The Silence in Ivan Roussev

The wild feeling of a closed space that drags you and in which you fight like an animal, shot me through the unusual route toward the front door, to the left, two steps, to the right, a door, a short but steep spiral staircase, to the left, a door…. air! My heart is racing but I’m saved. Impossible to get back to sleep. How did it affect me…To feel it dragging me in my sleep!

The light slowly prevails over the soaked with moisture dark blue morning air between the hills of Ilindentsi. In the low the moisture has sifted in equal and filled with fog hollows between hills and rubble. Green as I have never seen in this wild area sintered by the summer heat. It is wild in summer. Now it is such a blessing! In May!

Last night I was in the underground corridors Ivan had bored through the hills beneath his house to reach the underground river, filling them with its echoed bubbling. Light is as in a downhole, light for working, under which strange stone forms are shoved around the deaf corridors of the cave.

Ivan experiments with soil, stones and sounds for years – you have surely seen his works in Rayko Alexiev Gallery. And not only there. This work however dragged me within the elements he works with. What I like best is that he has long surpassed any opportunity the suggestion to be kept in a movie or in a picture. Not to mention an exhibition in a gallery. In fact… that work is the gallery.

Stone walls and oblique marble verticals tower above it, among them – in a more acceptable for a gallery exposition form, about a dozen sculptural shapes are arranged, in whose carved from the drill and chisel body Ivan puts candles. In the emerging dusk, their soft yellow light breaks through the rounded by the thick evening darkness stone forms, in a gentle and soft glow. Silence.

The Silence in the World of Ivan Roussev

Sculpture Park Ilindentsi

Jules Verne and His Children

Great ideas in design, those that not only make life easier and comfortable, but those that outline the horizon through the eyes of a great man and the border of that horizon is the border of our civilization in the last 100 years … those great ideas do not belong, helas, to painters and writers. Jules Vernes is not among us any more to bring the images of the possible in the world of happening: 80 days around the world, Captain Nemo, From the Earth to the Moon. Great poetry consists in physics and social sciences and we, having lost our renaissance thrill, step in the shoes of the founders of Venice and Sao Paolo Biennale. All in all, that is the ceiling of the dreams for us as artists! What a shame!

Today the artist is allowed anything, if he smears the canvases and behaves within the limits of what is entertaining to the burger, sorry, “customer” is the name. Meanwhile the wind gains strength in human genes and the world will never be burger again. And its has never been so far. Nowadays my favorite middle class, that is people with professions, lost power in the global stratification and now we, let’s say about 2-3 billion technologically bound children of the internet, we are market and resources for processes, whose existence we don’t even suspect. In the meantime, the children of Jules Verne, Count Von Zeppelin and Elon Musk outline the horizon and the paths toward it. The three of them create and bring to our real world a connectivity system of visions, through the technological, economical and social toolkit of time, in which each one of them works.

To honor the profession, we have one artist comparable to them – Hristo Yavashev. If you trace the history of art from Egypt on until now you will see that the images on the canvas are the most important in the work. And under the cloth you see a leg, a hand, a head… And further on – my job as an artist is to force the state clerks to entry my work as art. And if you could compare the procession of six-horse carriage of Count von Zeppelin crossing the crowd at his New York welcome, after conquering the sky over the Atlantic in 1929, to the smiling Hristo who took with his Maybach the New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to the opening of his exhibition in Central Park you would recognize you are watching the same movie.

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin is a visionary, a German nobleman, a general, an aircraft manufacturer. Born on July 8, 1938, ten years after Jules Verne, in the city of Konstanz, Germany. Graf Zeppelin is the founder in the creation of Luftschiffbau Zepelin GmbH, and in 1909 he founded the world's first airline transport Deutshe Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft (DELAG) - (German airships) for civilian passenger and cargo. For this purpose, huge hangars and poles to tie the machines were built in major cities. The following year regular domestic passenger flights began and up until 1914 the German Aviation Association transported 37,250 people on over 1,600 flights without an incident. For the same period 25 machines were built, of which 6 passenger. Not to interrupt the presentation I will integrate the documentary of his world tour at the end of the text. The film duration is an hour and a half and a beautiful journalist is on board, she describes the journey and publishes a book about it. The muse herself!

