Balkan Culture

---

 

ART GALLERY LE PAPILLON

presents

STANIMIR VIDEV

"NEARLY ABSTRACT"

painting exhibition

01.04.2024 г. – 7.05.2024

 

"Color is a key; the eye is a mallet, and the soul is a multi-stringed piano. An artist is a hand that with one key or another creates the vibrations of the human soul." - Wassily Kandinsky

From April 1st to May 7th, 2024, Le Papillon Art Gallery is delighted to host the latest works of the magnificent artist Stanimir Videv. His every appearance is expected, and his work is followed by numerous admirers in Bulgaria and abroad. Abstract, "Nearly-abstract" or figurative - each of his works bears his recognizable manner of applying complex tonally formed strokes and their subsequent vigorous treatment and manipulation. Stanimir Videv has not only a distinctive, expressive and almost abstract artistic style, but also a significant presence in the contemporary cultural scene. "Nearly abstract" are the unifying words of his current exposition of 20 canvases, but behind them is also his intuitive, primal expression in pictorial matter. Such is his deep emotional relation to the form outlined by the landscape and the people with their occupations passing through the artist's being.

His powerful painting follows his philosophy of balancing color, intricately composing shades and shaping a colorful sense of the object's emotional presence. The structures and figures he builds follow a scientific concept of dynamic compositions of the main individual elements in the depicted subject, but so skillfully harmonized that they are perceived as a whole. As if jazzed up color spots, but with a convincing sense of the integrity of the image and with a traceable interrelationship between its component parts. These are seemingly concrete landscapes and actually plastic combinations of colors and volumes with multi-layered color fractures, built with the skillful hand of the artist in a rhythm of warm and cold tones. Videv is inspired by the pulse and life of the city of Plovdiv, but in his works he goes beyond the specifics, keeping a recognizable touch, playfully handling his characteristic techniques of taking away from overlays, accumulating and leaving reliefs, fragmenting the whole into separate small independent paintings.

In complex and dynamic, "nearly abstract" compositions, the exhibition brings together urban landscapes, but also his recognizable enigmatic figural compositions, where the female image is like a mirage and gently touches the senses of the viewer. Videv likes to focus on the enigmatic female presence captured in various states and it always betrays his attitude towards woman as a muse. In this exhibition we also note the presence of musicians who inspired him, conversations and silhouettes of people, revealing the imprints of accumulated impressions and feelings in the artist.

Videv's painting is on the border between the real and the abstract, which makes it so valuable and loved, and to feel it well, it is supposed to look and sense. Without striving for the construction of compositional centers, the artist succeeds only through the skillful handling of colors to achieve several plans. Always honest in his art, creating music of complex colors, he builds convincingly vivid paintings whose abstract compositions relax the mind and challenge the imagination. The artist's various emotional and physical states, everyday events that moved the artist's thought, are his main creative drive. The landscapes are harmonious colorful abstract compositions, but always referring to a close and recognizable place for the mind. His canvases radiate a lot of energy, impact with a decisive layering of colors and removal of paints to reach the light.

Abstract art is based on the Latin word abducted and has been used as a term since the late 19th century for works painted from memory rather than from nature. With the development of art, the meaning of this concept changes in parallel, in the direction of designating works that do not depict the outside world and have radically broken their connection with the figurative reflection of reality. In painting, colors are freed from object form, and forms have no analogue to nature. The secret of the abstractist is not to think so much about what to draw or write, but to feel, trusting the inner sensations. It is precisely this frank and true emotion, which has passed through the heart, mind and masterful sense of color and picturesqueness of Stanimir Videv, that makes his paintings so directly affecting, even when they are "Almost Abstract". Each of his paintings is experienced, with a state of its own, and perhaps because of this, is always highly memorable for its complex colors laid on thick strokes and with thin finishing touches. Stanimir Videv is an unadulterated and frank artist, bearer of the characteristic handwriting of the Plovdiv painting manner. Over the years, his undeniable talent has made him one of the highly respected artists, with a strong presence in Bulgarian cultural life - valued both in artistic circles by prominent actors, writers, artists, and by collectors and admirers, including many diplomats, politicians, musicians. His feelings and love for the city of Plovdiv, but also for the mysterious emotional essence of female nature, are woven into all his canvases.

