Solo Exhibition – UniCredit Studio – „Naked Eye“ 2014

The paintings are inspired by the observation of the universe, as seen by the human eye and mind through telescopes such as Hubble. Most of them depict actual or partially changed constellations, nebulas, galaxies and supernovas. The format of most of the paintings is not very large. The complicity of the audience will be rather tangible in the smaller formats, as the viewers will have to come closer and take a peek at the galaxy. Yet, these formations and colorful nebulas can be, and at the same time, not be what they are. Not everything is what it seems to be, and it doesn’t have to be. In one of the paintings an asteroid is crossing the landscape diagonally headed for the planet Earth. I have always thought that there is nothing more logical and natural than one space phenomenon obliterating another. And while gazing at the starry sky, haven’t we all felt both existential tranquility and inexplicable anxiety at the same time, the vague feeling of joy of the magnificent beauty and fear of the incomprehension.

The paintings are here to ask questions, without explanations, without specific deciphering code and without specific conclusion. The science is helpless, the art remains.

Have you ever tried to imagine the sound of an explosion in the universe, have you ever tried to image the unreal light of a flying by comet? Have you ever tried to imagine the end of the end and its end to the endlessness? Have you ever wondered what is beyond all known, beyond all the notion and idea of everything, beyond the apparent meaning and the beautiful nebulas?

Do we really need to understand the meaning of our existence? Isn’t it hilarious to say, that there is even a slight chance to understand everything? Can we explain everything with rational scientific theories or the answers are so unimaginably and incomprehensively remote, light years away from our notions of the universe? The paintings could give a visual idea of the shape and the structure of space, but they cannot explain its content and its metaphysical processes. In the end, is there a guarantee that what we see is what we think it is?

“…The things which we intuit are not in themselves the same as our representations of them… If we take away the subject or even only the subjective constitution of our senses in general, they would disappear… We know nothing more than our own mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us… Space and time are the pure forms thereof; sensation the matter … The difference between clear and unclear notion is only logical and does not concern the content.”

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

The exhibition is dedicated to the great Bulgarian artist and a whole universe Kolyo Karamfilov.

“Heaven is larger than life and the Earth is larger than death. They are two diametric things, one of them takes us, the other one raises us, we depend on the sky, but return to the Earth.”

Kolyo Karamfilov.