You would most probably tell yourself – old stuff… we are looking for open positions for designers, IT, developers, and Vesso is bothering us with this! Take it easy – within the blog of Sculpture Park Varna we offer job opportunities at SPACEX, the company of Elon Musk.

You can check for yourself here

And now, as it should be done, I will present the company to you, the way they present themselves:

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, better known as SpaceX, is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California, USA. It was founded in 2002 by former PayPal entrepreneur and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk with the goal of creating the technologies to reduce space transportation costs and enable the colonization of Mars.

On April 8, 2016, with the launch of CRS-8, SpaceX successfully vertically landed a first stage on an ocean drone platform and delivered Dragon to Low Earth Orbit.

And now, the most important, the mission as defined by Elon Musk:

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.

This is to say Good morning to my muse, Moby Dick of Led Zeppelin, the same Moby Dick from the novel of Jules Verne.

And for you remains the delight of the 1929 documentary which will indulge you into the World of Count Zeppelin

Free

In my passion to outline a clear and unequivocal value circle, with the help of brief but vivid scribbles, the blog started resembling a boutique edition of “Who’s Who”. And as I am gathering the courage for two great persons, but really great, I need to gain power. It will be best through joking and with self-irony. I will tell  several funny incidents from my recent private life. I have a private life now, because I have been Free for some time, and those took place during my family life.

I have had a few happy marriages, and each one of them follows three distinct periods. The first period is the closet with the jam. One day it ends with the mechanical feeling that you are a vibrator at night and an ATM at day. There is then a relatively gray period of slight but polite friendship, both of you however with a knife clenched in the pocket. Finally, the patience achieved at this incredible price creates, no one knows how and why, friendship, reciprocity and mutual support, precious as a gift. This gift however, leaves a slight metallic taste in the mouth, because you are already Free. And there is nothing in you, you cannot make a joke with.

1. We are waiting at the customs at the border of Rousse. A crowd, boredom and dirt. Your country reminds you of a robbed watermelon field – we are back from Western Europe. We are not the typical couple – she doesn’t look any more like a school girl and I am a not so tall, having-put-on-weight, gray-haired, unshaven and tired man, who pays loans and debts. While she is wearily observing the dirt, a few moustached men come to me and slyly offer me in broken Bulgarian what is a not-so-bad according to them deal. I sent them away, not convincing enough for them. It is clear what they are thinking, apparently I am bargaining for the price. We were orthodox puritans and that was the worst joke we had ever experienced. What a joke! I didn’t presume that we appeared like that from aside. Now keep your confidence of an artist!

2. The Istambul Biennale. The Center. The European part of the city. September. A dense crowd, in which we stroll all in sweat. They had let me go ahead to rip the flooding mass of people, which I find to my surprise and content is not needed – people carefully draw back for me to pass, look at me reservedly but with undisguised confidence and go by. They don’t even look at the young woman, walking a few steps behind me. What a multiple silence!

  - What was that Erdinc, why do all those people behave like that? We are common tourists! – I am telling my friend Erdinc Guner, the then chief architect of the city. Later he was Director of the Cultural Heritage. One of us.

 - They have taken you for a hodja from…. I forgot which religious society. How could you not love the pashaluk way of thinking in Istambul!

3. Berlin Biennale was so far successful, we were living in Charlottenburg and if we were not swarthy and with poor German, I think we would have been “just like at home”. She thought I was wrong and sought proving it to me. She entered a croissant bakery shop, she adores croissants, waited for her turn to come, chose the croissants and when the lady put them expectantly in front of her, she got her purse. Started rummaging. She rummaged through it completely and ransacked it worriedly several times. The polite smile was frozen on the face of the seller. A clear, steel blue-sky look.

She finally took out a 5 euro note, the lady seller smiled warmly and wrapped carefully the croissants. We went out. The artist in her was looking at me with a triumph, she said:

-         -  You see, everywhere there is a place for your 5 euro. But there is no place for you.

