No matter how long you look at Yasen Gyuzelev's drawings, immersed in their vicissitudes and details, you still can't get enough, you feel attracted by something elusive and elusive. Although the artist is a typical illustrator, devoted to his craft: his art, appreciated all over the world, is born and lives between the pages of the book. Except when he decides to briefly transfer it on various occasions (in this case a round anniversary) to the gallery and it turns into the "Library of Babylon". According to Borges's story of the same name, the library is a model of the universe - we inhabit, we are heroes of an endless text that we never stop reading, even though it can never be read. This is precisely where this special mystical depth in Gyuzelev's work comes from: no matter which book he illustrates - "Journey to the Center of the Earth", "Great Expectations", "The Queen of Spades", "The Hound of the Baskervilles"..., the distant horizon of meanings rests on the emergence of man from words, on his "being in language", where only he can acquire his human identity, to exist.
In the contemporary communicative “boom”, the art of Yasen Gyuzelev is a retort – with the persuasiveness of bright talent, against the opposition of reading and watching, of word and image, of book and internet, which demonstrates that such an opposition does not actually exist, that it is only “foam of the days” on the unchanging nature of human existence. The very “inner imaginary” of reading gives rise to images, and the images in turn must be interpreted. And this is valid, both if they are inspired by the will of the writer and the artist. However, if they are based on literature, especially classical literature, which Gyuzelev prefers, the drawn images enter into competition with those already created in the reader’s imagination. In this sense, the illustrator's job is twofold, because he must not only please the audience, but also be able to change their perceptions. And for them to see through his eyes Alice, Oliver Twist, Don Quixote, Socrates..., the time to which they belong and their place in the universe-library.
The audience of the Arte Gallery will have the happy opportunity to walk with Yasen Gyuzelev along the "branching paths of the text", where they will encounter images that have become hits and others that have not been shown before.
Georgi Lozanov, October 2024
Opening: October 29, 2024, 6:00 PM
Location: Arte Gallery, 31 Buzludzha Street
Closing: November 15, 2024
Source: Facebook event
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