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Yonko’s Room is unlocked

2018 „Yonko’s Ark” – One Monev Gallery, Sofia

 

LEADING SERIES

 

IT WAS THE COLOR IN THE BEGINNING 

 

We live in a kaleidoscopic world in which the influence of color is important for our perceptions, our communication, emotions and relationships.  The history of color is linked not only with various  aspects of our life, but with the evolution of mankind. The theme has been  thoroughly  examined by a number of scientists and one of the most remarkable thesis in the field is the one by Michel Pastoureau, the only person  who has dared to write the “The History of Color” up to the moment. 

 

EVERYTHING STARTS WITH BLUE

 

If the history of color starts with the red, the one of “Yonko’s Ark” begins with blue. Why? Because  this is the color of  true evolution! In Ancient Greece and Rome they couldn’t name it, but nowadays it is the favourite color of most  mankind. 

Sailing to the beaches of Venice as Azure Blue from the mines of Afghanistan, it makes everything visible and untouchable: the sky is blue, but can you reach it? No! Thus in the epoch of surrealism the blue was the color of our dreams, respectively of our reveries. One of the biggest aspirations of ours is bound up with the first sighting of  the Earth from Space. Was Armstrong or Gagarin the first to see “the blue planet”? This is not a matter of discussion here, but it is a fact  that in our surrounding world everything valuable is blue. And that is the basic reason to call one of the series ’ Azeruis Rising’. It stamps the innermost  childish memories, objects and emotions of the author as well as his fears. Like every other color azure blue has its own demonic sides, too. 

 

As I mentioned above, the red color comes first and is the one which  man masters generally speaking. Red is the  most ambivalent, though. It is the most natural, the most predictable and its ambivalence is connected with the association of it with  joy and pleasure, by which it leads us straight to  hell and the flames of Inferno.

Who hasn’t  heard as a child about the “Red Hoody”? Yonko is not the first who asked himself why it is exactly red. It could be pink or green. There are reasons  for the children from Yonko’s generation to have this inspiration. This color accompanies  you a lot, because you are noticed, but it is crazy to cross the woods with a red hat on. It is  dangerous  and you are not in a camouflage. Literally the name  ‘red’ means beautiful and that’s why most of the objects of Yonko’s Ark are filled with irony and carelessness about the subject of “beauty”. At most they are intertwined with madness and in opposition to the statement  “Art is good only if it is beautiful.” 

 

YONKO'S ARK

“And there you are! God demanded that Noah do something strange. He told him to build a vast  coffin. This coffin was as big as a ship, but most of all it looked like an enormous, elongated chest.” No, this is not the story of  “Yonko’s  Ark” and the only point of tangency between Noah’s coffin and Yonko’s chest  is in the fact  that both objects have been conceived as safe-keeping boxes. In the concrete example with Yonko, the case in point is the legacy of the artist, what drives him to keep  living. 

 

The color blue continues  having a master role pledged in the first part of the project, but there are some “funny accents” in it which accompanied the author since his childhood till the collision with the local art scene. 

 

It is about  art works such as  “Chocolate Dreams”. Plastic represents the chocolate head of Georgi Dimitrov as a dessert - an ironic analogy with the sweet gossip of a whole era in which everything melted away like chocolate after the falling of the old regime. 

Other works like that are the those  from the “Smart is the New Sexy” series. The first one is with a subheading: Curator’s Talk: Timova & Artelina.

The second one is entitled ” Pink Freud”, in which the message is direct and  apparent.

Yonko’s Ark is a treasure-house of the human path. Life in which upgrading knowledge, heritage, emotion and creativity not only build  the artist’s position but also are part of his legacy for those who dream about an artistic career. And it is simple: “In order to be good at art, the most important thing is to be authentic and true to what provokes you to create!”.