Over the years, Vaska Emanouilova Gallery has combined interest in the historical and the contemporary art. One of the gallery’s programmes deals with sculpture and its current development. Ventsislav Zankov’s exhibition goes beyond this museum task and takes the risk of “updating” the works of the famous Bulgarian female artist, to understand them not as historical, but as an existential fact – a testimony of the human and life.

Two artists meet in the small space of Vaska Emanouilova Gallery – Ventsislav Zankov and Vaska Emanouilova, who at first glance do not look alike at all. The differences between them are not only historical, between traditional and contemporary art, between the last and the present century, between the distinctly female and the decidedly masculine beginnings, they are differences in the overall perception of the world and of the human as part of it.
The exhibition presents two notions of art and society, two epicrises of their condition, which emphasise each other on the principle of contrast. It includes sculptures and paintings by Zankov, created in the period 2011 and 2016, which have previously been shown only in solo exhibitions.

Notwithstanding what is considered “good taste”, a current direction, politically correct and art with social commitment, Ventsislav Zankov has always managed to take a clear position with his works. In this case, to show the world beyond the disintegration of the values of humanity and enlightenment, beyond any attempt at an ideal, at odds with the harmonious figure and bodily form as a world of debris of titans that once lived, of torn meaning and quivering bodies thinned like lines. Zankov’s works on display represent the quintessence of the artist’s understanding of art as an analytical tool for stripping the act of living.

Ventsislav Zankov works in the sphere of painting, sculpture, video, installation, performance, and new media. He has been one of the most active Bulgarian artists in this field since 1989. Zankov graduated in Sculpture from the National Academy of Art in 1988. In the period 1997-2008, Ventsislav Zankov was a part-time lecturer, and since 2009 he has been a full-time lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts at the NBU. He was a part-time lecturer in Sculpture at the NAA (2010). Zankov was awarded a doctoral degree in Art Studies and Fine Arts in 2013. He was a consultant in the training programme in psychodrama, sociometry and group therapy of the Psychotherapy 2000 Foundation. In 2016, Ventsislav Zankov was awarded a Master’s degree in Film and Television Arts at the NBU. Since 2017, he has worked as an associate professor in the Department of Visual Arts of the NBU.
His latest solo exhibitions include the following: In front of Me, Rayko Alexiev Gallery, UBA, 2020, The Last Burghers of Calais, ONE Gallery – Artium – Serdika offices, 48 Sitnyakovo Blvd and New Bulgarian University, with the financial support of the Central Fund for Strategic Development of the Board of Trustees of the NBU, 2016; Oh, Happy Days, Rayko Alexiev Gallery, UBA, Sofia, 2014; The Last Boudoir (Sculpture, Blood, and Video), Rayko Alexiev Gallery, UBA, Sofia,2011; New Ghostly Paintings /We Are All Now Shadows/, Rakursi Art Gallery, Sofia, 2011; Post-Romanticism. Reloaded, BKI – Berlin, 2011; Possible-Impossible, conceptual projects for the aesthetisation of the urban environment with the financial support of the Culture programme of Sofia, 2011, etc.
Ventsislav Zankov has participated in numerous group exhibitions. He is the author many publications in the print periodicals and on the Internet.