Dimitar Genchev - photo by Evgeni Milov, BTV
28 June 2024

Sarieva/Gallery Announces Representation of Dimitar Genchev

This July 2024 Sarieva/Gallery is thrilled to officially announce the representation of the artist Dimitar Genchev.

The collaboration with Dimitar Genchev has a long history and includes the two solo exhibitions Sepia (2024) and Family Portrait (2020), as well as the group exhibitions +1 (2023) and BACKGROUND: Young Artists (2019). In 2022 Light and Dust exhibition was presented at Sarieva/Hub in Plovdiv.

Born and living in Plovdiv, Genchev completed his art education at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, the Utrecht School of Art (HKU), the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Strasbourg, France.

His works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions at De Domijnen Museum of Contemporary Art, Sittard; Credo Bonum, Sofia; Morsbroich Museum, Leverkusen; Royal Palace, Amsterdam; Cloud Seven, Brussels; Sofia City Art Gallery, etc.

Dimitar Genchev has been involved in art literally all his life. His father created traditional Bulgarian ceramics, hence the artist's interest in "wet-in-wet decoration" – a technique that Genchev tried to apply in his later paintings: "At first I wanted to become a sculptor, but my father recommended I choose for painting. Maybe that's why I am very sensitive for texture and physicality", says the artist.

Texture, light, matter, figure and colour are the fundamental elements of Dimitar Genchev's work. In his spacious studio in Plovdiv, located in the building of a huge former hospital next to the Maritsa River, he creates his simultaneously hyperreal, imaginary and abstract world of images and fragments, fragments of movement or action, mixed realities, figurative elements, silent spaces. He often experiments, creating his own play with paint that inspires the colours and composition of the paintings, leading him through these stagnant spaces of beauty and stillness. In fact, Dimitar Genchev depicts what he sees in the world, but somehow without copying it.

“Genchev’s enchants the viewer with the illusion of light playing on bodies and objects, so lifelike that you believe that you can touch them, challenging our perception. In many paintings you don’t succeed in reconfiguring the details into a coherent whole. That’s why you keep looking. At the painting itself and the world beyond the frame. Genchev reinvents painting and heightens our awareness of life.” These are the words of the Dutch art critic, curator, educator and lecturer – Anne Berk writes about the work of Dimitar Genchev.

And art historian Dessislava Mileva describes Genchev as an artist-alchemist, "one of those who seek in art the infinite possibilities for the transformation of matter and the mysteries of its origin".

In September, Sarieva/Gallery will present works by Dimitar Genchev during viennacontemporary 2024.

The Sarieva/Gallery team congratulates the artist, his family and all collectors, enthusiasts and supporters of his work.

If you are not yet familiar with the Dimitar Genchev’s artwork, please visit our website to learn more about the artist here.

*Dimitar Genchev - photo by Evgeni Milov, BTV