People from Bulgaria and abroad often ask Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov what is his main occupation-sculpture, painting, or art installations. He usually answers that he tells stories. Most of the works of art created by Nedko Solakov tell honest stories. We would not be exaggerating if we claim that Nedko Solakov is one of Bulgaria’s most successful artists. During his long career he held a series of exhibitions in Europe, Asia and America. He has been displaying his works of art on several continents since the beginning of the 1990’s. In 1992 he participated for the first time at the Biennale art exhibition in Venice. Later he attended the biennale in Istanbul and exhibitions in Sao Paolo, Guandhou, Lyon, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Madrid and Rotterdam. In October 2016 he has been holding an exhibition in SARIEV Contemporary gallery in the city of Plovdiv (Central South Bulgaria). That exhibition, however, features Nedko as a naturalist who returned to the open -air painting. Art critic Yara Bubnova accentuates on that fact in an interview for Radio Bulgaria:

“Nedko Solakov is a Bulgarian artist who is capable of showing extremely interesting and strange aspects of our everyday life. He is a painter who works very hard and literally took part in all prestigious world exhibitions. He attended a huge number of biennales starting from the oldest biennale in Venice. Nedko’s latest exhibition is named Nature. That short name is not typical of his exhibition titles, because usually they are much-longer and intriguing and hint to the main conception of his art installations. Nature is a very traditional topic in art. However, it is not typical of nature to be associated with an artist who uses contemporary and visual language.”

According to most art critics, artists paint nature when they want to escape from reality and the everyday life, to get rid of the urban conflicts and the alienation typical of the modern city. Nedko Solakov did the same in his Nature exhibition. He spent 12 days out in the forests of Gabrovo section of the Balkan Mountain Range. He covered a distance of 147 kilometers and created one paining a day.

“Nedko Solakov set himself a very specific task-to combine the role of a painter who prepares a given exhibition with the pleasure to take long walks in the Bulgarian nature. He walked quite a lot during those 12 days. He made 12 paintings which represent his conception of the scale, grandeur, size and perfection of the mountain nature. Those 12 paintings, however, show the beauty of the Bulgarian nature, as well as some things that made that artist angry and irritated. Painting was not enough for Nedko Solakov to express his emotions and he resorted to verbal expressions, too. From my perspective that exhibition is interesting with the fact that it shows Bulgaria and its nature and meanwhile proves the skills of the artist. On the other hand, it is extremely entertaining, topical and very critical towards all of us, towards our interrelations and the things we like to associate with, yet we often forget that we have responsibilities as well.”

This is the message of Nedko Solakov’s latest exhibition. In 2009 the Bulgarian avant-garde artist placed among the 100 most-influential contemporary artists in the annual ranking of Kunstkompass, published by Manager Magazine. We are yet to learn about Nedko Solakov’s next artistic challenge and message.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov