"Color is a key; the eye is a mallet, and the soul is a multi-stringed piano. An artist is a hand that with one key or another creates the vibrations of the human soul." Wassily Kandinsky
Description
From April 1st to May 7th, 2024, Le Papillon Art Gallery is delighted to host the latest works of the magnificent artist Stanimir Videv. His every appearance is expected, and his work is followed by numerous admirers in Bulgaria and abroad. Abstract, 'Nearly-abstract' or figurative - each of his works bears his recognizable manner of applying complex tonally formed strokes and their subsequent vigorous treatment and manipulation. Stanimir Videv has not only a distinctive, expressive and almost abstract artistic style, but also a significant presence in the contemporary cultural scene. "Nearly abstract" are the unifying words of his current exposition of 20 canvases, but behind them is also his intuitive, primal expression in pictorial matter. Such is his deep emotional relation to the form outlined by the landscape and the people with their occupations passing through the artist's being.
His powerful painting follows his philosophy of balancing color, intricately composing shades and shaping a colorful sense of the object's emotional presence. The structures and figures he builds follow a scientific concept of dynamic compositions of the main individual elements in the depicted subject, but so skilfully harmonized that they are perceived as a whole. As if jazzed up color spots, but with a convincing sense of the integrity of the image and with a traceable interrelationship between its component parts. These are seemingly concrete landscapes and actually plastic combinations of colors and volumes with multi-layered color fractures, built with the skillful hand of the artist in a rhythm of warm and cold tones. Videv is inspired by the pulse and life of the city of Plovdiv, but in his works he goes beyond the specifics, keeping a recognizable touch, playfully handling his characteristic techniques of taking away from overlays, accumulating and leaving reliefs, fragmenting the whole into separate small independent paintings.
In complex and dynamic, "nearly abstract" compositions, the exhibition brings together urban landscapes, but also his recognizable enigmatic figural compositions, where the female image is like a mirage and gently touches the senses of the viewer. Videv likes to focus on the enigmatic female presence captured in various states and it always betrays his attitude towards woman as a muse. In this exhibition we also note the presence of musicians who inspired him, conversations and silhouettes of people, revealing the imprints of accumulated impressions and feelings in the artist.
Videv's painting is on the border between the real and the abstract, which makes it so valuable and loved, and to feel it well, it is supposed to look and sense. Without striving for the construction of compositional centers, the artist succeeds only through the skillful handling of colors to achieve several plans. Always honest in his art, creating music of complex colors, he builds convincingly vivid paintings whose abstract compositions relax the mind and challenge the imagination. The artist's various emotional and physical states, everyday events that moved the artist's thought, are his main creative drive. The landscapes are harmonious colorful abstract compositions, but always referring to a close and recognizable place for the mind. His canvases radiate a lot of energy, impact with a decisive layering of colors and removal of paints to reach the light.