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Doubling Dogmas
Artwork: Luchezar Boyadjiev

The Bulgarian artist Luchezar Boyadjiev (born in Sofia in 1957) is a visual analyst of social change who lays bare social and cultural processes. He calls doctrines into question as a matter of principle and analyses the lack of values in value systems. Boyadjiev is an exact observer, filtering, combining, exaggerating, eliminating, amputating and supplementing, sometimes with a complete lack of respect, sometimes playfully. He likes to create a confusion of notions in order to elucidate contexts that surprise viewers, disturbing them, but also stimulating them to thought and laughter. The formal means this artist employs include montage, de-montage and collage, but also installations and performative lectures, although he “does not prefer any one artistic medium in particular.” Yet Boyadjiev often also simply presses the button on his digital camera at just the right moment. The only thing that is really important to the theoretical artist and artistic theorist, is “to endow this view of things with as -effective a material form as possible, which is often aesthetically related to what I analyse.”
One long-term project that has accompanied this artist for almost 20 years now, is his investigation of the globalisation, not only of physiological living spaces, but also of psychological ones, a process that he likes to reveal in the urban locations of former socialist cities. He also does that in the present series of photographs that he has specially assembled for “Report”, entitled “Visually Speaking_001” (2005/2008). The work shows unmanipulated photos of a variety of religious buildings in certain eastern cities that are undergoing a process of transformation, such as Moscow, Novi Sad, Sofia or Istanbul. “In neo-capitalist cities, the economic aspects of life are gaining the upper hand over political ones; the visual presence of a company and of consumerism is devouring that of reflection, contemplation and representation,” says Boyadjiev.
Religion, the church, and faith are topics that are repeatedly touched upon in the work of the Bulgarian artist. In the process, personal experience plays a significant role, above all that of the political upheavals that took place in Bulgaria in 1989: “The events of that time in Eastern Europe might be described as the first natural death of a real utopia,” explains Boyadjiev. “Before 1989, religion in Bulgaria had little to do with religiousness, but was more like a national folklore. After 1989, the post-totalitarian vacuum was filled up with all kinds of political, economic, artistic and above all ethical and religious value systems,” the artist remembers. “Old dogmas were replaced by new ones. The iconography of faith and its symbols were, and still are, for me an ideal object to use for visualis-ing this process, which in my opinion is a very dangerous one.”
Formally, the series continues the work of “Billboard Heaven” (2005), in which the artist collaged photographs of walls full of posters in Sofia, thus suggesting a vision of a possible future development of the Bulgarian capital. “The development of the cities of neo-capitalism is typified by the frenzied appropriation of the public space by private interests,” says the artist. “All these features can be seen on the interface that is Sofia, a city in which one can put up anything one likes, at any time, wherever one likes, as long as one can pay for it.”
However, as far as content is concerned, “Visually Speaking_001” is also a continuation of an earlier work: “Fortification of Faith”, dating from the years 1989–1991. In this work, the artist altered familiar scenes from the Bible by doubling or multiplying the figure of Christ. In doing so, Boyadjiev plays around with the idea that Jesus cannot have been the only child of God, but must have had a twin brother, which might make the mystical circumstances and miracles seem -easier to accept. On one level, the work employs the principle of doubling and reproducing a holy figure actually intended to be quite unique (within the framework of a monotheistic faith). Through repetition, he becomes dethroned, de-mystified and turned into a product that can be reproduced in a variety of ways. It is a pastiche of the idea of some academics that the existence of God can be proved by rationalist and positivist means and, last but not least, a criticism of the banal marketing of religious faith.


Luchezar Boyadjiev was born in 1957 and lives and works in Sofia. He completed his studies in the Department of Art History at the National Academy of Art in Sofia in 1980; from 1980–1986 he broadened his artistic activity in the course of a period of private study. Since the start of the 1990s he has participated at the most important Biennales all over the world. In 2007 he was artist-in-residence in Sharjah and Dubai, as a guest of the 8th Sharjah Biennial, and in 2006 was artist-in-residence at the Museumsquartier in Vienna, at the invitation of the magazine “Springerin”, in collaboration with quartier 21. His primary interests are photography, video, drawning, installation, conceptual art and the mixing of various new media.

A selection of his exhibitions since 2003:

2008
·
Lucky Number Seven, 7th SITE Biennial,
Santa Fé, New Mexico, USA (upcoming)
·
Eurasia, MART, Rovereto (Trento), IT (upcoming)
·
The Jerusalem Show, Al-Ma’mal Foundation,
Old City, Jerusalem, IL (upcoming)
· Wonder, 2nd Biennial, Singapore, SG (upcoming)
·
Brave New World, IFA Gallery, Berlin/Stuttgart, DE

2007
·
5 Views to Mecca (and other scapes),
Feinkost Gallery, Berlin, DE (solo)
·
Attitude 2007, Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, JP
·
Plus ZWEI, Museum Kueppersmuehle
fuer Moderne Kunst, Duisburg, DE
·
Prague Biennale 3. Glocal and Outsiders,
Karlin Hall, Prague, CZ
·
Footnotes. On Geopolitics, Markets and
Amnesia, 2nd Biennial, Moscow, RU

2006
·
Crawling Carpets, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, AU (solo)
·
Neither a White Cube nor a Black Box, Sofia City Gallery, Sofia, BG
· Belief, 1st Biennale, Singapore, SG
·
Important Announcement, Sofia City Gallery, Sofia, BG
·
Check In – Europe, European Patent Office, Munich, DE
· Periferic 7. Focusing Iasi, Iasºi, RO
· Wild Capital, Kunsthaus Dresden, Dresden, DE
· Urban Legends, Sofia City Gallery, Sofia, BG

2005
Play Sofia, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, A
 
Urban Realities: Focus Istanbul, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, DE

Sous les ponts, le long de la rivière..., Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg, LU

Trans:it. Moving Culture through Europe,
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR Witte de With Foundation, -Rotterdam, NL; Kunst-Werke, Berlin, DE; 51st
La -Biennale di Venezia (collateral event), Venice, IT
Belonging, 7th Biennial, Sharjah, AE

2004
 
Roma in Sofia, in The Balkans – a Crossroad
to the Future, Arte Fiera, Bologna, IT (solo)
 
Cosmopolis, National Museum of Contemporary Art, -Thessalonica, GR
 
Love it or leave it, 5th Biennial, Cetinje, -ME
 
Privatizations. The Post-communist Condition, -Kunstwerke, Berlin, DE

2003
Hot City Visual, ICA at ATA Center, Sofia, BG (solo)
 
In the Gorges of the Balkans, Kunsthalle -Fridericianum, Kassel, DE
 
Blood & Honey / Future’s in the Balkans,
The Essl Collection, Klosterneuburg, A


BIBLIOGRAPHY (selection)

Vitamin Ph. Phaidon Press, London 2006

FRESH CREAM. Phaidon Press, London 2000

Installation Art in the New Millennium. Ed. Nicolas de Oliveira, Nicola Oxley, and Michael Petry. Thames & Hudson, London 2003

Fuchs, Rainer. Luchezar Boyadjiev. In: CATALOGUE. Footnotes. On Geopolitics, Markets and Amnesia. 2nd Moscow Biennial, Moscow 2007
Boubnova, Iara. Luchezar Boyadjiev. In: Short Guide. Belief,
1st Biennial, Singapore 2006
Eurozine. The City as a Stage. Luchezar Boyadjiev. Cycles on Moscow, Sofia, etc. www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-05-25-boyadjiev-en.html