Biography
Radostin Sedevchev was born in Pernik in 1988. Lives and works in Sofia. He has PhD from the National Art Academy (NAA), Sofia in 2018. Graduated the educational program “Close Encounters – Visual Dialogues / School4artists” of the ICA-Sofia (2017). He has MA (2014) and BA (2012) in “Mural Painting” from NAA, Sofia (2014). He studied in the Fine Arts University (HfBK) in Dresden, Germany (2017) and the Glyndwr University in Wells, UK (2011).
Solo shows:
“Present absence” (2018) at ICA-Sofia (curator Iara Boubnova)
“Unforeseeable Past” (2017) at the “Vaska Emanouilova” Gallery (curator Vladiya Mihaylova).
The artist was shortlisted for the BAZA Award for Young Artists (2018).
Among his participations in group shows are: BAZA Award, Sofia City Gallery (2018), curator Daniela Radeva; “Shifting Layers”, Sofia City Gallery (2017), curator Vladiya Mihaylova; School4artists, ICA-Sofia Gallery (2017); “The Image is not Available”, Credo Bonum Gallery (2017), Sofia, curator Vessela Nozharova; “Mixed Pickles”, Gallery of HfBK, Dresden, Germany (2017), curator Susanne Greinke; “Sofia Queer Forum 2015”, Academia Gallery, Sofia, curator Vladiya Mihaylova.
Аbout
The subject of my artistic works is memory, not as a simple documentation nor actual research of events or situations, but rather the mentality of that phenomenon. The compression and decompression of memories, the errors and inconsistencies as well as the ways people preserve and archive them.
My work is based on found objects, documents, photography and different “triggers” that can be interpreted in various ways without the need for documentary approach. In most cases my view of memory is subjective and emotional. Text is also a very important part of my artistic research. I use it as a ready-made most often in the form of quotes, fragments or epigraphs.
- Radostin Sedevchev
Gallery
Radostin Sedevchev
You are the knife i turn inside myself, 2018.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Radostin Sedevchev
- Material: Letters, paper, pen, postmarks, stamps, postcards, shelf, plexiglas, digital print, paper, empty postage envelopes
- Sizes: Variable size
- Description: “The easy possibility of writing letters–from a purely theoretical point of view¬–must have brought wrack and ruin to the souls of the world. Writing letters is actually an intercourse with ghosts and by no means just with the ghost of the adsressee but also with one’s own ghost, which secretly evolves inside the letter one is writing or even in a whole series of letters, where one letter corroborates another and can refer to it as withess. How did people ever get the idea they could communicate with one another by letter!”
letters from Ffranz Kafka to Milena Jesenská
(Prague end of March, 1922)
Radostin Sedevchev
85, 2015.
Drawing
Details
- Photographer: Radostin Sedevchev
- Material: Pencil, paper, PVC board
- Width: 0.00 mm Height: mm Depth: mm
- Sizes: Variable size
- Description: “The moments follow each other; nothing lends them the illusion of a content or the appearance of a meaning; they pass; their course is not ours; we contenplate that passage, prisoners of a stupid perception.”
Emil Cioran
Discarded list with the names of sexual partners, each and everyone left his trace. All of which draw a portrait of the complier. I on the other hand draw them. Every one caries him self in the name he is remembered with and every portrait is a decompression of the trace of memory. The decompression in this case is synthetic act of extraction of the memory, lead by subjectivity, fantasy and obsession, without any claim of faithfulness to real life events. Memories deprived from meaning, opened for second read and ultimately oblivion. - Copyright: Radostin Sedevchev
Radostin Sedevchev
Present absence, 2018.
Video installation
Details
- Photographer: Radostin Sedevchev
- Material: Video, backlit projection
- Sizes: Variable size
- Description: In Radostin Sedevchev’s new project “Present Absence” the viewer is made to witness a kind of permanent yet rarely observed events truly meriting the definition – “the circle of life”. In an abandoned cemetery the artist used motion-activated surveillance cameras to capture nocturnal life. He then added his own human point of view to that footage with footage filmed in daytime.
What’s been abandoned, as if unneeded for the humans, has meaning and use in nature – for the animals and specifically for a family of badgers that have accepted the location as their natural habitat. The cameras were fixed for months capturing stuff that humans define as permanent, tranquil, even idyllic – the change of seasons, growth and vegetation, blossoming and repose. At the same time the lenses capture all sorts of daily or nightly, ordinary yet diverse activities of insects and birds, of wild animals, and all the complex interwoven relations between species and specie individuals.
Compositionally Radostin Sedevchev’s “Present Absence” is a video installation. It aims to hold attention until one has merged with the view and the immersive effect of “loosing” oneself in the long neglected everyday life of nature is achieved. The basis of the work is the evermore popular notion of “slow time”, which we need to better reflect and experience, to make us fit for avoiding mistakes, unwelcomed intervention and aggression.
The artist does not claim to be an eco-activist with this work. However, these days the issues of ecology seem to have become the greatest concern of humanity. “Present Absence” comes across as an ecological appeal for respect and contact.
Radostin Sedevchev demonstrates once again his belonging to that wonderful artistic specie whose work is based on research; artists who are able to transform the research process into an art work. He has a special sensibility to time in its various manifestations – the measured time of history, as well as the very substance of time “in action”. He is already known as the “restorer” of human memories and of the lived-yet-forgotten past. Now the artist is urging the audience to witness for at least an instant the naturalness of time passing, and thus to partake in its process. The popular quote from John Archibald Wheeler who authored the definition for “black hole”, says: “No phenomenon is a physical phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” That is valid for art too.
Curator: Iara Boubnova
Radostin Sedevchev
There are no isoscles triangles in love, 2018.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Radostin Sedevchev
- Material: Diary, paper, color pencils, ballpoint pen, wood
- Sizes: Drawing: 130х100 cm, Diary: 17х12x3 cm
- Description: Orchidea is nineteen, she lives in Sofia and is in love with Nasko, but at the same time she loves also Traycho and naturally the love towards them is not distributed evenly. The project investigates into this love triangle and its manifestations written down in the diary of the girl written in 1971. This is a dinamic year for Orhidea, during this time she meets allot of different suitors, finishes school and starts her first job. However in the 365 entries in the diary, only in 14 she does not mention her love towards Nasko or Traycho and in 153 of them she talks exclusively for this strive.
Radostin Sedevchev
Everything is penultimate, 2017.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Radostin Sedevchev
- Material: Paper, pencil, silkscreen, color pencils, post stamps, gum-bichromate, wood, glass
- Sizes: 21x14.5 cm (certificate), 29x21 cm (portrait)
- Description: Josef Lorenz was born in 1846 in Badkönigswart, Austro-Hungaria. Died in 02.11.1918 in Michelsberg bei Plan, First Czechoslovak Republic. Despite his death Lorenz was baptized and proclaimed Arian in 1934 right after the Nazi regime came to power in neighboring Germany. Lorenz remained Arian on paper until 2017 when a new birth certificate was made, freeing him from the burden of an idea that he never saw active in first place.
- Copyright: Radostin Sedevchev