victims of decoration

жертви на декорация

CV [engl] [bg]

Peter Tzanev

Born 1967 in Gabrovo, Bulgaria.

Artist, critic and art historian. 1981-1986 studied at the School of Fine Arts in Sofia. 1992 graduated from the Department of Printmaking at the National Academy of Arts, Sofia. 1999 completed his Ph.D. in Art History. Published articles and essays on subjects ranging from contemporary art to themes relating to phenomenology of children and psychiatric art. 2000 elected member of the Union of Bulgarian Artists. 2002 completed his book Art, Psychopathological Imagery and Children’s Drawings, an extended study on psychotic art, published by Contemporary Art Foundation, Sofia. Since 1993 he has been assistant professor of theory of art education in Faculty of Fine Arts at the National Academy of Arts, Sofia.

Peter Tzanev developed an aesthetic practice closely related to his theoretical investigations in the field of psychology of art. Inspired by the potential of psychopathological imagination to alter behavior and ways of seeing he has been experimenting with his own drawing method describing it as “essential decorating”. The cycle “Victims of decorating”, started in 2002, tests different cultural strategies committed to the intrinsic ‘taboos’ of the images. “Victims of decorating” includes numerous “conceptual drawings” over photographs in which the human existence in body is threatened by irrational forms of communication and interpretation. “Victims of decorating” is placed between stylistic incongruity of painting and photography, and between incompatible contradiction of primitive psychological impulses and pragmatic instrumentality of technological mind. The human heads and bodies covered with hand made ‘embroidered’ overdrawing patterns, evoke associations with outsider and aboriginal art, fashion and aerial photography, and 3D computer simulations. They look concurrently like paintings and bizarre photographs. “Victims of decorating” is best viewed as knowing ‘palimpsest ensemble’ that lies behind the accessible surface of the every day reality.