Ivan Stratiev
„Temptations“
painting
11 – 29 May 2022
opening: 11th May from 6pm until 8pm
Ivan Stratiev
The tempted artist or the tempting artist
Every person no matter if he is an artist or a spectator, encounters temptations in life.
To some he surrenders, and some he stoically rejects. Emotions push him to “falls” and reason stops him from “mistakes”. I put them in quotes because I think a person regrets more for what he didn’t do than for what he did. Trivial, but true. Art takes us out of our comfort zone through emotions. Traveling in the garden of temptations makes us feel alive and happy. The grayness of the daily life depresses us. We need to indulge in temptation from time to time, even contemplating it from the side.
Drawing his temptations, the artist becomes a tempter, ready to lead the viewer into the magical garden of his creations.
The game can be fun, dangerous and addictive.
But art is also therapy. It clears the accumulated fears and stereotypes. It takes us out of the grayness and clichés and leads us to where everyone reaches according to their imagination and temptations.
One reaches the gluttony, another the erotic, the third the metaphysical.
You enter the gallery and the dice are rolled. Are you about to discover your temptation or not?
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Ivan Stratiev was born in 1960 in the town of Trun, Bulgaria. In 1984 he graduated from the University of Veliko Tarnovo “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, majoring in graphics. He has participated in a number of exhibitions in Bulgaria and abroad. He has over 30 solo exhibitions in Sofia, Varna, Prague, Vienna, Zurich and others. His works are in the possession of galleries and private collections in many countries around the world. He works mainly in oil painting and watercolor, as well as lithography and etching techniques. His art is figurative – from realism through hypermannerism and surrealism to anachronism. Ivan Stratiev has realized conceptual actions, installations and performances.
