The exhibition “Unpredictable circumstances” of the young artist Stefan Ivanov offers a possible answer to today’s questions about sculpture. The artist draws inspirations from the experience of pop art, hyperrealism, ready-made and other art practices to show how autonomous and human -independent are objects in the world of today. Silver doughnuts in front of an old pink TV-set; a carp, pressed in a clamp; a distorted empty picture frame and other similar paradoxical compositions represent in fact the works included in the exhibition.

Without telling stories or building complex analytical concepts, Stefan Ivanov employs various approaches to combine the individual elements. He thinks simultaneously through the tools of painting – colours, brushstrokes, spots and of sculpture – volumes, materials, masses and forms in space. In the works, “art” and “design” merge into a shared sense of an aesthetic world in which people exist on an equal level with objects. While skilled in the expressive language of both sculpture and scenography, the artist chooses the former and leaves the viewers without a storyline or a stage.

“Unpredictable circumstances” is one of the first solo exhibitions of the artist that conveys his sense of relevance of the world, which is full today of images, shapes, colours and events. Each of the sculptures in the exhibition is associated with some action – cutting, biting, spilling, tightening, pushing, sinking – which is left unfinished. Thus, it becomes a static, “sculptural” incident.

Stefan Ivanov (b. 1989) graduated in Sculpture from the National Academy of Art. He works with different media and focuses mainly on sculpture and scenography. He has specialized under the Erasmus Programme in Poland and has participated in exhibitions, symposia and workshops in Bulgaria, Greece, Sweden and Turkey. Among his most recent appearances is at the workshop „Komluca- Olympos“ in Antalya, Turkey, the joint exhibition with Yasen Zgurovski „Cross Point: Pink” at the fridge, Sofia in 2015, and his participation in NE Fest International festival for independent experimental art in 2014. https://www.behance.net/Stefan_Ivanov