first one (created in 2000) is more realistic and shows the rocks from a closer distance as objects; the second (2002, 2003) has some surrealistic elements and shows the rocks as parts of the landscape .
To me the shapes of the rocks and their places are a metaphor of the process of Creation of the world. I remember I have imagined then (while drawing on the top of the mountain) how God has modeled and placed this raw solid matter in its perfect shape, on its perfect place.

Creation (2000 - 2003)

The Creation series was inspired by the rocks on the summit of Cherni Vrah (Bulgarian for 'Black Peak') - the highest place of Vitosha Mountain (2299m) that lies near Sofia. The mountain is a wonderful place to take a break from the daily city life and I go there once a week during weekdays when there are not many people. Taking a rest at the summit I have drawn some sketches of rocks that later were used as base for oil paintings, for some of which additional materials (gauze and straw) were used to give them some extra material look. The series consists of  two movements: the first one (created in 2000) is more realistic and shows the rocks from a closer distance as objects; the second (2002, 2003) has some surrealistic elements and shows the rocks as parts of the landscape .
To me the shapes of the rocks and their places are a metaphor of the process of Creation of the world. I remember I have imagined then (while drawing on the top of the mountain) how God has modeled and placed this raw solid matter in its perfect shape, on its perfect place.



This work is an installation consisting of three paintings and a short clip in which the paintings are used as spaces. The paintings are called and represent different states of mind or modes of existing: Downwards (Submergence), Upwards (Emergence) and A Place called Nowhere, which stands for the ever searched state of perfect balance between the opposites, the middle point. The clip sums the three states up in an attempt to represent the being of man as an oscillation between opposites. The camera takes the spectator through a spiral channel, where the both directional states alternate each other while advancing and finally reaching the central space that bears the pattern of the third, static painting and is in fact… hard to stay in. Maybe this much desired state is more alien to the human nature than we can imagine? The spiral is used, because it allows a motion not only to circulate, but to reach a center as well. Finally, the conjunction of the opposites on a symbolic level poses the question if such a union is endurable at all.

The three paintings could be found below the clip.

Passing through Nowhere (1997 - 1999)

These are works from the homonymous solo exhibition
30.11 - 14.12.2018
Arosita Gallery, Sofia


I would like this exhibition to offer fewer words and more observation; to let objects speak in silence, and people to feel and think for themselves.

What is an object? Various interpretations of this concept are possible. Here it has the simple meaning of something we can observe. Something we perceive as external to the observer (subject) and which can be seen by him and others. In our (Western) culture "objectively" has acquired the meaning of "commonality" and hence of "real"... because it is assumed that it is not influenced by personal (subjective) feelings or attitudes. However, this is only apparent. In the process of experiencing the object, we put into it our soul, our pre-existing contents. Even when we see something new in an object, we actually find something unknown in ourselves. An endless process in which the subject objectifies himself. Projecting their inner world on objects, the subject experiences themselves in the world.

There are objects in the exhibition that carry a specific idea. Others can be perceived more intuitively. There are also those who are subject to pure contemplation.

Let everyone discover in them what they carry within themselves and if they can... even something else.
 

Slav Nedev
Sofia, 2018.11.23

Objects 

These chairs were created at a symposium that took place in Beratzhausen, Bavaria from 21 to 30 July 2017. Actually they were not literally created but rather over-painted so as to represent some of the participants in the symposium. The blue squared chair is Kurt, the white one with the yellow back is Ludwig Hirtreiter and the green white dotted chair is Tine Merz from Regensburg. Unfortunately there was not enough time to make a chair for each and every artist but otherwise it would be quite possible and fun. The colors and the patterns were inspired by the clothes of the respective persons.

Chairs/Persons

A series of 29 paintings exploring purely aesthetic problems of color and form. 
Gouache and tempera on Velké Losiny® paper in two different sizes: 29 х 42 cm and 42 х 58 cm.
 
The Water Imprints were created so to say at one go. I had about thirty sheets of nice, hand-made paper and I wanted to try what one could do with them.

My aim was to experiment and make relatively simple, almost geometrical compositions that were to be enlivened with color and various textures including with some simple print forms and stencils made of handy materials. I needed to work fast because the paper has its own character and one should make it pretty wet, then slightly dry and somewhere in that gap – while it is neither too wet, nor dry – to fill it with color and shape. There is not room for deep thoughts in this process. What is needed are quick decisions and improvisations. That unleashes the creative impulses and the intuition and – together with certain chance (because one works with water) gives as a result free works without surplus speculations. The sole conception is the unfolding of the inner sense of composition and color.

