“Protégé of muses, who in a dark conspiracy are my best illusions”

 

Solo exhibition painting, sculpture, graphics, drawings, collages

By Kaloyan Iliev – Kokimoto

1 – 24 April 2025

ONE Gallery

Sofia, 1A “Dyakon Ignatii” Str.

 

 

 

“Hey, I am a protégé of muses, who in a dark conspiracy are my best illusions – for the prince and for freedom”. This stanza from the poem “Draft for a letter to the beloved” by the late Miryana Basheva, although changed for the needs of the exhibition, became the main inspiration for the creation of the works. The poetess’ work offers a clear and so relevant today, direct feminist theme, in which the woman is not judged only by men’s perspective, but she turns look inwards. And despite this suggestion, the exhibition does not offer the conviction that female power needs nothing but itself. Also, the man is not denied in the whole picture, but instead the emphasis is on liberation. The ideas of liberation from the man and the declaration of the "uniqueness" of the female gender have been rethought and reworked by me as a man and as an author of the exhibition. I directed the energy of this very important moment in the poem towards myself in order to extract my personal problematics. In the presented paintings, sculptures, drawings and collages, I extract the meanings of existence from living human interaction in order to impose themselves on our reality, until reaching the absolute rejection of it. In this same reality, in which my best illusions have taken on the most diverse and exotic, cultural and ethnic forms, combined with popular influences from our consumer world, the appearance of the so-called muses is formed. These are not only my illusions about freedom, gender equality and the religions we live with, but it turns out that they live in each of us, and therefore the muses are common too...

 

The opening date was not chosen by chance to be April 1st, and although the presented topics are not at all a joke, I present to you an exhibition with a dose of humor and self-irony appropriate to my style. Until April 24 on the second floor in the gallery space you will have the opportunity to see for yourself the truth of the muses, which in a dark conspiracy turn into our best illusions. 

 

 

Kaloyan Iliev – Kokimoto