Before the opening of the exhibition „Golden Wheat Ear,“ the young artist Evelina Valchanova shared with BGNES about her exciting encounter with art and her emotional experience in search of simple life truths:
„My name is Velina Valchanova, I am an artist, and I work with painting. Today, I am opening my exhibition „Golden Wheat Ear“ at the Re Club Gallery on Moskovska Street 29. The works you see behind me are part of this exhibition, as well as some other diverse plots united by the common theme of gold. Gold as a symbol of the spiritual, divine, valuable, important, and beautiful in our lives. Here, I present an ordinary apple as golden because it symbolizes the idea I use in all these works: everything around us is valuable and magical. If we manage to see and comprehend it, we will have a much happier life without needing to seek something extraordinary. Every ordinary thing can be seen as very valuable and important. This is how I view the objects in my works, adding this golden metallic accent that resonates from the painting.
My previous solo exhibition was called „Structural Painting“ and was much more purified, both in color and composition. Here, I decided to be more liberal with the colors, which is why there is a richer color palette. As you can see, here we emphasize the greenery. In the other works, there are both cooler and warmer tones, but overall I emphasize the contrast between the gold and the background from which the action develops, i.e., the environment. That’s why you can see darker, more saturated colors in my works, to contrast with the gold, which is the main accent, as I already mentioned.
Structures and reliefs are also an important part of my expressive means, but while they were the focus in my previous exhibition, here they give way, although they are still present as a new emblematic technique, making more room for the gold. As you can see here, in this traditional plot, we focus on something more interesting, a pop-art transformation that pays tribute to traditional art and gratitude that it is a foundation on which we, the younger and more modern artists, can step.
This is the work „Golden Wheat Ear,“ which is also the main focus of this exhibition. It depicts wheat ears in golden color to convey the feeling of something very valuable, precious, and magical. This is something I want to teach people. This is bread, this is what feeds us. I also teach this to my children. That’s why I often use it as a base and a main accent – the most important thing I have to say, namely, that we should be grateful and simply enjoy our golden fields because we have fertile land and everything we need to be happy.
One of my favorite elements is the fish. I like it because it can speak without words. It is an image that can embody many meanings. It is also a Christian symbol. Here I combine it with the gold, which is also present in Christianity. I think I achieve a very impactful work, very tight graphically. I like a minimalist expression. This brings my work closer to poetry. With few words, in this case, few graphic means, to say many things and for the work to impact the viewer on many levels.“
Text, photos, and video: Emil Drindolov
