Gallery
Edge Group
The Obvious Breakfast, 1992.
Performance
Details
- Photographer: Edge Group
- Property of: Edge Group
- Description: The Edge Group participated in the first edition of the International Festival for Modern Art Process-Space with the infamous action The Obvious Breakfast, which took place over 10 hours on one of the piers of the city of Balchik on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. The artists arranged a magnificently abundant dining table full of delicacies. They “devoured” the food over 10 hours on their own while the audience was being separated with a rope. The viewers remained hungry and the action turned into an egotistical gesture of the group in the context of the social crisis, shortage of goods and inflation.
The apparent cynicism of this spectacle tended towards criticism of the numerous creative events at the time in the capital and in the country that were mainly aiming at getting grant money from either non-governmental or market sources, rather than at the public good. The action was also somehow critical of the new subject – the artist who had to learn to be individualistic and egotistical in order to survive in the new market conditions, as well as within the new social privileges that came with the market and the non-governmental foundations. - Copyright: Edge Group
Edge Group
Opus Probect, 1993.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Edge Group
- Material: Exhibition
- Property of: Edge Group
- Description: OPUS PRObJECT, 1993
The Opus ProBject was the next show of the Edge Group. It took place in June 1993 in Plovdiv in the exhibition hall of the Association of the Artists in Plovdiv.
This time the space of the gallery was not changed at all. There was rather the intention to master all its capacities. The viewer even had the feeling that it was not the idea that was tailored to fit the space but rather that the space had been made to fit the idea. The exhibition hall was transformed into a huge installation taking over the whole lower floor of the gallery. In each of the four corners there was a large heavy bed made out of massive wood and covered with intricate silk covers in blood-red color. Those made the four actively aggressive focal points in the space. All around, the beds and the walls were full of scattered apples in endless transformations. Two of the walls were offering identical in size and positioned at equal distances to each other works, which were connecting via traditional techniques (painting, collage, drawing, and Xerox copies) the idea of the apple with some persistent themes that had been occupying artists over the ages. The works unlocked endless thoughts about time, light, infinity, and love; they conveyed limitless wealth of diverse associations; they suggested meaningful and absurd questions.
The works were not unified stylistically; it was as if each one had been executed by a different hand. The only unifying factor was the presence of the image of an apple or at least the metaphorical insinuation for such. The precise yet monotonous arrangement, which had overtaken all the wall surfaces, as well as the identical dimensions of these works, meant that they are the passive agents within the installation. The walls seemed to have been transformed into mirror surfaces reflecting the generalized face of the audience; they spoke of the multitude of individual readings, experiences, worldviews, emotional states and intellectual load that are the end product of the creative idea transformed and re-born within the viewer – from its literal reception and reproduction (the real apples that had been photocopied) to the far removed abstract and often unintelligible interpretations; even to the lack of impact or provocation.
While the viewer was facing these two walls, he/she would be consumed by the immense diversity of the talkative pictures generating rich and confused associations and emotions; the other two walls were strikingly laconic and clean in terms of composition. A raw of white plaster casted apples was arranged on the white wall at eye level. They were leading the gaze of the viewer down the end wall of the hall which was covered with numberless real apples looking much like a frozen waterfall. The precise lighting created the illusion of slow downwards movement of the waterfall towards the bed with the red-blood colored covers and also towards the scattered around freezed up apples. The square of the white apples in the center of the hall, which had been suspended in air above the visitors’ heads, was in fact the center of the spatial composition. This was the very center of the space formed by the four beds in the corners.
The show triggered endless associations – from the biblical symbolism with the fall of men, the red color of redemption, the predestined and so on; all the way to the ironical invite for the viewer to submit to the temptation offered by the untouched apples. The lighting was the basic compositional element which had been handled with exceptional professionalism. Two main types of lighting had been used – law spots and diffused sources. It turned to be a strong unifying element compositionally by creating a theatrical stage effect. In this show the viewer was also the main actor who seemed to have ventured center stage quite unwittingly. The viewer had no chance to withdraw as the whole space was a stage set. There was the powerless feeling that you are being watched, while the oppressive sense of passivity, produced by all of the installation’s components, allocated the main acting role to the viewer. - Copyright: Edge Group
Text: Zhivka Valevicharska
Edge Group
The Ideal, 1992.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Edge Group
- Material: Exhibition
- Property of: Edge Group
- Description: The Ideal was the third exhibition of the Edge Group and it took place once again in the gallery at 32 Gladstone St. in Plovdiv (March 31 – April 15th, 1992). This show achieved the symbiosis between idea and means of expression that the previous shows Symbols and Signs and Big Photography only suggested as an ongoing process but did not fully accomplish. The clarity of the connection between concept and visual embodiment matched the basic issues that the artists in the show were aiming at – the relationship between idea and matter. This problem was seen not only in artistic but also in a deeply philosophical context, as well as in the context of the today’s consumer society.