David Černý and his vision of Kafka

If resemblance was the most important thing in a portrait, how then do we judge about the portraits of Rembrandt? Atanas Dalchev

Yesterday I received a nice gift, which is for you in fact.

There it is, as I received it:

Located in a busy shopping center in Prague, this twisting and reflective sculpture depicting the head of writer Franz Kafka is the latest kinetic artwork by controversial Czech artist David Černý . Installed in 2014, the enormous mirrored bust is comprised of 42 independently driven layers of stainless steel and weighs in at some 45 tons. The piece brilliantly reveals Kafka’s tortured personality and unrelenting self doubt that plagued him his entire life. 

The layering of objects is a common motif for Černý  who built a similar rotating head that also functions as a fountain titled Metalmorphosis. 

Artist David Černý named the giant kinetic sculpture "K on sun,". The sculpture is in Prague, right next to a building in which Kafka himself once worked as a clerk in an insurance company, and across from City Hall. ” It’s to remind you of Kafka, when you are totally frustrated by the incompetence of state employees,” Černý said. The 45-ton sculpture is constantly moving. It transforms over time, just like K in Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”.

The mountain of Jordi Pantebre

The exposition Photos paysages d’Andorre by Jordi Pantebre has taken place from 03^rd  until 15^th Dec 2012 in Strasbourg and consisted of 17 photos of the mountains of Andorra. The exposition was accompanied by the poems of Andreu Escales. It was organized by Andorra – the then rotating chairman of the Council of Ministers of the EC. Those 17 photoграпhic canvases illustrating the mountains of Andorra are the result of 30 years of work. The mountains of Jordi Pantebre. 30 years. 17 pictures.

It was 10^th or 11^th January, 10 am, -25 ^o, Dordrecht. I am ringing at the door. I am thumping. No one. I go to the window and go on. A sleepy, stressed and stunned man pulled the curtain, to whom I said:

-          The sun. Come on.

-          I haven’t had a coffee yet.

-          After that. Dress up. Don’t forget the camera. I’ve been waiting for the sun for three days.

We rushed to the gallery. Inside, through a hole as large as ten cents drilling through the completely darkened with black, tightly foil windows, a powerful beam floated. You've seen it. Magic Space Tangra.

  - I am in the Netherlands for years. Nobody has ever thought of coming home without notice. I am shocked. But it’s good that you came. A great job we did.

To get a refuge, Jordi had signed a declaration that he would not get involved in politics in the Netherlands. He couldn’t stand that I did not bother with politics. He was expelled from France “with a gun against his head”, as he said, while signing the declaration that he would never go back to France. And he was in France because he had been expelled from Spain for a two-hour movie, depicting the repressions against the Basques.

Movie is not the correct word. Jordi was then experimenting with multiple screen photo projection. On a large screen 6 photos showing simultaneously, each with different duration, thus forming different combinations and logical relations with the rest. Incredibly rich vision. Six slide projectors, with 2 000 shots each, each controlled by a computer. 1985. As a student he had shot for Dali.

Jordi was attached to me to film the process and the creation of my exhibition, because we were alike according to the Dutch. The communists had destroyed my exhibition and despite that I had continued working. I had protested against the restrictions imposed in a letter addressed to the Minister of Interior in 1984. I am still keeping the letter.

The newspapers reported about my issues with the authorities. А celebrity from the Balkans! A dissident! The dissidents were in vogue then. My exhibition was one of twelve, presenting Bulgarian culture in accordance with an interstate contract. It started with the Thracian gold treasure and so, so, to the avant-garde in Bulgaria. To me.

At the opening of the celebrations, after thanking in the end of his speech, the Prime Minister Lubbers said everything was wonderful except for the missing Veselin Dimov.

A confusion in Bulgaria.

… within these conditions I will go nowhere

… all right, no problem, they were not considering me anymore.

…. If you ever come back in the next 6 months, make sure to call me before that

 -  It is all right like that.

He kept his word.

You see – a young wife, a mother, a brother.

I was with a heart arrhythmia. And not only.

