
Pulvis Art Gallery

"Landscape with houses"
Vasil Barakov
“I climb upon the highest mountains, laughing at all tragedies - whether real or imaginary.”
F. Nietzsche
A small village can often be asomber space harboring outdated notions and closed-minded apprehensions aboutthe outside world. Vasil Barakov’s work represents just such a criticalillustration of the more spiritually oppressive sides of rural life. Thepainting is engulfed in a thick, almost viscous darkness which at certain spotscompletely obstructs the viewer's access to the full breadth of the landscape.It’s as if the village is getting transformed into a ghostly and unrealapparition of times long past while being consumed by the shadows of themountains surrounding it. This eerie, disqueting quality is enhanced by thefact that there are no people in the frame and two of the houses occupyingfocal points in the composition are surreally colored in blue and red whichsuggests that this may in fact be a painting of a memory or a dream.
It's also nocoincidence that the only part of the artwork which is relatively suffused withlight is the side of the mountain. This is an artistic choice which exploitsour eyes’ starved search for relatively brighter sections to express thepossibility of transcendence and escape.
Through the act of leaving the villageand ascending the mountain we may be able to overcome the weight of pastburdens, prejudices, and fears. In other words, we may achieve salvation if weare daring enough to brave the steep cliffs of our very own souls.

"Seascape"
Georgi Baev
"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."
John 1:5
A drawing of the sea at nighttime inevitably conveys a sense of immeasurable depth, longing and loss. A day has gone by, and the bright reflective surface of the water has become a monochrome void drawing into its submarine embrace the empty, cloudless sky. The golden sands of the beach have absorbed the thick murk which has come down from the heavens and covered the blue expanse. And although the uncannily dark seascape is submerged in blue and unsettled by black abstract shapes, the painting is almost startlingly tranquil and even full of hope. The two golden blotches which conceptually complete the painting’s minimalistic composition create the feeling that even during the most empty, dreary, and melancholic of nights, there’s always the promise of a new day coming engulfed in the sublime brilliance of the rising sun. In expressing this existentially potent insight, Georgi Baev’s artwork opens a way of perceiving darkness as the ultimate horizon of light, as that which will be overcome by the radiance of a life that is yet to come. Viewed in this way the foreboding midnight coastline becomes a space of peaceful reflection and patience. There, sooner or later, a bright light will finally come ashore and bathe everything in gold.

Boris Kolev B.a.i.l.a
I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star
F. Nietzsche
At first glance the eye is usurped by chaos. A scattered being frenetically moving across the off-white background of B.a.i.l.a’s work.
But as the eye appropriates itself, as it conditions itself with this two-tone fugue, a certain notion of order starts to glimpse through the uncontrollable abstract landscape. It is the order of the microlevel, the logic of a quantum field, where pulsating particales, captured in black, swirl and scar the white background and finally become visible in their dynamic being.
And as one immerses oneself in such a work, one starts to see the artist’s journey through the commonsensical and the revealing of a deft stroke that isn’t satisfied with the ordinary but is looking for something more complex, a deeper continuum, a paradoxical logic of the world in front of the eye. Thus, when B.a.i.l.a’s work confronts the spectator’s gaze, it shows a long lasting devotion to these strange places beyond the horizon, where being reveals itself as a constant potential for transformation.
Boris Kolev invites us to the beauty of such strange places.
Pulvis Art Gallery consists of over 100 unique works of art, specially gathered from all over the world.