Art for the blind. This is the shortest description of the project, on which Ivan Kanchev has been working for seven years now and which may reasonably be defined as unique. There have not been such projects in Bulgaria and according to the artist’s research, his ceramics has no analogue in the world.
Ivan Kanchev started his work on the project as a second-year Ceramics student (1997) at the National Art Academy. He conducted profound research showing that hands are the blinds’ most important organs of perception. In order to experience pleasure from the contact with a certain shape, the latter has to evoke pleasant feelings and warmth as well as to call forth a sense of security and tranquility, to be firm – the blinds’ aesthetical criteria for the beautiful are determined by the contact with a smooth, full and firm form. The artist unites in his works the positions of both the sighted and the blind, thus striving for uniting and elimination of the boundaries of difference.

Svetla Petkova

MULTIPLICATION A British Council touring exhibition of Artists Multiples + 11 artists from Bulgaria

01 April 2004 - 02 May 2004

Multiplication is a new touring exhibition of artist’s multiples initiated by the British Council’s Visual Arts Department. The works in this exhibition are united by their lack of uniqueness, usually regarded as a prerequisite in a work of art. Many are commissioned works produced by third parties, whilst others are by artists who work solely with the concept of the multiple. In either case the challenge to the artist is in finding ways of realising an idea that can be repeated time and again. Thus part of the creative challenge comes in researching new methods and sourcing new materials, leading to some unlikely collaborations between artist and fabricators.
The exhibition comprises 62 multiples by 46 artists. The works are displayed in plywood cases which slot together in a system designed especially for Multiplication by the artist Sarah Staton. Each work is identifiable by its catalogue number clearly stencilled throughout the exhibition display system and referenced here on this website.
The exhibition has been selected with the help of Jacqueline Jefferies from Camden Arts Centre, Sarah Staton and Sally Townsend of The Multiple Store. All the works in the exhibition have been drawn from the British Council Collection, and many were acquired specifically for this exhibition from Camden Arts Centre, and The Multiple Store, some work from the exhibition are still available for sale.

MEETING POINT Svetozara Alexandrova. Painting

01 April 2004 - 01 May 2004

The painter Svetozara Alexandrova realizes this project with her typical straightforwardness of the means of expression. The initial collision with this approach leads to a tense perception.
As a starting material for her works were used passport photos – one of the most standard identification documents, which the author turns into fine art. On one of these two big canvases a woman is painted who has involuntarily closed her eyes. This moment turns into a detail of a whole sequence of microscopic movements. Caught by the lens, it is the missing chain of information, which takes the document beyond validity. In another work a man is pictured in between the blinking of the eyes. Tangible are the signs of the advancing age on the faces of both of them, faces visibly unbeautiful and too specific.
The sixteen much smaller in terms of format works represent a multitude of faces of young men also made of standard passport pictures. In these series the standard was used as an instrument stressing the individuality. Each face stands out being different and unique. These bright young faces are present with almost an exorcist strength compared to the enormous disharmonic masks of the man and the woman and they make space for serenity between them.
Svetozara Alexandrova has the ability to stare in this layer in which the latent is transparent and to enforce the doubt in it by ripping it shown. She takes it out methodically through the framing through the purely suggestive image and shaping it with the strength of painting. Thus the suspicion on the internal life stands out summoned by the externally expressed.

Vela Mlechevska