That is how I became a vegetarian if you have ever asked yourself why.

The Bulgarian ambassador was not invited to the opening of my exhibition.

The Mayor of Dordrecht learnt 2 hours before the event that I had invited him.

I am presenting Bulgaria. There is no way for him no to come. He had had a schedule.

All the King’s Men came.

The avant-garde Dutch composer sang, played and danced shamanic motives on the topic of Tangra for nearly two hours. That was the opening. When all the speeches were over, I replaced the embassy interpreter in front of the microphone. In the awkward silence I thanked my audience and explained in my German that I am protesting for being manipulated with political purposes from Bulgarian as well as from Dutch authorities.

-          Jordi, come tomorrow morning at 4:30 am at my house with the pickup. In Bulgaria the arrests start at 5 am. I don’t know what the practice is here. Tell Margreet to be ready in her car at 4:45 am. I get out of your car, cross the garden and get into her car.

At 4:55 am we were heading to Amsterdam with full speed. Margreet Huisman is an exquisite artist and person. Slender and aristocratic, she had the softness of the movements of an expensive Siamese cat.

Jordi and I, we shared a great welcome of the sun in the deserted areas of the village of Topola, next to Balchik. We haven’t seen each other ever since. 

Wind Veil

The facade of the six-story garage in Charlotte, NC, was covered with 80,000 tiny aluminum panels that move with the wind and reveal what a gust of wind looks like. The structure is designed to provide ventilation and shade for the parking.

Wind Veil - Gateway Village, Charlotte, North Carolina

The work was done by Ned Kahn. More about this artist and visionary in the contemporary chaos theory, you can see in his site, here.

Ventsi Kolev

The best Bulgarian designer Ventsi Kolev designs and produces in Bulgaria automated robotic systems mainly for the Netherlands. On the 24^th May we celebrate the creation of the fonts Glagolitsa :-)) and Kirilitsa, I will draw attention therefore to the comparability between words and experience. Design means a drawing and a construction. Taught not only separately, but even in different universities in Bulgaria.

A poem of Radoy Ralin was tackling the subject, commenting the ceaseless repression of Bulgarian education, suggesting the idea Ministry of Education to be split in – Department Reading in Sofia and Department Writing in Plovdiv.

After these clarifications I now turn to Ventsi, to whom I showed with a triumphant look the Flying bird by Festo.

-         -      All right, Ventsi said disappointed with my frivolity – we were neighboring stands at the last

exposition. Not bad – he encouraged me. Jesus! Not bad. That is the spirit of design himself. 

That is not everything…. that is not even the beginning…

This Game is not a Game

Mindflex is a toy by Mattel, which uses brain waves to steer a ball through an obstacle course. The brain waves are captured with the enclosed EEG headset, which allows the user to speed up or slow down a fan, thus lifting or lowering the blue styrofoam ball. The game is not new; it was released in the fall of 2009. Mindflex retailed it for between 60 and 120 USD.

The game was not available outside the USA.

Scientists have questioned whether the toy actually measures brain waves or just randomly moves the ball, exploiting the well-known illusion of control from our everyday life. A fusion, I would answer – in the style of Miles Davis.

This aspect is of no importance to me. What really disturbs me is that while your children are studying English to prosper one day, their children will actually play with practices and techniques of interaction between thought and what is happening.

This already brings the play out of the everyday understanding and the sense of design.

I know, my colleagues would be wondering what this topic is doing here. Well, the reason is that it comes to 3D modelling.

The Appreciator, the Amateur and the Professional

I like the most the appreciator. That is a person with a different profession, often exceptionally good at it, so carried away by the flow of life that he couldn’t complete at the right time painting, playing and gesture techniques. The clear awareness of a better, or if not, at least of a more honest and open world remains as a hope that nevertheless one day he’ll do it. He will stand on the riverbank. The tripod in front of him. He will be sinking in the endless blue of the sky, and everything, but everything will be endless blue and he will sink into it with all his heart and soul, and each gesture will make him equal with the Creator and he will be as a wanderer, who has returned to his father’s home.

