FIGURES
Sevda Semer :: 3 April - 3 May :: 2019

Sevda Semer / FIGURES
3 April – 3 May 2019
Opening: April 3, 19:00
23, Marco Balabanov St., Varna

The exhibition is part of the Creo Kultura Foundation Project PAINTING DOES NOT REPLACE DIVERSE DIET curatet by Daniela Radeva and realised with the financial support of the Culture Fund of the Municipality of Varna.

Media partners of the project are:
ARTizanin Magazine, Portal Culture and Urban-mag

FIGURES are a series of titled paintings. The pictures are not figurative and the titles are so long that they take minutes to read. It’s more precisely to say “listened to” since they are on record and have the status of a part of the work. This mandatory equivalence is probably the most important thing in Sevda Semer’s new works.

After some time she has expressed herself in text, a few years ago, she started drawing, mostly in small format, and most often on the pages of notebooks. Her instinct for the large format initially manifested itself in persistency and consistency – her Project “One Perfect Day” is a visual diary containing 365 consecutive drawings created daily throughout 2017. Then came the enlargement of the pictorial surface, and along with it – the length of the so-called title. The images of Sevda Semer are getting even more abstract and more intuitive while the words, that appear seemingly concrete at first, are far from a narrative. In “FIGURES”, there is again the allusion of a diary. The artist mainly articulates bodily sensations. Thoughts that are constantly circulating in each of us, but we rarely pay attention to them or are unable to utter them out aloud.

The body is the hidden theme in this exhibition. The body of the artist, responsible for transmitting information between the artist and the work, has been the object of interest and experimentation long before Carolee Schneemann and before Kandinsky. The body also plays a major role in the simultaneous use of pictorial and performative techniques in Yves Klein’s and other artists’ works. The contact between Sevda Semer’s works and the viewer is almost tactile in essence, as a hug – the large formats and the sounding text of a certain duration of time do not allow you to quickly get past them. In spite of the use of abstract images, in this exhibition, the artist employs her own ability for sharing. When someone is reading to you it is different from reading it yourself – higher attention is needed. And attention is first expressed as a physical presence for a certain duration of time, and then – in an exchange of information.
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Sevda Semer was born in Sofia in 1990. She graduated from the National High School of Ancient Languages and Cultures. Works as an artist, writer and journalist. She participates in exhibitions and projects in Bulgaria, Canada, Spain and England. The artist was part of the residency for visual artists of the London studio for risograph printing, Hato Press, 2017. Solo exhibitions: “Wide Cube” at 0GMS Gallery (2014), “Recent Pictures” at 2.0 Gallery (2017) and “One Perfect Day” at “+359″ Gallery (2018). She is the author of the following publications: Candies (2014); Between Three Cities (2014); What’s Here for Geist Magazine, Canada (2015); Pages of a Diary for Dear Journal Magazine, Canada (2015); Recent paintings (2017).

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PAINTING DOES NOT REPLACE DIVERSE DIET presents solo exhibitions of four selected contemporary artists showing large-format works created specifically with reference to this project. All authors live and work in Bulgaria. They have a long-term commitment to painting as medium. They also have experience with other techniques and materials, or types of arts. The artists have extensive professional experience. They have been presented at exhibitions and institutions abroad and are well-educated with regard to world art.

Painting is the link among the different authors. Being the most essential means of expression in all periods of history, including contemporary art, the art of painting is the most labor-intensive art in terms of time, labor and material resources at the same time. For these and other reasons, valuable painting, in this country, today, is created slowly and by a very limited number of artists. Therefore, the mission of this project is to stimulate the development of specially selected artists who have so far proven their professional merits. The project is not aimed at looking for rising talents, but rather towards investing in established names, who are still young – at the age of 30-40 years.

The selection of authors is made so as to cover various trends in modern art of painting – abstract and figurative; narrative and poetic concept; relationship between pictorial canvases and installation and sound.

The themes and subject-matters of these artists treat modernity, modern culture, thinking and worldview, which is clearly visible in their works and definitely distinguishes them from artistic practices typical of earlier periods.

The cycle of exhibitions includes the following authors: Sevda Semer, Anton Terziev, Stanimir Genov and Iskra Blagoeva.

The project covers three lectures on the subject of the art of painting.

Lecture on the topic of continuity in Bulgarian art. Speaker: Dimitar Traychev – artist, lecturer, specialist in the art of painting of the 20th century in Bulgaria.

Lecture: „Painting as a Performative Practice in the Second Decade of the 21st Century” – Experiments on Psychological Cartography of the Global Modernity”. Speaker: Prof. Dr. Peter Tsanev – artist, art critic, professor at the National Academy of Arts, specialist in psychology of creativity.

Lecture on the theme of conceptual painting in Europe and the US in the 20th century. Speaker: Prof. Vladimir Ivanov

Exhibitions