6 September 2019 – 25 October 2019
(almost) Paintings
SARIEV Gallery, Plovdiv is pleased to present the solo show “(almost) Paintings” by the gallery artist Nedko Solakov. The exhibition presents heretofore unshown paintings created between 1977-1981, while Solakov was a student at the National Art Academy.
The exhibition will take place from 6 September to 25 October 2019 in the gallery space and will be opened on 6 September at 6:30 pm in the presence of the artist. The exhibition can be seen in the framework of NIGHT/Plovdiv 2019 (13-15 September).
The exhibition text is by the renowned Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov.
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(almost) Paintings. Nedko Solakov
Bringing out your earliest paintings, unsigned and unshown until now, is an act of daring that few would risk. It’s like inviting guests into your teenage bedroom, which still holds the chaos and the secrets of that time. But this is also what makes this exhibition such an incredible opportunity for us as an audience. Nedko has put his trust in us and allowed us to come very close, into that very personal space of beginnings, before experience has wiped away hesitations. Even though his experience and ability were apparent even back then. In fact, throughout his whole journey, Nedko Solakov has had the courage to turn his personal story into art, as in Top Secret or the later Fear, to name only a few.
In this exhibition, we enter into the studio of the past so as to see that even there, at the very beginning, Nedko was telling stories. We do not simply look at, rather we read and listen to Nedko Solakov’s paintings. Not only because they include text, but because there are always stories hidden in the paintings themselves.
Here we find the stories of people dozing on the train, those exhausted knights of everyday life. (Exhaustion is that which extracts the body from the armor of ideology in the work of a number of artists from that period. The exhausted body lies beyond the socialist canon.)
There is something real and unreal, something almost real in these paintings, just as in the ghostly face of the landlady peering through the door of the young man’s apartment, where the bright red high heels of a mysterious visitor give off a treacherous and magical glow. Here, in this series, we also find the man waiting for a woman at the airport, and in the waiting itself there is already a premonition of being jilted – which is what happens in the following painting entitled “Jilted”.
There is also a child seen from the back, swinging in some primordial silvery-gray emptiness. There is also the shooting gallery from childhood, which every one of us has our own personal story about – most often a story about dreams and denials. Which, after all is said and done, is precisely what the shooting gallery offered, the contraband of a shiny and unattainable world in miniature. Even in this brightest of the paintings, we still cannot overlook the twilight against which the silhouette of the child stands out.
Just as in the other paintings of almost everyday life, we are pursued by a desolate, overhanging, thick, gray and silver inconsolable sky. The nothing-ever-happens-ness of the late 1970s, during which your own life was supposed to be taking place. And the melancholy, which is possible at that age when you are almost entering life. Nedko’s early paintings capture just that melancholy, which back then was strenuously erased, with youth instead being depicted as “cheerfulness and audacity.”
These paintings actually draw a (self)portrait of the artist as a young man. And the fact that they are gathered here together for the first time allows us to see how they are connected with one another in a natural way, how they tell a common story.
Why “(almost) Paintings”? Due to modesty? A sense of distance? These paintings in and of themselves are absolutely stand-alone, completed works. But it wouldn’t be Nedko if he hadn’t added that “almost,” to make the viewer hesitate, to force us to wrack our brains, to conceptualize along with him, to think about unfinishedness and beginnings. These “almost paintings” from the past have only been signed recently (August 2, 2018) and dated with the respective years they were made and accompanied by personal stories written on the gallery walls which are connected to the paintings and the time when they were created. Thus, the “story certificate” along with the signature turns these still-not-yet-paintings into whole, completed paintings that already go beyond paintings. Paintings put off in time, which will be realized only now before our eyes, 40 years later.
In short, this exhibition shows us not only the directions that the artist would take from then on, but something equally as important – the directions he abandoned. And we will see how Nedko Solakov continues further on, passing into other levels. The hand, the stories, the outlooks that began here will remain. As will that particular sense of excitement that we have witnessed something very personal, something that takes us back to the beginning of our very own almost life.
