My ArtBook Black
square – White square Visible – Invisible, 1987 – 1995 was shared only
with few friends of mine. There was no point. And I like anonymity. There is a
deeper and more immediate communication, where poetry and reality merge. That
is what I like.
Last year I shared it
with Krassi Roussev, because he was exploring this kind of artistic activity in
Bulgaria, and before the coup d’etat, with my gang of 10 Varna artists at the time, we had created books of similar genre, in small print, less than 15 books. I had to provide
the conceptual basis for the presentation at Veliko Tarnovo University, especially
because of the included inside picture Invisible Square in Invisible Field.
Instead, there was this panting communication, troubled by deadlines and
circumstances, in which I succeeded at the last moment, while travelling with
Biomet to Varna, to send him on the road something that under the pressure of
the lurking passion had already escaped the conventionality of the description
and THAT COMMUNICATION is the verbal picture, written with Lenovo 350 A, sent
at 4:25; you can see it below and which the following day together with my book
was presented by Krasi at the University forum…it was the 16th
November, Tuesday…
He didn’t call until
Friday. I was embarrassed and didn’t call. He had fallen sick. Leningrad
University graduates were brutal in their resistance, turmoil occurred in the
hall. There were however contemporary-minded professors that supported him. You
have no idea, Vesso, what is it to work like that! Sure, I don’t have…
At an exhibition
dedicated to contemporary painting at Rayko Alexiev Gallery, curated by a very
young fellow, my ArtBook was at last presented, accompanied by my verbal
picture – here it is. The orthography and punctuation are preserved as they
are.
1. Black square –
White square, Visible – Invisible is a book, which describes in a simple way a
complete vision. I believe that artist’s work is to broaden the horizon of the
senses through his everyday practice. The separate steps are linked on this
road, that is the reason to recall them briefly.
2. In my first
exhibition – Terrain and Constructions, my main quests could even be seen from
the title.
While installing the
works I found to my surprise that they possess “inspiration” and “presence”,
something which was beyond my learning experience
The presence, the
impact of the work was an issue beyond the formal quests and experiments. I
realized that the “magic” lies in the Process modeling, not just in the Form
modeling and its positioning.
The “unity” between
environment and structure in Water dragon resulted. I have also realized, that
during creation the relations environment - construction become objective in
the human and through the human and his perception and potential. The
“presence” of the material object has no material medium or at least not within
our sensory model. Our culture defines an already existing world. The magic
culture creates it.
Such perceptions and
practices are not strange to us, Bulgarians, they are the basis on which our
view of the world and our rituals are founded, they represent the “other
paradigm” of our ancient culture. It is based, as we all know, on the triad
Sky-Man-Earth, where darkness and light take place, not the simple and
impersonal Subject-Object.
The learning issue in
the avant-garde physics is similar - we
don’t know what happens to the observed object, if not “observed”, does it
exist at all…
I was seeking the Answer
simultaneously in the publications of Scientific American and in the notes of
Se-ma Ts’ien… and of course in the alternative cognitive practices accompanying
the Hippie movement.
3. Each thing has a
form; the material object and its impact also have a form; we recognize them
for the form.
The sculpture form of
the “Dyonisius wheel” is a complex distorted surface, obtained by stretching
thin leather over a wooden geometric construction. Its form naturally follows
the tendencies of the internal structure. The work presents in a concrete from the
mental construction with ritual meaning. The “Dyonisius wheel” thus expresses
clear quests of world view. It conveys them a form and through the work they
could be perceived and experienced.
4. I believed we are exploring
and experiencing the staging of the ancient culture now and through the prism
of the present perceptions and convictions and that makes it up to date, it
takes place “today”.
“Magical space Tangra”
arose in this conceptual atmosphere. I covered the windows of the gallery with
black foil and divided the World into “inside” and “outside”, into micro space
and macro space. I perforated a hole in the foil so that the outside world was
projecting inside and I was dealing with those two superimposed images. A beam
of light glided through the space of the gallery and you could feel the hall
“hanging” on it and rotating with the Earth in the infinite. From the Sun the
light was traveling 8 minutes before bringing the images in my space. May be
every thought and feeling were projecting outside. The world was taking place
within and through the man. Magical space.
5. In the years that
followed I studied Yi Jing and the achievements of the Great Yantra.
The significant work
of that time is “Pyramid of air”. High 45 m, it consisted of 4 ropes marking
out its edges. Its base was inscribed in a circle, outlined with white mosaic,
the idea was when the grass grows “the circle will visually disappear, while
still being there”. I raised the pyramid with a helium balloon at sunrise on 21st
June 1989, at the lawn next to Hristo Botev hall. In those dimensions, edges
were barely visible but spectators claimed to have seen! the pyramid’s wall as
if made of glass, there were also other ecstatic occurrences.
Veselin Dimov.
Invisible Square in Invisible Field. Painting. No material. 1995
My book summarizes
part of my experience so far. It englobes the periods after “the end of abstraction”
of Malevitch. Starting from the very material, paper and watercolor of “Black
square in white field” through the visible and the invisible to the last page, “Invisible
square in invisible field”
Apparently, the
background and the square are “invisible”, they have no material medium, in
fact there is NO painting, it appears in the MIND, just like the previous “material”
paintings.
The world is in the
MIND. It IS the World.
Several years earlier,
day and night I was drawing spatial structures and constructions for the Great
Yantra. The thought patterns especially as that of the four-dimension sphere
are an exciting experience – imagine two spheres penetrating into one another,
each point of the one touching each point of the other. The world described by
the patterns of our traditional culture is of this kind. Domesticated and
shells are alive even today.
6. I am convinced that
processes as Great Yantra could be expressed with the image of penetrating each
other dodecahedron and icosahedron, each peak of the one touching all the peaks
of the other, thus producing consistently and simultaneously in the so
concluded spaces everything mind-achievable.
7. Art is an Insight
Act. If accompanied by an activity, then its traces bear its image – it represents
to us the message and the work.
There is an inspiring
text of “Katha Upanishad”, where the insight breathes.
“Beyond the senses are
the objects;
Beyond the objects is
the Mind;
Beyond the Mind is the
Intelligence;
Beyond the
Intelligence is Atman;
Beyond Atman – the Unmanifested!
Beyond the
Unmanifested – the Spirit;
Beyond the Spirit
there is nothing
Nothing – Pure consciousness
“
The text dates back to
the 17th century and is published in a book about the Great Yantra.
I don’t mean a geographic book about the river and our old capital.
