Like love, the Balkans are infinitely paradoxical. On the one hand, they are steeped in history, culture, and events, yet these things seem unable to give any of the countries or their inhabitants a consistent identity. Therefore, it is no surprise that the idea of leaving them in search of something better and more interesting has fuelled the imagination for many years.
Like many others, the visual artist Kyril Buhowski has left and returned to Bulgaria for a number of reasons, constructing himself in the process. In his debut exhibition, Buhowski shows us something like a turning point in the development of his desire. A place where he manages to rest from his endless search in art, abroad and in others. Without exposing himself, the artist reveals desires as the most important and only element that we truly possess. He takes us on a short adventure in which he shows us the objects, secrets, places, identities, texts, and peculiarities of the formation of the work that is man. With this in mind, the cycle of paintings is not ashamed to reveal a certain nakedness without imposing at all. The works problematize without moralizing, and like love, defined as that part of ourselves which we recognize in the Other, the paintings show the subject rewritten, dizzy and mapped by itself and its quests.
Along with all these torments, there are also numerous contradictions that have yet to be resolved. While the paintings show more of the positive side of the multicultural patchwork that is the subject, the installation in the centre speaks volumes about the serious tensions of identity between the West and the Balkans. It reminds us of the many problematic appropriations, mixtures, references, inspirations we find in history and today. Тhese elements are chimerically intertwined, pointing to the weightless heaviness of the contemporary global subject filled with unresolved contradictions.
Right now, we will have to reflect on the contradictions brought in front of us, on the table of desire. And for his part, Buhowski will have to look for ways to exacerbate or resolve them in his future artistic projects, perhaps beyond his purely personal questions.
Georgi P. Pavlov
Curator