Of course that is nothing but a dream. He meets otherwise others like him and they discuss passionately the latest works of a favorite artist, beloved by them, with whom they drink and whose works they buy all! with the deep sense of shame and hidden passion, so intrinsic to the systematically cheating husband.

We are lost without the appreciator. It seems good that people have not read Joseph Beuys….and have not become aware that every human being is an artist. And really is. And how should we have fed our children then?

The amateur has graduated Academy usually. It is great if the Amateur is a lady, because brought up in dreams, artistic practices and ArtLive, she will educate her children with love, passion, commitment and unconditional pursuit of the values and ethics of civility. A woman over 35 in a gallery is rare, except for the gallerist and her friends. There is always a Man standing behind.

If the amateur is a man, you will get what you see. Claims, struggles, intrigue, hypocrisy and the strong ego of the non-proved himself. The focus is on the flow of events and he follows every direction twitch in order to manifest himself.  The main issue is to turn on the movie, which is in his head – and he will be understood and he will be successful, and the uncle from America will not be alone, there will be lots of uncles, and they will see that he is the best, but misunderstood, but when he makes money, at that moment, oh yes, at that moment he will paint, say and play everything that shakes his soul and they will all be at his feet. And the stage lights will not go out and he will be like… like… like …. you say whom.

This is the drama I mostly like in Louis de Funes.

Short, of an age, theater actor, over 50, realizes that he doesn’t look like the slender, and young and irresistible Hamlet. The movie industry is a big thing in that case. And consider this – if he becomes famous, but very famous, even though he is short, ugly and bald, there is no way that he won’t get the role. A bald Hamlet! Imagine that! The great can do anything, can’t they. Everything he has acquired as knowledge, he uses it in the fight. There is no other fight. The last one. Show no mercy!

Smashing. Could you be as smashing as Fernandel, Alain Delon and Jean Gabin. If you have the guts – go on! And then the only thing in your scope will be what happens in the spectator’s head, and not what you think. And every nuance suggested in the head of the spectator will be traced like a filigree and your every action will have the irresistibility of goodness, the humanity of knowledge, the understanding and the ending, of each movement and judgement of a good brain surgeon, who comes home to his wife, throws weary his bag and tells his wife – today I had this peculiar, but very interesting case. I think I handled it successfully.

That is the professional.

1987

If you hold something and drop it, you know it will fall.

You drop it and it falls. And if you don’t know that it will fall – will it fall?

And what is something?

And what is fall?

And what is I?

I gave this work of mine to R.S. – a famous art critic, in a distant past.

R. knows that I do what I want and didn’t pay attention to me.

Later with VarTna I published and did a series of works where the material medium was only the starting point. Some chic exhibition titles are left from that time, citing my works, for instance Visible – Invisible, etc. My work Focus in the Focus was in BulArt in 1998. Mitko Grozdanov published then instead of my biography the text Focus in the Focus. What matters the path of your years? Look at the path of the ideas. Mitko is a true art critic.

You can see what I mean in this video. On my favorite TED, of course.

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor’s “Ascension” at Venice Biennale 2011 is the greatest graceful and lyrical monumental work for me. The work, a wisp of smoke ascending from the floor to the ceiling of the Basilica di San Giorgio, an ancient church set apart on its own island, emphasizes the "immaterial becoming object", according to the artist. Quiet and gentle like a dream, the author arranges lightly and gracefully laminar streams of air in ascending slender and clean energy flow, surrounding it with light and smooth turbulence. The transition from the soft curving mirror reflections of the surrounding world, in his other yet material works, to this work, ascending to the pure consciousness, is like a lesson taught in mental purity. 

Simple. Lucid and unequivocal.

See how the wave of emotions and the whirls born by them blur clarity.

888 246 red ceramic flowers

888 246 red handmade poppies

 is the best and most touching monumental and memorial work I have ever known. Each of the 888 246 ceramic poppies glazed in red, made and symbolically planted, the last one on 11^th November 2014 is a tribute to every life lost by the British or colonial forces in the First World War and has been created to mark 100 years since the day Britain went to war with Germany in 1914.