Georgi Gospodinov
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Since the early 1990s, Nedko Solakov (b. 1957, Tcherven Briag, Bulgaria; lives in Sofia) has exhibited extensively in Europe and the US. His work was featured in Aperto’93 (Venice Biennial); the 48th, 49th, 50th and 52nd Venice Biennial; the 3rd, 4th and 9th Istanbul Biennial; São Paulo’94; Manifesta 1, Rotterdam; the 2nd and 4th Gwangju Biennial; the 5th Lyon Biennial, Sonsbeek 9, Arnhem, the 4th and 5th Cetinje Biennial, the 1st Lodz Biennial; the 7th Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates; the 3rd Tirana Biennial; the 2nd Seville Biennial; the 2nd Moscow Biennial; documenta 12; 16th Sydney Biennial; Prospect 1, New Orleans Biennial, Singapore Biennial 2011, dOCUMENTA (13), Kathmandu Triennale and 1st Riga International Biennial for Contemporary Art. He had solo shows at Museu do Chiado, Lisbon; Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam; CCA Kitakyushu, Japan; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Centre d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona; Kunsthaus Zurich; Castello di Rivoli, Rivoli; Sofia City Art Gallery; Galleria Borghese, Rome; Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg; BOZAR, Brussels; ICA Sofia and La Panacee, Montpellier. In 2003-2005 an extensive mid-career "A 12 1/3 (and even more) Year Survey" was presented at Casino Luxembourg, Rooseum Malmoe and O.K Centrum Linz, and in 2008-2009 the “Emotions” solo project was exhibited at Kunstmuseum Bonn, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, and Institut Mathildenhoehe, Darmstadt. In 2011-2012 his retrospective “All in Order, with Exceptions” was presented at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Fondazione Galleria Civica Trento (“All in (My) Order, with Exceptions”), S.M.A.K., Ghent and Fundação de Serralves, Porto. His works belong to more than fifty international museums and public collections, among them MoMA New York, Tate Modern, London and Center Pompidou, Paris.
Upcoming group exhibitions in September and October 2019: "Grand Hotel Abyss," steirischerherbst'19, various venues, Graz (curator Ekaterina Degot), "Drawings from the Guerlain Collection," Albertina, Vienna (curator Elsy Lahner), "Cosmopolis #2," Centre Pompidou, Paris (curator Kathryn Weir), "Teleology of the Human. Biography, Destiny, Hope, Faith," Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow (curator Viktor Misiano).
The show in the media:
Nedko Solakov shows his student paintings
Bulgarian National Radio, 5 September 2019
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(almost) paintings. Nedko Solakov
Dnevnik, 6 September 2019
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Eight paintings with eight tales from Nedko Solakov's "atelier of the past"
Dnevnik, 6 September 2019
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Nedko Solakov shows his student works in the exhibition "(almost) Paintings"
Bulgarian National Television, 10 September 2019
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In the soul of the artist: Great Nedko Solakov in front of "Tazi subota"
BTV, 5 October 2019
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The exhibition of Nedko Solakov, finished 40 years later
Ploshtad Slaveikov, 8 October 2019
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Nedko Solakov: without nostalgia
Kultura.bg, 11 October 2019
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Nedko and (almost) Solakov
Literaturen vestnik, 16-22 October 2019
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Nedko Solakov at SARIEV Gallery
Art Viewer, 25 October 2019
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Nedko Solakov
Jilted, 1980
oil on canvas
size of painting: 61 х 46 cm
size of work: 133 x 120 cm After a while, we got divorced. We were couple for seven years, got married (at 21) and divorced in less than a year. She stayed at Czechoslovakia with the man she fell in love with, and I indulged in debauchery in Bulgaria. We saw each other last year, after 33 years, in Slovakia, where she lives. We had a great time at their hotel complex – the two couples embraced. Here it is: (there will be a silhouette drawing on the wall). The stealer-of-other-men’s-women, whose guts I had previously hated, turned out to be a great guy. I told him this and we embraced again. Of course, this meeting was no accident and the whole juicy story was included in my work for yet another biennial. After all, I am from Gabrovo, and as notorious cheapskates we believe that nothing should go to waste. -
Nedko Solakov
Midday, 1978
oil on canvas
size of painting: 39 x 58 cm
