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The Ruins of an Unbuilt Bridge
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2024, site-specific installation, corrugated cardboard, installation view, Gabrovo, Bulgaria
This temporary sculpture was inspired by an architectural proposal for the improvement of the riverside area of ??Gabrovo, which has not yet been realized and is undergoing serious changes after many external interventions. The art installation is made of cardboard "bricks" and hints at the future bridge that is about to connect two parts of the city. The work raises many questions. Who determines where the bridge will be built? What will it look like and what will its main functions be, pedestrian or transport? The sculpture, although temporary, carries a message about the connections and transformations that are necessary in the urban environment, but also in our society as a whole. The need for connectedness, not division. The work also raises the question of the interpretation of our historical past and the newly created ruins that often "predate" the non-existent objects from which they "emerge". Here, the cardboard "bricks" are a metaphor for the temporary and the permanent in our lives, and the bright color gives a plastic "flavor" and amplifies all these questions.
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MORE UPCOMING
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2020, solo exhibition, exhibition view, Arosita Gallery, SF, BG
This is an exhibition that showed some of my newest works at that moment. It contained six different series. Some of them are inspired from the situation around us that year, like "Future World" and “Are We the Champions?”, Others are related to my searches through the years, like "NeoCubism" or "Fluctuating Constructions". In addition I install two other series created for my previous exhibitions, but not shown before. These are the series "2018: An Attic Odyssey or How to Deal with the Object - first steps" was created for "How to Deal with the Object" exhibition / Credo Bonum Gallery 2019/ and now partly gave the name of this exhibition. "Lillholmen" is another small series which was planned to be part of "Sculpture projects" series shown in 2017.
Now all these works became an eclectic exhibition which reflects my experience through the year 2020.
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2019, site-specific installation, corrugated cardboard, exhibition view, ICA - Sofia Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria
The ordinary cardboard boxes used to pack kitchen and bathroom appliances are for the artist Alexander Valchev sculptural material with plastic qualities. It is used to create three-dimensional objects installed in space and to engage specifically “in” and “with” this space. The perception of both objects and space is classical: the viewer is asked to walk around, to observe and to contemplate; to evaluate aesthetically the “abstract” geometrical forms, the volumes and their interrelations. The cardboard boxes “are” and “aren’t” the art work both at the same time. They are not only building up the space but are also supplementing various meanings and semantics; they are “telling” us about the time when they were made, about the culture of this society from its highest to its lowest everyday strata. The art work here is not merely the box but the space – it is populated by volumes constructed by, within and in-between the boxes that are known from the artist’s previous iterations. In times past the viewer would encounter the self-portrait of the artist drawn on the surface of the boxes/volumes. This exhibition now is a total environment and a space that is maybe the “self-portrait” of the artist as it is. One is tempted to talk about claustrophilia – the author’s love for closed spaces that are at the same time the construction (though fluctuating), as well as the energy image (quite powerful) of the world.
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Diana Popova & Luchezar Boyadjiev
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2019, solo exhibition, curator Iara Boubnova, exhibition view, Credo Bonum Gallery, SF, BG
“How to deal with the Object”, the exhibition by Alexander Valchev, deals with sculpture – it engages with how the three-dimensional, which is correlating with the human body, exists in space. With an evident self-irony the artist is orchestrating his own competent, intelligent, and well-informed interpretation about how those elements that art has been dealing with since time immemorial, might interact with one another today. The functions of The Object has been awarded to cardboard boxes quite familiar to anyone who has acquired kitchen or bathroom appliances. Regrettably, such boxes are too well known to all those who are pressed by necessity to find shelter in the cities of the world.
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Iara Boubnova
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Dispute on Reality |
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UAMO Festival |
2018, solo exhibition
Arosita Gallery, Sofia, BG |
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2018, group exhibition
curator Carolina Lio
Goethe-institute, Sofia, BG |
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2017, group exhibition
curators S. Pamukchiev, P. Tzanev, K. Vassilev
Shipka 6 Gallery,Sofia, BG |
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2016, group exhibition
Munich, DE |
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The exhibition introduces group of Bulgarian artists, who tend to be grouped in an imprecisely defined professional category, according to their year of birth. The generation aged between 35 and 45 years no longer meets the definition of ‘young authors’, but it is too early for these artists to be labelled as ‘advanced’. Therefore, this age group is often deprived of application opportunities for residence, competitions, funding programmes, etc., even their participation in exhibitions is under question.
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Daniela Radeva 2016
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When I was invited to do an exhibition at the Goethe-Institute I began to think in principle I've always shared, that the exhibition should be linked in any way with the place. In this case, the institution and from there to the country which it represents, but also their relationship with our country and the present.
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Alexander Valchev
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Fortress |
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2015, group exhibition
curator N. Dzhakova
Sofia Arsenal - Museum for Contemporary Art, BG |
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2015, group exhibition
curators Iara Boubnova and Vessela Nozharova
Viennacontemporary, Vienna. AT |
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2016, group exhibition
organized by Goethe-institute Sofia,BG
Accademia Gallery, Sofia, BG |
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2014, group exhibition
curators Claudio Scorretti & Irina Ungureanu
Luciano Benetton Collection
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, IT |
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2014, solo exhibition, curator Vera Mlechevska, Arosita Gallery, Sofia, BG
The sculpture is my creed.
It could be seen in all my activities and displays, during its principles I perceive the world, regardless of what I do and what kind of media I express myself as an artist. For me it is the most complex, comprehensive and hard about making art.
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Alexander Valchev
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2019 - Open Art Files: Notes and Footnotes - group exhibition curated by Vera Mlechevska, Kapana Gallery, Plovdiv, BG |
2019 - Portrait of a Friend- group exhibition curated by Iglica Trifonova, Sofia City Art Gallery, BG |
2018 - New Life, solo exhibition as part of Danube Dialogues festival, Novi Sad, RS |
2015 - Art for Change 1985 - 2015 group exhibition, curated by PhD Maria Vassileva, Sofia City Art Gallery, BG |
| 2015 - Join the Dots / Unire le distanze - Salone Degli Incanti - Ex Pescheria Centrale, Trieste, IT |
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© Alexander Valchev 1999 - 2024 |
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