The artistic minds behind this installation commemorating 100 years since the start of World War I are ceramic artist Paul Cummins and stage designer Tom Piper. Cummins specializes in ceramic flowers, which he makes by shaping on a wheel and then carving by hand. The installation's name, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, also comes from Cummins. He, in turn, borrowed it from will of an anonymous man who died in Flanders. 'The blood-swept lands and seas of red, where angels fear to tread.'

Contribution: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry officially unveil Paul Cummins' Blood Swept Lands And Seas Of Red, and planted their own poppies

Tribute to the brave dead: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry wander through the wonderful ceramic poppy field planted at the Tower of London

I have heard that the specialty Monumental Arts at the Academy is closed and the professional experience acquired for thousands of years is not taught any more. I am not willing to verify that - as far as I am watching the new monuments and monumental works for the last years ….it should be true. Not to mention then the contemporary reading of open-air sculpture and plastics arts…

Do not worry – the train has not stopped.

It is just that some have simply remained on a faraway station.

A standing figure, one foot forward

As already said, I have grown up as an artist close to Dimitar Daskalov, Valentin Starchev and Lyubo Prahov. I was studying with Lyubo. Marko Markov was studying with Valio Starchev. Ivan Roussev, Emo Popov, Angel Stanev, Todor Todorov and , I think, Ivan Slavov were with Krum Damyanov. 

- You see, Veso, your wrist problem is not new. This wrist problem could be seen in Egypt – look. He shows me the album. In Assyro-Babylon the things are different. Here they are. The Greeks ignore the problem, but as you can see their heads don’t look at anything. The eyes are looking, later, in the roman portrait. So, look how they have dealt with your wrist problem. Look at the Renaissance /I have forgotten the author/. Now look how I have dealt with the issue in the statue of Krakra Pernishky. The way of formcreating is an expression of spiritual values, of your own experience in this world. No one can solve your problem. This is an eternal problem, but at the same time it is yours as well. Manage it.

He went to the table, left me confused in front of the tripod and poured himself an Academic Nedelchev. “Academic Nedelchev” was how we were calling the what was then grape brandy. He also poured himself a glass of water. Lyubo had studied with Marko Markov.

 - The last six months of his life Marko was visiting his students’ ateliers, we were talking and he was glad with us – Lyubo tells me. Marko studied with Bourdelle. I reckon his head was better than Bourdelle’s. So it should be. A day comes when students teach their teachers. Arno Breker had also been a student of Bourdelle. Arno Breker – Lyubo goes on – was despised because he was working for the Nazis. He gave their aspirations an image- Lyubo adds. We drink brandy with water.

One day – Lyubo says – Rodin and Bourdelle visited the exhibition of a young Italian, Modigliani. “ You know, my dear Rodin, it seems to me we are the two last sculptors on the earth” – said Bourdelle with disappointment.

Two years ago I took a close look at Arno Breker. A great artist. The Germans know that and made him a museum.

It has also been prohibited by law after the war the State to interfere in the activity of artists, journalists, scientists and writers. There is a reason. Looking at the Cathedral of Light by Albert Speer literally sweeps me off my feet. Awesome in all its meanings.

I haven’t been much of art history and I have missed those works. Only when I was constructing my Temple of Light and was searching out suitable searchlights worldwide, a colleague from New Zealand – the one who did the light effects on Lord of the Rings sent me pictures dating 1936. I remained speechless.

My work Temple of Light was commissioned for the Yule festival in 2004 from the city of Amsterdam. It would have been a great goof. Thankfully I already knew. Formally – yes, but my conviction then and now is that every man and every creature has a talent. The talent is like a bank loan. You pay it out all your life. Who are you to charge the great artist with the burdens of the day? You tag the label to him and start pressing.

-        – What God has made Man should not destroy – Lyubo used to say.

I want to display in my gallery the ascension and the evolution of the plastic arts expression in Bulgaria after Galin Malakchiev. About 10 authors who overcame the walkers of the plot and the figure. Their language is rich enough to inspire a feeling and presence without any lettered canvas. I hope they will help me achieve it.