Lovers (2017) Painting by Stoyan Zikov

"World of Angels" is an exhibition that combines my artistic quests into painting, sculpture and drawing at the same time, creating a space in which angels are sculptural and physical incarnations of feelings and experiences. They recreate my own internal state by showing the world not as I see it, but as I feel it.
My work on the “Angels” cycle is inspired by а childhood memory of mine. I was about six years old when during an early spring, and while the snow had not yet melted, me and my family were spending the holiday in Bistritsa. The village is huddled up in the mountain, right next to the forest and before the urbanization, it was very common for wild animals to come down, looking for food. Then, for the first time, I saw deers and even managed to caress one of them. There were about seven deers and the scenery was highly influential. One of the things that made me very impressed was that during this time of the year the horns of the young deers are covered with moss that gave their horns a delusive softness. In a certain moment there was an undefined noise, and the whole herd disappeared into the woods in seconds. This memory was imprinted in my mind as a miracle I had lived through. This is why I call my compositions "Angels".
One of the biggest difficulties I faced was materializing the feeling, the emotion... trying to turn the intangible into material. This was a major creative issue I set myself up to resolve.
I have always understood art as a scientific process in which the artist is a researcher who is experimenting, analyzing results and trying to present, let me call it “theorems for creative problems". In this case, I can say that "World of Angels" has been able to bring out some interesting principles that I will further develop in the future, but which have reached the stage where I can display the creative decisions made so far.
My work has always been going in parallel in sculpture, painting and graphic drawings, so I decided that if I really want to present this world, it is most appropriate to do it in precisely these three dimensions.
There is another key issue for which I have tried to present a creative solution. This is the choice of materials I used for the paintings. I found it interesting to try to use the classic oil technique on а canvas but creating conceptual and contemporary works. I believe that it is the classical technique and materials that make the search for an otherwise perplexed creative problem understandable.
In the paintings and the sculptures from the exhibition I am not trying to create some kind of a fictional world, it is our world, the one we live in everyday, I just removed everything unnecessary and left the essence, such as I understand it as important and valuable. Many people are trying to define what I do as “surrealism", something I can not agree with. There is nothing irrational or metaphysical in my paintings and sculptures. Physics, light and spaces are completely natural, cleared of unnecessary talkativeness, of change of focus.
I opine that art is a portal to the potentials for access to the depths of the model of existence, vast and different for everyone. It is for this reason I believe art is not exhausted in terms of forms and quests, but is yet to develop and to go deeper into the matters. To say that art is exhausted is like accepting that science has reached its limit.

Related themes

Tempera On CardboardWorld Of AngelsStoyan ZikovContemporary ArtFigurative