size of work: 80 x 123 cm But this buoy is not really ok. At the time, I used shit like krapprot or carmine, which I painted this picture with (for many years my palette consisted only of cadmium yellow and red, ultramarine, titanium white and ivory black). I remember thinking the sky here was quite an achievement, being as close as possible to what I liked to call the "white sky". It happens in the summer and goes along with scorching heat. The character on the paddle boat is supposed to have passed through my head, given the point of view. Which sea is this? Ours, of course. Sunny Beach from back in the days when it was uninhabited. Or it could be from its north side. -
Nedko Solakov
On the Train, 1977
oil on canvas
size of painting: 56 x 53 cm
size of work: 90 x 120 cm This is a very strange canvas, I clearly tried to prime it myself, but the holes in it are too big. Otherwise, I am visibly influenced by M.B. At that time I mainly used the train to go home to Gabrovo. There was one at 5-something in the evening, that arrived in Gabrovo around 11 o’clock at night. Six hours of jostling and swaying. Crossing the Balkan Mountains was very tedious, especially in the winter, when beastly heat blasted from beneath the fake-leather seats – dry heat, no less. That must’ve been when I got the idea for this painting. But it’s not a winter scene – the vision in the corridor flaunts a summer dress. -
Nedko Solakov
Shooting gallery, 1979-80
oil on canvas
size of painting: 65 х 100 cm
size of work: 100 x 180 cm To be honest, I'm not totally convinced that chronologically this work should be in this place. I have just achieved the "white sky" (which will serve as the basis of the future "silvery peinture" that will make me relatively well-known as the youngest member of the Union of Bulgarian Artists), and there they are again, those bright colors. But I'm sure that when I painted it, I identified with the boy in the dark. -
Nedko Solakov
Swing, 1980
oil on canvas
size of painting: 27 х 35 cm
size of work: 70 x 68 cm This tearful little jewel was most certainly painted in the family dorms in Students’ Town (as was the previous work). I was basically on my own in the room, for obvious reasons, since my wife was in the Czech Republic and came back maybe twice – the second time it became clear that things weren’t going well at all. Apparently I comforted myself with such sentimental compositions (I think there was a lonely wife somewhere on the same floor doing the same thing). -
Nedko Solakov
The Landlady, 1978
oil on canvas
size of painting: 73 х 92 cm
size of work: 115 x 170 cm So, once we met at the airport, and after she called her parents in Gabrovo to let them know she had landed, we barricaded ourselves in my room and indulged in sex, naturally. From time to time, Aunt K., the landlady, checked to see what was going on and the only thing that saved us from "Uh, well, I was just..." was a small latch. In the picture the latch has been removed. -
Nedko Solakov
Village idiot, 1981
oil on canvas
size of painting: 54 х 65 cm
size of work: 80 x 118 cm I already mentioned the "silvery peinture" with which I became relatively well-known. In the beginning, all my silver paintings screamed with color just as “Village Idiot” screams. After a while I made two paintings (note that at last I use the word "painting") with similar titles, and though they, as paintings, were much better than the "almost" one in front of you, at the moment this idiot is somehow more appealing to me. -
Nedko Solakov
Waiting for Her, 1978
oil on canvas
size of painting: 65 х 100 cm
size of work: 134 x 390 cm A lot of waiting around happened on that terrace at Sofia Airport, now Terminal 1. The terrace for meeting and sending off our jet-setting relatives is long gone, but even longer before that my ex-wife and I briefly got married and then divorced a year later. We had been dating since our days at the Math High School in Gabrovo, after that we more or less kept our relationship going during our first year of university in Sofia (she studied Textile Engineering at MEI, I studied Mural Painting at the Art Academy). But after she went to study the same thing in Czechoslovakia, our love flared up because of the distance between us, and so it went for several years. We wrote letters to each other on a regular basis, which all ended with "You know ..." ("... I love you" was the unwritten sequel). I put mine in the mailboxes on the trams. It seems that this sweet service has long since disappeared. Well, here I am on the terrace, obviously it's winter or some inbetween season, it's cold. I'm dressed in a Mongolian Darhan coat (my lovely Bulgarian coat was stolen during the December 8 Students’ Holiday celebration in my first year at the Academy); I have a special scarf knitted by my future wife to flutter around and a neat cap bought in Prague on one of my trips to my beloved lassie (who was very sexy, so “lassie” is not a very appropriate term). And a bouquet, of course. And some tricks in the composition of the picture – just look how finely drawn the control tower is. And the sky is pretty gloomy. I could speculate that this comes from socialist oppression, but I won't because it's simply not true.
