THIS IS IT, 2020
an artistic project on the occasion of the lack of a universal model

25 February – 07 March 2020
Rayko Alexiev Hall, Union of the Bulgarian Artists

“This Is It” is composed of several installations and animated photography that function together and debate themes at the core of the interaction between society and art.

The project comments on the replacement of:
the missing with the missing,
the cavalier with the simple windy,
cold with warm light,
the spiritual, the value – replaced, the sacred – replaced,
the choice between one and the other,
replaced by a choice between one and the same with packaging, without an alternative, but also without the senses looking for the real choice, the different.

At one stage in the development of Western civilization, art fell from the temple directly to the palace. From a function and a factor in the culture of the spirit, it placed itself at the service of the culture of life. Thus, not only his theme, plot and poetics change, the modality of perception and attitude changes. Already then and in this way the replacement begins, it inevitably becomes a de facto major halt in the chronology of the West. This is probably also the breakthrough that leaves Europe as a cultural project vacant, hollow. The historical process of replacement condemns this civilization to a lack of vision, of a model, because of the absence of man from it. In European culture, in Western art, it is overpopulated with images and reflections, projections, shadows and manifestations, but there is no man as the bearer of value, of the spiritual. As its center.

Among the mantras of the ordinary man caught in the rapture of the last cycles of history, liberal indifference swirled. The release of conscience, the release of guilt, took major roles. As in a macro-level therapy session, the images freed Europe from its nightmares, simultaneously from its role, its responsibility, its accountability.

Here again we pose a question out of the ordinary: Where is art in culture? What visual problems does it solve when it can’t solve others? Can everything be true and not have the alternative, the liberal “yes=no”. Could there be no alternative to value, to verification…? Everything (“yes=no”) is allowed, becomes, can, passes, why? Is it resolved through the visible something essential?

Dr. Gatev / Y. Panchev