The impression that his canvases create is that it happened by itself, without the technical intervention of a person who spent hours in front of it and layered the oil paints. And this happens when the craft is so well mastered that it is pointless to display it deliberately. "A painting is ready when you have sufficiently tired the canvas and the palette; for me - between the fifth and seventh time when placing it on the tripod. More than once I have completely ruined a picture and made a whole new one, or else turned it back and found that it was done. The painting has its own life, the ability to change in a short time - like light. When someone likes it or finds the right person who needs it, it becomes more beautiful. The painting is made by accumulating emotions, not by accumulating experience; then when it's painted honestly, without thinking you have to display it or sell it, although that's important too. I always want to be as honest as possible with my art, I'd rather polish it than do something I don't feel. Because it's all about feeling. Painting is a very personal thing. I approach very emotionally, I am able from one square decimeter to overturn the entire canvas; from the sea to make a harvest, but this is not poaching. It's more important to me and I'm trying to solidify something I've followed as a philosophy, to stand up, to improve, to make it better. I step on something old and unfold it, give it another direction. It is like the character of man. You grow old, but something in you always remains the same - the eyes, the smile or the way you walk. Painting is suffering, you have to experience it, let it pass through you, haunt you. You have to tear yourself apart, look inside yourself, otherwise it won't work," says Stanimir Videv.

You are welcome to the opening of the exhibition on 01.04.2024 Monday from 18:00 in the exhibition hall of the art gallery Le Papillon, 12 Dragoman Street and you will be captivated by the color and compositional harmonies of the works of Stanimir Videv, and from the energy of the author's presence!

The exhibition can be seen from April 1 to May 7, 2024 in the exhibition hall of the gallery in Varna, Dragoman Street 12, and also viewed on the website artpapillon.com or fb: Le Papillon Art Gallery.

 

BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE

Stanimir Videv is among the brightest representatives of Bulgarian abstract painting and is one of the leading artists in Plovdiv, where he lives and works. He is born on March 27, 1957. Graduated from the art high school in the city of Kazanlak in 1976. He completed his higher education in 1984, majoring in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Professor Dobri Dobrev. He has been a member of the Union of Bulgarian Artists since 1985, and of the Union of Plovdiv Artists since 1986. His first solo exhibition was in 1986 in the city of Plovdiv, part of the National Autumn Exhibitions.

Stanimir Videv has presented more than 30 solo exhibitions, and his paintings are owned by the National Art Gallery, museums and private collections in Bulgaria, Germany, England, Spain, Turkey, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Israel, USA, Finland, Greece, Luxembourg , Serbia, New Zealand, including that of Belgian entrepreneur and connoisseur Hugo Wooten.

Participated in collective exhibitions of Bulgarian art in countries such as France, Switzerland, Russia, Holland, Germany, Greece, Malta, Italy, Belgium and China, also took part in international art fairs - Expo Art in Los Angeles (1991) , Euro Art in Geneva (1993), Turkey (2009) He has numerous participations in general exhibitions and plein airs (Vienna - Austria, Istanbul - Turkey, Paris - France, Luxembourg and Tel Aviv - Israel, Malta, Switzerland, Greece, USA).

He is the winner of a number of awards:

- "Plovdiv" award for 1997 and 2007

- "Sword of Rompheus" award for 1997,

- The prize of the Union of Plovdiv Artists for 1986, 1987 and 1997.

- "Vasil Levski" National Award for 1987

- The award of the "Dyakov" gallery for 1996.

- First prize for painting, "Miniart", Ruse 2009

- Prize of the municipality of Pleven at the "Fifth Biennial of Small Forms", 2010.

- Painting Prize, Pöchlarn, Austria 2014