Grafikart Gallery presents the new solo exhibition “Graphics and Drawing” by Veselin Damyanov-Ves from April 4 to April 24, 2024. Lovers of Bulgarian graphic art will be able to see more than 30 of his latest color engravings. We will take a peek into his colorful world, which, through the experimentation and mixing of different graphic techniques, tells us the story of the world around us, full of absurd situations and people struggling to find themselves.
The vernissage is scheduled for April 4, 2024, Wednesday, from 5 to 8 p.m. in the Grafikart gallery at 50 Zlatovrakh Street in the capital.
Man is the center of the universe. Since its creation and development, it has ruled the world, changing the environment around it. Man is an interesting creature that is the object of study by himself. Each of us seeks to know the other and the human individual as a whole. Man relates to the world through the objects that surround him, both animate and inanimate. The perception of man and the objects around him provide that perspective on his surroundings that can reveal what man is in his essence.
In the current exhibition “Graphics and Drawing” by Veseleni Damyanov – Ves, as well as in his entire work, the objects of study are “people”, animals and everyday objects. It refracts the object through the sharp features of the graphics tool. It gives a sense of man’s imperfection, of his inadequacy and need for development. It gives expression to man surviving and being changed by his surroundings. In this world full of absurdity, Veseleni Damyanov – Ves has conversations with himself, through these distorted faces under the pressure of the modern world. Often in his works we see only human heads or shapes resembling human heads, placed on objects that look like boxes or simply scattered at some end of the drawing sheet. An interesting read about getting out of the “out of the box” frameworks in which we are closed or simply thrown into the space of the world, dysfunctional.
An interesting choice of approach to the image in Veselin Damyanov’s new works is that they give a feeling of disintegration – as if the person is created from different parts that do not match and you have to look at the whole image to see what the graphic work looks like.
Black and white graphic images with colorful spots and elements give the viewer a perspective on the essence of people. We are fundamentally the same, but our character traits give us color and expression in the world. So the “humans” of bat Wes (as they know it in art circles) show their characteropathies with some other color. The colors are bright like red, yellow, green, blue. Each one of them can be defined as a different character trait. A naive, purely primitive expression in the depiction of man is also noticeable.
We humans are made of differences and in order to discover our essence in one whole we have to walk a long way, experience moments in order to be able to build ourselves up and look like one whole. This exhibition shows just that, our various imperfect faces that have no claim to completeness, but make a claim to wholeness. Placed in this world of the grotesque, we ourselves, in order to survive, must not take ourselves seriously.
Veselin Damyanov-Ves has been a member of the “Grafikart” circle since its creation in 2019. It is an informal creative association of five artists, which in recent years has been asserting the place of graphics on the contemporary art scene. Emanuela Kovach, Vasil Kolev – Vassillo, Ludmil Georgiev and Branko Nikolov are also members of the “Grafikart” circle.