Monolandscapes – Simeon Shivachev

Monolandscape is not a genre but rather a condition associated with the emotional experience of the artist. It is a philosophical gazing into texture, into the material, into colour and their possibilities to bring to life this experience and turn it into a specific image. The plot and location are not important. The artist can afford to repeat the same motif endlessly in a monotonous rhythm, searching unremittingly for the golden line between the sky and the ground. This horizon is also very arbitrary and changes with each subsequent painting according to mood and colour. In fact, it could simply be a border between two complex tones or between two completely different textures. But painting experiments and impasto are never in themselves enough for the eye which is always looking for an image and something specific in them. And that’s why even now it can discover a sea, a plain, a sky. It can also discover sentimental contemplation, melancholy, darkness or blinding light. These “frames”, devoid of any noise or details, change as if the eye is blinking and each subsequent “frame” offers something new in an otherwise familiar motif.

Simeon Shivachev has been trying out different variations of monochromatic painting in a constant dilemma between the image and nothingness. In his new series of paintings, “mono” refers not so much to the paintings but to a suggestion of unity. After being presented at the Nesi Art Gallery in Burgas at the beginning of this year, the exhibition is now showing at CIBANK’s gallery in a version extended by nearly 13 paintings.

Simeon Shivachev was born in 1970 in Burgas. He is part of the generation of Bulgarian artists who developed a tendency towards “solidified” art which appeared in Bulgarian art in the 1980s. The most typical features of this trend are an enthusiasm for modernistic styles such as Informel, for Monochrome Painting and Eastern Laconism, an increased interest in the material and form, an escape from conventional norms and genres in painting. Simeon Shivachev creates paintings, prints and installations. He has participated in dozens of exhibitions such as “Personal Mythologies” at Shipka 6 Gallery in Sofia, “Coordinates” – exhibition hall of the Society of Burgas Painters, Burgas (2006), “The Body” – Shipka 6 Gallery, Sofia, “Sea – Coast” – City Art Gallery, Varna, “Monochrome”, P.K.Yavorov Library, Burgas (2005), etc. In 2008 he was selected to participate in the M-Tel competition for contemporary Bulgarian art. This is the artist’s eighth solo exhibition.