Nedko Solakov

Nedko Solakov

Nedko Solakov, Iara Boubnova, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Christy Lange, Jonathan Watkins • Hatje Cantz

This edition of Nedko Solakov

ISBN-10: 3775731725 · ISBN-13: 978‑3775731720 · 2011

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Completeness 51

Cover quality: good

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This first monograph to Ned Solakov's oeuvre presents works by the Bulgarian-born artist from the last ten years. Solakov gleans his ingredients for his fictive, often absurd narratives from classical works of art history. In his twelve-part series of "representative" paintings - as he calls them -, he juggles with the clichés of Romantic landscapes in the sense of Caspar David Friedrich. The pictures, painted in the manner of the old masters, quote the painterly rhetoric and construction schemes of German Romanticism but make its theoretical superstructure disappear: According to Peter Herbstreuth, "Solakov´s intention is a cozy house version of the Romantic." All pictures have "missing parts", blank spaces which are meant to irritate. On some pictures, there may be a moon missing, or a boat, on others a reflection - all of them carrying encoded meanings in Friedrich´s cosmology. The viewer finally turns to the inscriptions to the pictures for help, and there Solakov meticulously describes what the respective composition is "lacking". This way, he deconstructs traditional art historical preconceptions and the recipient's expectations: "Do-not-trust-me- or-yourself-too-much", in the artist's own words. The artist: Nedko Solakov, born in 1957 at Chevren Briag, Bulgaria. Studies of art at the Sofia Art Academy, graduation as a mural painter. In 1985/86 studies at the Nationaal Hoger Institut voor Shoone Kunsten in Antwerp. Participation in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Scholarships in Zurich, Vienna and at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien. In 2001, participation at the Venice Biennale. Lives and works in Sofia.

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