Kamen Stoyanov was born in 1977 in Rousse, Bulgaria. He lives and works in Vienna and Sofia. He studied from 1996 to 2003 at the National Academy for Fine Arts in Sofia and from 2000 to 2005 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Kamen Stoyanov’s work is multimedial including film, photography, video, performance, drawings, installation and the mixture of them.

Over the past few years his films, actions, videos, installations, photographic works and performances have been shown, among others, at exhibitions such as “In-Visible” (Cultural Center Tobacna, Ljubljana, 2018, solo); “Exhibiting the Exhibition” (Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 2018); WRO Biennale (WRO Art Center, Wroclaw, 2017); “Ask the Artist”, MANIFESTA 11 (Zurich, Switzerland, 2016); “Will I be happy?” (Inda Gallery, Budapest, 2016, solo); “Operantium”, Projektraum LS43, Berlin, 2016, solo); “Let them draw”, (Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv, 2016); “Urbanauts”, Projektraum Viktor Bucher, Vienna (2015); “Past future-future past” (Transmediale, Supermarkt, Berlin, 2014); “The Movement of the Whole” (Inda Gallery, Budapest, 2014); “Unexpected Encountrers” (Camera Austria, Graz, 2013); “Material and Culture” (MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, 2012); 17th Biennale of Sydney (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2010); Aichi Triennial, (Nagoya, 2010); “At Arm’s Length”, MUMOK (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, 2008, solo); MANIFESTA 7, the European biennial of contemporary art (Trentino, 2008).

He’s been awarded, among others, with the following prizes: The Sovereign European Art Prize (2011), Otto Mauer Prize (2011), Alexander Resnikov Award (2010), Kunstpreis Europas Zukunft, (Galerie für Zeitgenoessische Kunst Leipzig, 2008) MUMOK Prize for the Zone1 at the VIENNAFAIR (2007), Prize for Visual Arts of the City of Vienna (2007) and with the MAK Schindler Artists and Architects-in-Residence Program in Los Angeles (2012).

His works are part of public collections (Lentos, Austria; MAK MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts; MUMOK, Austria; MUSA, Austria, Public Collection of the Austrian Government; Sofia City Art Gallery, Bulgaria) and private collections (ESSL MUSEUM, Austria; EVN Collection, Austria; DOM MUSSEUM, Austria).

The movement as a process plays an important role in my practice. The movement as an intentional act of change of a given condition. Social, urban, cultural or institutional one. The movement as an instrument of shaping the space. – Kamen Stoyanov

Kamen Stoyanov’s artistic practice finds parallel between physical movement and process, and ideas of historical, social and cultural change. The artist performs – in actions or objects – with the same care in streets, fields, and art spaces, drawing on the accidental and ubiquitous readymade. Inevitably, high and low culture mix in Stoyanov forms; his work is just as likely to consist of making his native Bulgarian yoghurt as neon sculpture. From here, he inserts himself into dialogues of power, progress, and geopolitics, without abandoning the intimate that surrounds his ideas. – Pierre d’Alancaisez