Europe- my Love

October 5th- 22nd 2016

Europe – my Love

Boris Kolev’s paintings open a window on the latest cultural realities in Europe. His paintings are created with love and disquietude toward contemporary and personally experienced historical developments. The title, sounding as a slogan “I Love Europe and Europe Loves Me” brings an irony toward the return of Christian love, which ought to split into political protection and social mutual support. The cross-reference to Joseph Beuys “I Like America and America Likes Me” provokes contemplation of the new mechanisms of love and the distributed roles in cultural imperialism. Exploring that theme Boris Kolev creates paintings that substitute the iconography of the Old Lady with that of an Infant Child. The personification is developed in the image of a helpless small girl, unable to offer directions nor mete out judgement, but consistently depicted with trophies of prosperity.

This image of Europe is both alarming and concerned, connected to and derived from reality. The artist’s paintings are based on a black and white atelier photograph of a posing child. This way the child portrait turnins into a metaphor of the continent’s altered identity. The deep and entwined cultural roots are replaced by face powder, ringlets and a pearl necklace. That image is developed in a dozen large format works, drawing attention to the delicate emotional nuances of that infant child and her “accessories”.

Boris Kolev deliberately creates his declaration of love for Europe on vinyl. The unusual media enable him to unfold the esthetic and pictorial code of neo-expressionism, enriching it with pop art elements, advertising approaches, inscriptions and signs. Vinyl is used as a new media, limiting the layering of acrylic, but creating texture similar to a computer screen. At the same time, the artist presents us with the recognizable fact that this is not orthodox painting. The techniques of expression in acrylic paints are subject to a visual intimation that is closer to monotype and graphics. Vinyl is very familiar from advertising billboards. Most of the time, there are smiling faces on the vinyl, guiding the audience toward household needs and desirable identities in a consumer society. The oil funnels and meat grinders on Kolev’s canvas are leading symbols in the cultural history of the modern westerner. Nevertheless, in the artist’s paintings Europe’s scope and consumption are not limited to the conflicts that play out on its own territories. The geopolitical and economic reality beyond the continent generates some of the most dramatic strokes of the “social terrarium” (in the author’s words). Such are the religious conflicts in the Middle East, accompanied by moments of mystic ecstasy. The monochromic (and in oil color) androgenic faces seem to impersonate archaic statues, shouting in a petrified silence. These images are probably fated to encrypt themselves in the timeless cultural bridges and mechanisms of European globalism.
Lilyana Karadjova