This time the space of the gallery was drastically rearranged – instead of the expected view of the well known gallery space, the viewer had to go through a narrow corridor of white panels leading up to a wide circular room. There awaited him ten identical white-primed canvases on the wall. The audience reactions were conflicting. Often people were obviously disappointed with the white canvases. Definitions like “a scandal”, “parody”, and “self-promotion” and so on were present in the local press. There was also the direct and unavoidable association of the “new space” with the female womb, while the viewers were unknowingly casted as the cause for the creation of the ideal – on the next day all of the artists started creating their “ideals” on the blank canvases. That was a new courtesy to the viewer who were allowed to not only realize that he/she is the reason for creation but also to have the opportunity to follow closely the process, the sanctity of the creative action, which is usually guarded jealously behind the walls of the studio.
In fact the choice of the canvas as a marker for the classical forms was integrated within the main conceptual line of the exhibition. This choice was also determining the visualization of the personal “confessions” through means of the image indeed. There was also the self-directed challenge the Edge(s) were presenting. On one hand, each one of them had to formulate and justify his or her “ideals”, to turn deep into his/her self and to confront his/her individual positions and worldview; on the other, each one alone in front of the canvas was also facing the immense problems related to the purely plastic formulation of the issues surrounding utopia and ideals. Reevaluating their positions of life and philosophy for each one of them had started months before the show with the first notion to have such a project. But the “materialization” of the rethinking had to be accomplished within the short 10-days period in front of the audience.
Walking through the narrow passage on to the white “womb”, the visitors were forced (to think over and overcome) to jump across a succession of marble plates engraved with texts such as “Go back”, “Time reveals”, “The tenth day”. These “invites” were underlining the working process unfolding over time, which was the focus of the show – the ideal as a working process, utopia as a search process rather than as an end product. It seemed though that such philosophical and existential themes were skillfully mocked by the roasted piglet(s) suspended above head, beyond reach of the visitors. The unobtrusive but strongly felt bitter sarcasm of the show was directed at the audience, which was representing the consumerist aspects of art. The act of “consuming” or the consumers’ satisfaction was left for the Edge artists alone who consumed the roasted meat all alone.
The project Ideal did not terminate with the closing of the show. The ideas investigated there were further developed in unexpected modifications within the first edition of the International Festival for Modern Art “Process-Space”, which took place in June of 1992. It was organized by Dimitar Grozdanov, Boris Klimentiev and Diana Popova. The Edge took part with the action The Obvious Breakfast along with the show The Ideal.
The Ideal project terminated with the film under the same title, which was created on the basis of the documentary material from the show in Plovdiv and with the verbal insights and positions of the artists. This film might easily be considered a documentary though it is in fact a logical artistic summing up of what had taken place made from the distance of time.
The idea and the materialization of the Ideal project turned out to be a decisive stage in the creative development of the Edge phenomenon and of the relationships between the members of the group. With this project each one of them took the responsibility and the risk to go on an artistic journey towards the self and the peers. And that is the most personal direction for the artists, which each one has the right to experience in a unique way. - Copyright: Edge Group
Text: Zhivka Valevicharska
Еdge Group
GREAT LIGHT, 1991.
Action
Details
- Photographer: Edge Group
- Property of: Edge Group
- Description: When The Edge made their new action titled “Great Light” at the Central Train Station in Plovdiv we were once again confronted with a political statement in a synthesized form. It was to be understood strictly within the political turmoil in the country and the city in the days of the previous as well as the upcoming elections. The action took place throughout the day of December 13th 1991 when the chaos of the pre-election campaign, the propaganda and street rallies was accompanied by the pre-Christmas agitation. The intervention of the group within the public space was simple and barely noticeable – on one of the walls in the waiting room of the station there was a modestly positioned small electronic display, which was constantly running the Jewish proverb: “Each one of us – a small flame, all together – a great light”.
