Artist: Dimitar Genchev
Exhibition title: Sepia
Venue: Sarieva at DOT Sofia, Plovidv, Bulgaria
Date: April 4 – May 12, 2024
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Sarieva, Plovidv
Sarieva/GallerySepia. It will take place between April 4 and May 12 at Sarieva/Gallery in DOT Sofia.
Dimitar Genchev is an artist-alchemist – one of those who seek in art the infinite possibilities for transformation of matter and the mysteries of its origin. A transformation that leaves the mark of a specific dynamism on each of the artworks presented in the artist’s newest solo exhibition – Sepia. Realized in collaboration with Sarieva/Gallery, it is focused on a yet little-known direction of the author’s visual investigations and experiments.
In his artworks created during the last year Dimitar Genchev combines abstract and figurative elements, exploring how far the decay and merging of forms can go across infinite spaces – weightless, devouring and ephemeral. Spaces that promise nothing, narrate nothing, thus carrying within themselves an immeasurable and much-desired tranquility in a world riddled by the dissonance of noisy narratives. Spaces in which the eye does not seek reconstruction of meaning, history, boundaries, but an ever-deepening immersion.
The leaf, a natural element with an extraordinary variety of forms, is the principal figurative allurement for the eye in this new series of artworks. But the author is not satisfied with its existence as such, nor does he seek to burden it with a certain symbolism. What interests him is the leaf’s ability to transform, especially on a visual level. The more we observe the leaves in these artworks, the more they escape us, forever changing into something else. This escape is particularly noticeable in Fragile (2023). A leaf or maybe a cloud, a piece of fabric or paper, the elements in the colorful chaos of the canvas coexist in a permanent visual-poetic mutation which brings about a sense of transience as in a moment of random play of light after a summer storm.
Light is of fundamental importance in Dimitar Genchev’s work. It is essentially a rhythm, an impulse, a moment of falling in love. In Kingdom (2023), despite the small size of the work, light seems to burst from the canvas and melts everything in its path. The figurative elements appear here as more of a pretext for experimenting not only with the reality of forms, but also with the possibilities of light to generate them. An approach the artist also employs in Pretence (2023), but as though in a reverse movement, letting the elements lose their solidity and gradually dissolve into the background.
Genchev not only paints light – he creates it in the canvas, skillfully embedding opaque, glossy or translucent elements into a dialogue with the light sources. This play of external and internal light, so characteristic of the author, completes the sense of incessant motion and of the existence of a third dimension on the two-dimensional surface of the canvas.
In Sepia (2024), light emerges from the deep dark. Literally and metaphorically. No different from an icon painter (alchemist), Dimitar Genchev starts working upon a dark base, seeking among the folds of matter the moment of its transformation. For the artist this moment is first born and felt in the stomach and then on the canvas. The cuttlefish, a mollusk inhabiting the sandy bottoms of seas and oceans, ejects from its stomach jets of ink paint, thus composing its most efficient defense in a series of dense, dark shapes. For centuries of undiminished popularity, the brownish hues of sepia ink paint have portrayed the melancholy of human existence. And although not consciously sought after by Dimitar Genchev, we cannot but sense it lurking in the light.
The exhibition text is by Desislava Mileva.
Dimitar Genchev (b.1985 in Bulgaria) lives and works in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. He received his education from the National Academy of Art, Sofia, HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht, and studied at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam and Ecole des Arts Decoratifs de Strasbourg.
His solo exhibitions include Beauty & Decay, Museum De Domijnen Hedendaagse Kunst, Sittard, NL (together with sculptor Peter Buggenhout); Family Portrait, Gallery Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv; The Good Machines, Gallery Credo Bonum, Sofia.
His solo exhibitions have also been presented at the galleries Gerhard Hofland and Rutger Brandt in Amsterdam.
His works were displayed in numerous group exhibitions, including Object Love, Morsbroch Museum, Leverkusen; Rooms of Resonance, Cloud Seven, Frederic de Goldschmidt Collection, Brussels; Background: Young artists from Plovdiv, Gallery Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv; Listen to Us – Artistic Intelligence, Rainald Schumacher works from Deutsche Telekom collection, Plovdiv; exhibition of the nominated artists for Hermine van Bers Art Award, Old School, Leiden, The Netherlands; Necessity is the mother of invention, duo show with Pere Liobera, Horizonverticaal, Haarlem, The Netherlands; Dining with the artist, The Mesdag Collection, The Hague; HKU’s Royal Club-Dutch Painting, exhibition at the library of European Council, Brussels; Prospects and Concepts, Art Rotterdam, Van Nelle Fabriek, Rotterdam; Wonder boven Wonder, duo exhibition with Tim Breukers, gallery Van de Weghe, Antwerp; Exhibition of the artists nominated for the Royal Award for Modern Painting at the Royal Palace, Amsterdam. Dimitar Ganchev’s works have been presented at art fairs such as Art Rotterdam, Liste Art Fair Basel and others.
Genchev has received various awards and scholarships from the Mondriaan Fund foundation, awards for painting: the Buning Brongers Award in the Netherlands, the National Competition of Allianz Bulgaria, the Painting Award from Young Bulgarian artists and the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award.
