It wasn’t hard to share with my preliminary conceptually set colleagues in the
Netherlands, notions and sensibility like the one, on the image above.
Therefore it was such a bliss for me to work in 1998-99 with presumably the best painter I have ever
seen, not to mention worked with, Hemk van Dalen.
We were corresponding for about a year, discussing our common idea for a
shared exhibition in the city gallery of Dordrecht. When I arrived, two months
before the exhibition, he welcomed me as I was getting off the bus coming from
Bulgaria, took me exhausted from the road and from the lack of sleep to his
atelier and made me discuss the key issues from the beginning. Three days
without sleep had made my German unforgettable, but it was worth the effort.
Our installation was called “Analysis of
thinking and of things”. Below you can see some details from it. Our
purpose was to juxtapose basic images from our two civilizations.
The meaning of the perception and the insight in the
mental and emotional structures of the other was to determine such area of
perceptive models, where our cultural community and creative impulse coincide. It
all started with my indelicate act at a public place. At the press conference dedicated
to the opening of my exhibition, a Dutch art critic passed the ball to my court
with his question “what do I think about contemporary art and the Dutch contemporary
art in particular”. I replied that for the time being I was not interested in
European culture after 9th century. This was said in the oldest city
in the Netherlands, founded in the 9th c. where the first
philosophical literature publishing house was established – sometime during the
early Baroque. The majority of the audience knew my work and the direction ever
since “Magical space Tangra” and without prejudice assumed that I had more to
share.
We have been working on the topic with Hemk van Dalen. The opening of
the exhibition coincided with the attendance of a large group of colleagues from
Bulgaria. The only question my Bulgarian colleagues addressed was where did I
get the flexible mirrors, which bore the 12 volumes of the Encyclopedia of 17th
century wrapped in gilded paper. I will not mention the name of the colleague with
the question. At least he asked something.
It was hardly that summer that I shared some things, the way I consider
them, with two young colleagues from Veliko Tarnovo.
Then I had some time and I installed at sunrise, on
the 11th May, this circle of thrust 24 copper tubes in the mirror of
the channel. Inclined, the tube and the its
reflections remind of runes – the writing before Cyril. My Dutch colleagues did
not fail to take me to their Gothic cathedral so that I can be personally
convinced that there were still runic inscriptions and traces in the 11th
c on their land as well. Amazing! They showed me we had been in related cultural communities.
