NEDKO SOLAKOV
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NEDKO SOLAKOV
Nedko Solakov is widely known for his witty installations/narratives, full of masterfully executed details. These involve the media of painting and drawing, the object, the text, multimedia. They rely on spatial arrangements and have lately ventured for realization in public spaces. His stories often incorporate, and are motivated by, easily identifiable truisms, while following their own clear narrative. In Solakov´s works truisms about faith, the entirety of the artwork, the function of art, the place of the artist in today´s world and the great expectations defining it, are intertwined, transforming and invading the works from within while constructing ironical and self-ironical messages. The discovery and the recognition of such truisms by the viewer construct quite specific and intimate relationships between the artist and his audience. Shared understanding turns them into fast friends. It is the relation to the viewer and the mutual expectations saturating the exhibition space which have most recently attracted Solakov, both emerging as important narrative trends in his installations. The visitors in his “A (not so) White Cube” (2001) in P.S.1 in New York, or “Chat” (2001) in IASPIS Gallery in Stockholm, or “(аbout) Fourteen” (2002) discreetly spread all over the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, peer into window panes and stretch their necks, they crawl under a staircase and crouch by the wall, almost lying down on the floor in order to read the texts or to see the miniature drawings. In “A High Level Show with a Catalogue” (2002) in CCA, Kitakyushu, Japan the public is first sent on a search in a specially produced catalogue featuring close-ups of the texts in order to better recognize the small stories on the floor or at 4,5 m height. The viewer complements and completes the work buy becoming a real participant, either by his/her own wish or by “force”. I am not sure whether such a directing/motivation/manipulation and even coersion of the viewer re-confirms or refutes the truism about the traditional mutually respectful expectations of artist and viewer. However, the works from the cycle Insolent Art are engaged with precisely that. The first one was realized in 2000 in Regina Gallery, Moscow where on a large wall lighted by a single spot light there was the following text: “You, viewer, are part of an audience, which (especially on New Year’s Eve) is not so important to my career, therefore, it is not appropriate for me to exhibit something more substantial here.” The second one is to be shown in Kassel within the show “In den Schluchten des Balkan”. It questions the touristic nature of these relations while insisting that they should be reevaluated over and over again. Iara Boubnova |