Art Today Association / Center for Contemporary Art

Art Today Association organized for 11th time Week of contemporary art. The edition in 2005 presented exhibition „FREEZE“ and took place from 8 September until 28 September in the Center for Contemporary Art – Plovdiv. The exhibition presented objects, installations, video and photography. 17 participants took part and presented their versions on the absolute idea of conservation as stability, constancy, immobility, reticence, degradation. Some of the authors used ice-boxes in order to transform them by changing or confirming their meaning and function.

Participants: Ivan Moudov, Emil Mirazchiev, Yohannes Artinian, Sevdalina Kochevska, Nadia Genova, Roumen Zhekov, Veselina Sarieva, Ivan Toshkov, Natasha Kyupova, David Heywood, Icko Maznev, Michel, Maria Dzhelebova, Nadezhda Lyahova, Dimitar Grozdanov, Dimitar Mitovski, Zhivka Valevicharska.

Veselina Sarieva

Short QuickTime Video, 1:08 min.

Freezing people and the cosmetic industry (make-up, plastic surgery) use the principles of freezing in order to keep the healthy and aesthetic wholeness of the body and organism. The psyche is considered as non-matter, which makes it not so dependent on the physical process. Thus the process of freezing (the transformation of activity in passivity of the physical processes and the indications of aging) when talking about psyche can be a process of the free mental relations. In this state of non-time the psyche crosses the borders of the moral values and mixes up the life-saving and beautification acts.

Dimitar Grozdanov

Dimitar Mitovski

Short QuickTime Video, 3:14 min.

David Heywood

Emil Mirazchiev

Short QuickTime Video, 1:15 min.

Freeze and give a minute of silence in respect of those who died for the freedom of Bulgaria. The video is shot on the second of June – the Botev's day when in the whole country exactly at 12 the sirens start hooting for a minute.

Zhivka Valevicharska

Izko Maznev

Tolerance during the time, space, the milky way in the fridge and concepts that secretly watch us while we throw shadow on a future square.

Ivan Moudov

Ivan Toshkov

Yohannes Artinian

Maria Djelebova

SUBSTANCE+TIME+LUCK
Is that what we are – a spark that appears, gleams and dies away forever.
The combination of the figures-candles defines the limits of our life. We are closely tightened to these limits. They close us in our own place and at the same time are the threshold enticing us to step beyond, to overcome „the play with thousandfold repetition of our own life“
The man has learnt to ask questions – Who am I? Why am I here? Where do I go?
Happy birthday.........
EVERYTHING IS A CANDY FLOSS.

Michel

This fridge is №53
Its contents is calcified as special. It can not be open or moved on any occasion except by authorised persons.
The other fridge is a replica of fridge №53. An exact copy produced by a multinational company. By your wish you can put inside whatever you want.

Sevdalina Kochevska

Short QuickTime Video, 1:08 min.

Nadia Genova

Natasha Kyupova

Rumen Zhekov

The installation “Warm letters” is “made” of 217 letters sent to the author during his military service in October 1979. I felt incredible happiness of each letter. We received them in a very strange manner. Every letter was handed by an old soldier who torn the tip, blew air inside, closed the letter, put it on the door of the receiver and burst it with a strong hit. In spite of this touching ceremony the letters were of great importance to me. After 25 years I give these lines to be read. I have not read them again and I will probably never do so. It is sure that they are very funny, touching and will not provoke immense interest except for their senders. This project gives me the opportunity to go back to this year while reading all these letters during the exhibition.

Nadejda Oleg-Liahova

The solution is different in the work titled "Attempt at catching the essence": the melted ice cast is being caught from its original source, from the hollow matrix that it has been separated from. It is given shelter again without being restored - for the time being, it is just some water that has acquired the form in which it "has been caught". There would not be any difference between the water poured straight from the form (the hollow) and the water that has come from the melted ice cast. There would not be any difference if we were not present or if we did not know anything about the melting, the transformation. That water was a face, which we can restore, recall or just remember that we had pressed that cast to our body and remember the sensation of the cold form. Nadezhda Liahova's works recreate the difficulties that our desire to remember meets. Our desire faces the (im)permeability, and (in)security of what we want to remember and in order not to frustrate the desire that we are, we need imagination which can restore/create the remembrance. That kind of imagination, which will transform the water into another cast, and the cast into someone's face but not the face that the cast was taken from. And that very face could be more genuine to us than the real one, the one that was before.
However, I guess that these faces involve us in remembering things that we do not want to remember or which are not necessarily in the darkness of our experience but they start concerning us.
If the water is frozen again, will the same face appear? In the artist's attempts with the casts of her face, the transformation means deletion and both of them at the same time. Restarting the attempt at accomplishing a beginning leaves one with the feeling of eternity of remembrance, of erasing even the desire to get back through or to the transformation.
A. Angelov

Realized with the support of:

Swiss cultural programme Bulgaria www.pro-helvetia.bg

Municipality Plovdiv www.plovdiv.bg

Liebherr Bulgaria http://www.liebherr.com/