The documentary video shows the almost identical reactions of the hurried passers-by who would stop for an instant in front of the anonymous display, would look around and would merge back into the stream of thoughts and people taking away mute bewilderment, interpretation or the very phrase stuck in their minds. Naturally, this “great light” would have had another meaning in a place and at a time different for the chosen ones. Here is once again the deep connection with the symbolic status of the location – the station as a metaphor for road and transformation. Unlike the Black Happening, which restricted the audience to those visiting the Christian temples, the choice of location this time was determined by its accessibility and openness towards a wide range of social, religious and political sections of the population. In this sense the Great Light was a gesture of acknowledgement for the promise contained in the power of the people, of the demos in its widest definition. - Copyright: Edge Group
Edge Group
Big Photography, 1991.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Edge Grpup
- Material: Exhibition
- Property of: Edge Group
- Description: Completely different was the second show of the Edge(s) titled Big Photography. It took place in the spring of 1991 at the exhibition space on 32 Gladstone St. in Plovdiv. It differed from Symbols and Signs mainly due to its none-conceptual and experimental substance. Here the collective image semed to have receeded in the background. This was rather a show of single individual artists grouped within the same space and united by the same materials and technical means.
The show offered a large number of works that could be defined as “photographs” with a high degree of relativity. Materialized mainly with photographic means the works as a whole were marked by the traces of experimentation that took place during the time of shooting as well as in the dark room, as well as within the wide range of options offered by the media. The works in the show investigated to various depths the range of immanent photographic features but they also offered a visual wealth of successful attempts achieved while processing the film and the photographic paper, or while using different filters, raster and photographic emulsions; or while playing with the exposure to light. All the works were under the heading of unusually large formats though. Strongly present were the collage and the photomontage, as well as the mechanical intervention on the negative and the photographic paper. The artists limited themselves to the potential of the black-and-white photographic techniques though not in the achromatic hues. They also used the not-so-rich possibilities of the black-and-white dark room methods, which allow for the color treatement of the photographic print.
The name of the second Edge Group show was possibly due to the large format, which was present as a priory concept in the whole look of the exposition. It was naturally tilting towards experimentation too. However, if we leave aside the formal aspects, there is a kind of homage paid to photography too, which had been making its way within Bulgarian art ever since the 1970ies. In this case though, it was not only the aesthetical issues of the art form but photography itself was an equal partner within the creative process of the artists and the technical execution of the works. Bulgarian artists were not daring to allow this “non-artistic” method within their studios for a long time. Photography entered Bulgarian art in a big way as a technical means but also together with the art forms of the assemblage and the installation, etc. That went along with the freedom of the artist to submit his means to the primacy of the idea. In this sense, the Edge was underlining the expressive potential of this visual language as well as its technical capacities as a carrier of a new freedom of thinking and of a new type of communication between the work and the viewer. Last but not least was the common drive to overcome the limitations of that language in the broadest sense of the word – from the most formal pictorial boundaries of photography, which were surpassed through the use of the intrinsic photographic means; and from leaving the frames of the traditional material all the way to the in-depth attempts to rethink and to go beyond the framework of the conventions and the problems dictated by the media. The Big Photography show was also the first attempt of the group to start working under a common plastic denominator and aesthetic concept. Guest artists to the show were: Georgi Rouzhev, Nikolai Ivanov, Elza Artamontzeva, the Dobrudja Group, Nikolai Minchev and Katia Petrova. - Copyright: Edge Group
Text: Zhivka Valevicharska
Edge Group
Eco-action BLACK HAPPENING, 1990.
Action
Details
- Photographer: Edge Grpup
- Material: Black nylon, corrugated cardboard, acrylic drawings
- Sizes: Text: Zhivka Valevicharska
- Property of: Edge Group
- Description: “This is our first and maybe last political exhibition”, the group proclaimed referring to the Symbols and Signs exhibition. Nonetheless, theey remained politically and socially engaged with their next action titled Black Happening.
