Do you make notes? About yourself, about your life, about your thoughts, about other people? Each one of us takes their own notes – in order to find, to remind, to share, to forget.
Graphic Notes is an exhibition by the group GrafikArt, showing the artistic endeavours of five visual artists for whom work in the field of graphics is a kind of confession. Although the five of them are radically different in their views of the reality that surrounds them, that which makes them likeminded is their love for graphic prints. Emanuela Kovach, Vasil Kolev – Vassillo, Veselin Damyanov – Ves, Branko Nikolov, and Lyudmil Georgiev are first-time guests at the Art Gallery – Kazanlak, and they will show their graphics from their latest artistic endeavours. Branko Nikolov uses the medium of our digital reality to record the past that is falling apart before our eyes. The crevices in his eaves subtly refer us to the “empty” rooms of Emanuela Kovach. With the technique of drypoint, she searches for what used to be in these empty rooms – an imprint of a body that has disappeared, traces of a home, love, and companionship. The intaglio “notes” of Vasil Kolev – Vassillio reveal to us the traces of the man within the man, who is left without a voice. In the colourful graphics of Veselin Damyanov – Ves, we discover his ability to laugh at our own modern times. And when we look away from our times, we can return to archetypal representations – to the sunrise in Lyudmil Georgiev’s St. John’s Eve. Between colour and abstraction, he challenges us to step into his gardens of earthly delight, in which probably everyone could find their refuge.
The GrafikArt group is an informal artistic alliance that has staked its claim in recent years to a place in the graphic arts of the contemporary art scene. To this end, the GrafikArt Gallery opened on Bulgaria’s cultural map, in Sofia, in 2019. It is a space for exhibitions and events focusing on graphic art running the gamut from its classical forms to contemporary means of expression, a space for lovers of graphic art to meet with established artist – but also with artists who have chosen work with the printing press as their vocation in the 21st century, searching for new ideas and artistic directions, crossing the existing boundaries of this venerable medium.
GrafikArt Gallery is part of the Culture, Sports, and Health ML Association, founded in 2007. The Association has carried out various activities over the years, and in 2017, together with the Ministry of Culture, it initiated the first National Competition for Graphics – Classical Techniques. The competition is held every two years and promotes the work of young artists in the field of graphics. Since 2020, the Culture, Sports, and Health ML Association has partnered with the State Cultural Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with which they have put on a series of exhibitions presenting the five artists with whom the GrafikArt Gallery has worked on a regular basis – Vasil Kolev, Branko Nikolov , Veselin Damyanov, Emanuela Kovach, and Lyudmil Georgiev.