{"id":911,"date":"2023-05-09T15:35:14","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T13:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artgallerykazanlak.com\/exhibitions\/nikola-valchev-black-mirror\/"},"modified":"2024-02-06T19:49:52","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T17:49:52","slug":"nikola-valchev-black-mirror","status":"publish","type":"exhibition","link":"https:\/\/www.artgallerykazanlak.com\/en\/exhibitions\/nikola-valchev-black-mirror\/","title":{"rendered":"Nikola Valchev. Black mirror?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>\u201cIf technology is a drug \u2013 and it does feel like a drug \u2013 then what, precisely, are the side-effects? This area \u2013 between delight and discomfort \u2013 is where Black Mirror is set. The \u2018black mirror\u2019 of the title is the one you\u2019ll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone.\u201d<\/em>&#13;\nCharlie Brooker&#13;\n<\/p>\n\n<p>\u2014Charlie Brooker<\/p>\n\n<p>The exhibition <em>Black Mirror<\/em>\u201d is inspired by the television series of the same name and presents us with more than 20 canvases in different formats. The artist offers us a concept that includes traditional painting and prints. The prints, in turn, were generated using the program Midjourney, which uses artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n\n<p>To date, we are not only registering the emergence, but also the transformation of artificial intelligence into a phenomenon because of its everyday application. Like any phenomenon, artificial intelligence makes us rethink our understanding of art, and it provokes extremely contrary opinions in audiences. On the one hand, the artist\u2019s \u201cpalette\u201d is enriched by one more new tool; on the other hand, however, the traditional focus of attention on handwork shifts to the ability to manage and communicate with artificial intelligence. The idea of artificial intelligence has its inception in different cultures \u2013 in ancient Greece, it is the mechanized servants of the blacksmith Hephaestus, in the Near East \u2013 al-Jazari\u2019s book of mechanical devices, and in Judaism, it is the Golem, a being made of inanimate matter and animated by man. One of the peaks of this idea came on May 11, 1997, when IBM\u2019s chess supercomputer, Deep Blue, won the final game of a rematch with Garry Kasparov and became the first computer to defeat a world chess champion in a head-to-head match.<\/p>\n\n<p>Aware of the polarization of opinions on the subject, Nikola Valchev avoids a categorical answer; he does not attempt to suggest a position, but to provide the public with the necessary visual mass to make their own comparison. The viewer is placed in a hybrid environment where the two realities coexist, left hesitant to define them and faced with the responsibility of his or her choice. The idea of the depersonalization of the personality in canvases is treated, hinting at the depersonalization of the personality in social networks. And although the exhibition does not give us ready answers, it reminds us of the cold atmosphere of synthetic technologies and the sense of worry and anxiety they bring. The viewer has a hard time trying to formulate the idea, since human error is the only difference from \u201cunerring\u201d artificial intelligence. A process that transforms error into a mark of authorship and creativity.<\/p>\n\n<p>Nikola Valchev was born in the city of Kazanlak in 1994. Here he graduated from the Academician Dechko Uzunov High School of Arts and Design with a major in Advertising Graphics. He continued his education in the Fine Arts Department of Veliko Tarnovo University in the painting classes of Prof. Tsvetan Kolev. In 2016, he went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz, Poland, after winning a place in the Erasmus+ student exchange program. In 2019, he defended his master\u2019s degree, again in Painting at Veliko Tarnovo University. He began his creative appearances as a student, participating in a number of group exhibitions in Veliko Tarnovo and Poland. After his studies, he returned to his hometown as a regular participant in the town\u2019s autumn salons and the collective events of the Academician Dechko Uzunov High School of Arts and Design, where he started working in 2019 as a teacher of drawing and painting. In 2021, he participated in the 6th International Plein Air Large Format Drawing \u201cDialogue\u201d organized by the School Board of the National High School of Stage and Film Design in Plovdiv, held at the Bratsigovo Ceramics Centre. Nikola Valchev currently lives and works in Kazanlak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":512,"template":"","class_list":["post-911","exhibition","type-exhibition","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artgallerykazanlak.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibition\/911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artgallerykazanlak.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibition"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artgallerykazanlak.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/exhibition"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artgallerykazanlak.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artgallerykazanlak.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}