Water Imprints (1996 - 97) 

Why do I call this series elements? Because there is air in it, there is water, there are earth and fire… There are birth, life and death, springing up from the relationships between the elements. The name was not preliminary given – it arose spontaneously in the work process, as well as many of the elements in the paintings themselves. Spontaneity, in fact, had a primary role in the making of the works. In this sense, the works are not illustrations or treatments of a preconceived theme, but rather a process of giving the elements an opportunity to point out and represent themselves. The elements are not only outside but inside as well, in a state of perpetual communion, merging into one another, and thus giving birth to an alchemy that has its processes and stages, as well as its starting, transitional and end products. (Perhaps it was the quest for outer world analogues to what happens in the inner world that led to the alchemy's boom in the Middle Ages.)

In my works, I try to capture and represent some typical images and symbols that, irrespective of time and concrete forms, remain stable in their essence. I have attempted to cleanse them of any concreteness and thus to create a dreamlike atmosphere. Dreamlike, because the dream is a natural environment in which one thinks primarily with images rather than with words. (Let us not forget that one never knows to what extent one dreams while he believes he is awake.) Nevertheless, if the works are reviewed in the order of their creation, one could perceive a certain succession of states that, although quite spontaneous, is reasonable and logical. For example, "Ladder to Heaven" (a quest for the other, the unknown) finds an answer in "Where Earth and Sky Meet" (an attainment of the sought), followed by "In the Beginning There Was a Ball" (a new, integral entity, synthesis).


So, the elements and their alchemy are everywhere, creating an environment that includes us and at the same time informs our very being. Sometimes they are like a sunny day, sometimes like lake water or the touch of the wind… Sometimes, they are inimical and destructive…, but still we are kneaded together out of them!...

Slav Nedev

Sofia
July, 2005

Elements (2004 - 2006)

The Post-urban Visions series transcends the existence of today's highly urbanized industrial society and envisages a future (post-urban) state, in which the humans for some reason (probably caused by themselves) are extinct and only remains of their activity (mostly architecture) and shadow-like silhouettes remind of the busy city life.
However in this desolate landscape, the nature slowly regains space (Post-urban Vision No.1) and the life represented by the green leaves (contrasted to steel, concrete and glass) begins anew.
. . .

Post-urban Vision No. 1 was inspired really by a vision I have for some days. It was not some obsession but the image of green vegetation that breaks through some straight geometrical, rectangular, glazed structure appeared repeatedly in my mind long enough for me to decide to paint it. Then this first work opened the way for the rest of the series.

Post-urban Visions (2007 - ongoing)

Because the sculpture was realized after wining a competition, follows an excerpt of the concept.

"The Evergreen Twig is a minimalist composition that develops in an upward spiral - a symbol of constant development and renewal - qualities that characterize Kazanlak's history and social life. The sculpture would like to not only reflect the past and present of the city but, by visualizing an evolution tendency, to form a positive attitude for citizens for a positive future as well.

The first elements of the composition are set firmly on the foundation, creating a sense of stability of reliability. At the same time, a gradual upward movement begins from them, from this solid foundation. Delicately hinted at the beginning, it becomes more palpable in the spiral of development and culminates in the last leaf, which is almost vertically upright and directed to the sky."


Dimensions
Height: 304 cm
Overall height with the  base: 364 cm
Width: 197 cm
Depth: 199 cm

The Evergreen Twig (a sculpture in Rosarium Park, Kazanlak, Bulgaria)

Rose Flower is a sculpture in Rosarium Park, Kazanlak, Bulgaria.
The project links the history of Kazanlak as the center of the rose industry in Bulgaria, the ethnographic complex Museum of the Rose, the Rosarium park and the rose flower.

Aluminum, stainless steel
Dimensions: 198 x 191 x 198 cm
Total height with base: 258 cm

Project date: March 2017
Installation date: August 2018

Rose Flower 

The title of the series was inspired by a joke among the inhabitants of a secluded place in Upstate New York, which says: "If you want culture, you have to buy yogurt". This saying, mentioned by Louise Pirotta, a US artist, became the occasion for a small challenge between colleagues living in different countries.
Subsequently, I further developed the subject with new images, experimenting with various computer applications.
 
However, aside from the funny beginning, the exhibition refers to those associations, the symbol of which is milk as a primary nutrient and in particular the milk modified by microorganisms. These are the processes of fermentation and transformation, maturation, storage, nutrition, satisfaction of thirst / hunger, feeding with new energy - archetypal states that are essential part of the dynamics of life. In the works of the series, the yogurt is placed in the abstract spaces of sky or nothingness and is thus freed from any concreteness, which renders it the cosmic dimensions characteristic of myths.

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