This eco-action had the goal of activating the social consciousness of the Plovdiv inhabitants. It was conceived to confront the people in the early morning of Palm Sunday in April 1990. Black Happening met people in the small garden of the Djumaiya Square, a place which you could not avoid if you were heading up to the churches in the Old Town of Plovdiv. The small not-yet spring green park “waited” for people “dressed” in mourning-black “clothing” – the pathways, the drinking water fountain, the trees, and the grass – all these that would have had the aura of spring, were covered with black nylon while in some places the huge cardboard silhouettes of strange and horrific monsters were sneaking thorough. The occasion for the Black Happening was the newly revealed truths about the ecological danger that the nearby facility for processing of non-ferrous metals presented to the whole region. The action was an act of open artistic protest with the social task of attracting civil engagement while reminding people of the recent Chernobyl disaster. The horrific monster figures, the black ground, the sense of lost relations to nature were triggering thoughts about the history of ecological accidents and their victims, about the maddening future of the links between people and nature. The action was posing questions about the political and social responsibility towards the environment as well as the social context and the ordinary people who most often are the victims of disaster. The unhindered pessimism conveyed by the sorrowful park was delicately balanced by the second part of the action – the Wall of Desires, which as awaiting the audience after the almost procession-like climb up to the church of St.st. Constantine and Elena – there was a empty white cardboard surface installed on the outer wall of the church where one could unload the accumulated negative emotions and hopes through anonymous action. - Copyright: Images: Edge Grpup
Text: Zhivka Valevicharska - References: https://www.am-contemporary.com/group-edge
Edge Group
SYMBOLS AND SIGNS, 1990.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Edge Grpup
- Material: Exhibition
- Sizes: Text: Zhivka Valevicharska
- Property of: Edge Group
- Description: The Edge organized their first show in March 1990 in the exhibition space at 32 Gladstone St. in Plovdiv. All founding members of the group took part in the Symbols and Signs show along with Pravdoliub Ivanov who was invited as a guest-participant. Most of the works in the show were either mocking the symbols of the just-discarded regime or were reminding the viewer unquestionable truths and painful disappointments, which the time between 1944 and 1989 had caused. Although the works lacked any signatures of the authors, they each had its own autonomous visual and conceptual existence as well as distinct artistic impact. Not one of the works was engaged aesthetically with the rest; the theme and the means of expression were the only unifying factor. The show had a totally conceptual substance while the artworks covered almost all of the new forms for visual expression – installations, performances, assemblages, and various actions that took place during the run of the show. The until-then traditional artistic forms such as painting, prints, and drawings were accompanying the “new” forms on the walls of the space while acting as a kind of “conventional” background that would support the viewers’ reception. The main goal shared by the authors was to free themselves of inhibitions, to discard all that had accumulated after their traditional training, to mock and thus to reject those norms that had been imposed on them. Symbols and Signs provided an occasion for the artists to investigate the options offered by the new forms of expression, to experiment freely with materials and media, to initiate the unknowing audience into the new visual language and image.
The Symbols and Signs show was a strong radical event with political orientation, an artistic event in our contemporary art which until now has no analogue in scale and impact. The provocations presented by the authors are many; they were attacking the senses as well as the associative potential of the viewers with a vast array of visual means. The whole idea of the group activated those negative emotions left over from the social realities during the time of socialism and the early stages of the transition period. It offered views on reality tinted by the spicy taste of irony or with sharp provocative aggression. Overcoming easily the concrete physical and historical embodiments of power, the whole concept of the event challenged directly the abstract carriers of power that were adapted for mass manipulation – the sign and symbols system. One could see in the exposition acts of speculation with the artistic cannon and norms of the socialist times. The reaction of the unprepared Plovdiv audience was often confused and negative. The provocative substance of the artworks was amplified additionally by the symbolic actions during the opening – a huge blood-red cake shaped like a pentacle was cut up with a hammer and a sickle after which it was handed out to some of those present. What was the sweet taste of the end of the regime? The following action-attack under the ironical title “The Wheels of History” unexpectedly dumped into the feet of the huge audience small but heavy ceramic balls. The wheels of history started turning brutally and suddenly while introducing disturbance, shock and perplexity. - Copyright: Images: Edge Group
Text: Zhivka Valevicharska - References: https://www.am-contemporary.com/group-edge