Bogdan Alexandrov’s latest exhibition presents a series of portraits executed in his characteristic “pointillist” acrylic technique. It is hardly surprising that they are visually compelling, since he is one of the artists who can confidently be said to have already left their mark on the modernization of Bulgarian painting. Even if we knew nothing about his work, this would scarcely diminish the power of the immediate impact produced by the intricately shaped figures, the color palette, and the painted surface. Yet beneath his evident professionalism, this intellectually astute artist usually conceals far more complex intentions, and the key to understanding his semantic traps lies in the very first word of the exhibition’s title—palimpsest. In his working process, Bogdan Alexandrov uses photography not as an aid in constructing the painted image, but as its doubling entity. He very often photographs the mirror reflections of his subjects, thereby lending an additional degree of constructedness to both the image and the compositional solutions. Such transformations of photography into painting lie at the heart of contemporary art, and the artist clearly navigates this territory with skill. He is thoroughly familiar with the history of conceptualizing strategies in painting and creates new meanings for the portrait image by drawing on photography’s capacity to “slice” through thin layers of time and space. Here, the palimpsest is understood as an accumulation of old and new meanings, of half-erased images from drawings, photographs, or flashes of memory. The images of real people are combined with those of now-extinct species of animals and birds, studied from old photographs or drawings passed down to us from scientific expeditions of the past. Ultimately, what confronts us is a new text in which memory even prevails over the specificity inherent in the portrait genre. The extinct species prompts a new interpretation of the anonymous image of the unnamed person. By exploring the liminal possibilities of painting and photography, Bogdan Alexandrov creates a new unity of the image. Photography and electronic media affect the traditional conception of painting and generate a meta-image that opens possibilities for interpreting the past while simultaneously conveying a sense of the contemporary relevance of its creator’s intentions. Svilen Stefanov
