15.05.2008 - 31.05.2008




Iassen Ghiuselev’s exhibition falls in “the eye” of one of the central cultural conflicts after the Second World War – the conflict between Reading and Contemplation, Speech and Image. As if to show that this contradiction in terms does not exist. What is more, he achieves it in the simplest way possible, by materializing “in visuals” the internal imaginary world of reading. And he explicates it in such a way that you want him to do create for you. Even if you thought that you saw images born in your own head when you read Carroll or Pushkin. The painter creates visual matrices of classic literary heroes and plots and people all over the world are ready to trust their children in Iassen’s hands, and let him lead them along the “branching paths” of the text. As is evident from the authoritative rewards received by him, and mostly from the prestigious publishers he worked for in Germany, Italy, Korea, Greece… He is a classic illustrator in the best sense of this notion, simultaneously adopting today’s avant-gardes characterized by its post modern passion for references, paradoxes and irony. Thus Alice’s mirror world is located in the cross section of the worlds of Escher and turned into a “brand name” of the painter, “Pinocchio” “stepping on” the archetype of the clown with the obligatory portion of sorrow at the bottom of every joy and vice versa, Socrates was pushed into the iconography of Ancient Greek sculpture, in an “archeology of memorabilia”, which glues together the process in the stream of our consciousness, etc. Iassen Ghiuselev’s paintings are faithful (on oath) to literature, and they do not merely illustrate it, but seem to engulf it through the various concepts and usurp it. Thus they become pictures displayed in the first one-man exhibition of the illustrator in order to breath a “second life” into his art.

Georgi Lozanov

_________________
EIBANK Gallery
2, Slavyanska str.
Sofia
Bulgaria
TEL : +3592 93 99 280
skuymjievahq.eibank.bg
gallery.eibank.bg