Both of them work with pictures and texts. With a few strokes, humorous, subversive and at times with biting irony, they comment on the social and political/cultural status quo. Dan Perjovschi & Nedko Solakov: from their bases in Bucharest and Sofia, they have taken the international art world by storm in the last 15 years – among their more recent exhibitions have been the 52nd Venice Biennial, documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany (Solakov) and the MoMA in New York (Perjovschi).

With Walls & Floor (without the ceiling), Dan Perjovschi and Nedko Solakov present their current, large-scale joint effort at the ‘Tresor’ venue of the BA-CA-Kunstforum, which – as the title already suggests – will be created in situ. Within a week, the two of them, equipped with felt tips and pencils, will take over the exhibition’s walls and floors as well as the architectural surroundings with their drawings.

Dan Perjovschi and Nedko Solakov, who both received a classical-academic training, have a lot in common at first glance: they are both from South Eastern Europe, they like to critically explore the political and social transformation processes taking place in the post-communist societies, the opportunities and risks of a united Europe, and the mechanisms of the global art world – as well as the resulting consequences for their identity as artists between ‘East and West’. Both develop their ideas for specific contexts; they start out from the medium of drawing and extend it to room installations and performances by taking over walls, rooms and whole buildings. However, beyond this common ground their artistic practices are very independent.

Nedko Solakov, who was trained in classical mural painting, is a storyteller, who deals with universal themes as well as autobiographical moments. The particular attraction of his conceptually designed, cross-media works lies in the incomparable interplay between simplicity and complexity, seriousness and humour, precision and absurdity. Central themes of his artistic works are, alongside his identity as an artist, the critical analysis of the ‘arts system’, traditional representation systems and the expectations which are usually associated with art.

Dan Perjovschi sees his role as an artist in the post-communist era as an eminently political one. He works for the critical publication Magazin 22, which was established shortly after Ceausescu’s overthrow. Perjovschi consciously decided to use the medium of drawing, which has always been considered the most direct of all artistic methods. “I want to capture a complex issue with a few lines. My revolution is taking place here, in a drawing measuring 10 x 10 cm.” His political graffiti are quickly dashed-off snapshots, which make an issue out of macropolitical events in a highly sensitive and sharply ironic way, and which contextualise them with personal experiences. The bourgeois separation between private and public-political worlds is unknown to him: “Everything I see is related to the way I see things and what happens to and inside me.”

In Walls & Floor (without the ceiling) an ephemeral joint work will be created, just for the duration of the exhibition. “The great challenge related to wall scribbling is the fact that 99 percent of these works are painted over again and will completely disappear at some stage. That is what attracts me”, says Solakov. With this temporary work, the two artists withdraw themselves from the mechanisms of the art market, which requires a mobile, tradable artistic product. The project will be the culmination of a series of collaborative works of the two artists, which have all been realised abroad until now – a fact which the artists will subject to critical analysis in Vienna.

A joint project of BA-CA Kunstforum and KulturKontakt Austria.
A catalogue will be published for the exhibition.

www.nedkosolakov.net

www.perjovschi.ro