Sofia Arsenal - Museum for Contemporary Art
www.samcaproject.org
Sporadic Biphocality
A project by Dr. Gatev
With the special participation of Prof. Stanislav Pamukchiev, Venzislav Zankov and Rassim
October 15 – November 11, 2012
The project „Sporadic Biphocality” presents, probably for the first time in such a sound and clear voice a problem that bears symetrically a technological and conceptual character. It’s about art and its presentation and positioning in public space.
D-r Gatev presents his oevres thematically linked to the popular practices of „production” of contemporary art in two contexts or two different scales, using two variating distances, hence the formulation „biphocality”. The first scenario: three largescale photografic images by D-r Gatev are being presented as an independent serries, installed separately in an autonomous space – a room, designated for them. The second level or rather phocal plane offers the viewer the same serries of photografic images in the framewok of an institutional group exhibition together with the works of major figures of contemporary Bulgarian art – Stanislav Pamoukchiev, Ventzislav Zankov and Rassim. The show takes place at SAMCA – the Sofia Arsenal Museum for Contemporary Art, which underlines the institutional character of the presentation and channels the attention towards the problem of contextualization and juxtaposition of artefacts in a museum environment as well as the general millieu of artworks which form the larger local context/local scene.
The way D-r Gatev’s works incorporate into the common project is a risky experiment, but in its own voice, it reminds very classical artistic practices utilised here in their conceptual flesh and core instead of their aesthetic aura.
To what extend the common features in a group exhibition justify its creation or becomes the reason for a show is a question which according to differen paradigmes in the psychology of art or critical theory finds controvercial answers. Sometimes it’s common sematic stragies like juxtaposition of works, their catalogization, their numbering and count, the deffining of a certain topic or raising a question throught the works of art that are among the possibilites. Possibilites wich are worthwile to note as inconsistent with the case of D-r Gatev and the issue of the Sporadic Biphocality in the Bulgarian contemporary art and its (semi-autonomous) occasional appearance on our stage.
The careful formation of an intellectual context by the three special participants helps preserve the illusion of an authentic millieu. The project thus outreaches and overcomes the conditionality of an exhibition, it happens thanks to the group show but also inspite of it as it tackles a problem emerging from the art itself. From the art as an alternative, as a totality and artificiality. The perfect illusion does not allow mistakes and therefore it rejects the (possibility for) mistakes, proving, for this equation that the mistake is the most potent act of mankind.
The three autors invited for the group exhibition present works typically museum / group show works. Prof. Pamoukchiev is creating a site speciffic phalic silouethe of layers of soft and hard felt covering a good few meters of the central exhibition space. Ventzislav Zankov shows an illuminated neogothic sculpture of his latest period of works. Rassim develops an introspective project into his personal and family mythology as he navigates the imagery of his urine-manipulated photographic prints arround the loss of his sister in his early childhood.
Commissioner Panchev
