Choose Training: exhibition by Kalin Serapionov

Choose Training is a fitness term related to choosing your training program in a closed, air-conditioned space. In Kalin Serapionov’s large-scale video installation Choose Training is a metaphor for today’s world and its automated modus operandi. Choose Training is a portrait of the big city. Of any big city anywhere in the world that is inhabited by brightly lit advertisements, empty neon offices and afterhours places of entertainment.

Kalin Serapionov’s video installation consists of three big synchronized projections. Each one shows real footage captured by the eye of the artist. Images of blinking neon ads and bright empty offices are interspersed with people skating on ice or training at the gym. All the images that take part in this grand narrative are organized by a sound background, created by Angel Simitchiev especially for this work. It serves to emphasize the artificial character of the environment and sets an overall rhythm to bring together the whole array of diverse images.

This is the first presentation of the 3-channel video installation Choose Training in Sofia after its debut in 2014 at the Contemporary Space Gallery in Varna.

Kalin Serapionov born 1967 in Vratsa, living and working in Sofia. He graduated from the National Art Academy, Sofia. His works have been exhibited in: Hilger Contemparary, Vienna (2004), ATA Center/ICA-Sofia (2005), LCB Depot, Lester, the UK (2008), Neon Campobase, Bologna, Italy (2010), ICA Gallery, Sofia (2013), One Night Stand Gallery, Sofia (2016), Contemporary Space, Varna, Bulgaria (2014, 2016). He participated in among others: Manifesta 4, Frankfurt am Main (2002), Blood & Honey. Future’s in the Balkans, Essl Collection, Vienna (2003), In the Gorges of the Balkans, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2003), Heterotopias, Biennial of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (2007), Sounds & Visions. Artists’ Films and Videos from Europe, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2009), Grammar of Freedom / Five Lessons: Works from the Arteast 2000+ Collection, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, (2015); Art for Change, Sofia Art Gallery, Sofia (2015) and many others.