London-based Bulgarian artist Ruslan Kotev presents solo exhibition in Sofia

The exhibition “New Landscapes” by London-based Bulgarian artist Ruslan Kotev will be on display at Paris Art Gallery in Sofia from August 27 to September 12. The exhibition will feature around 15 paintings executed in an abstract and figurative-abstract style, the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) reports.

“New Landscapes” is Ruslan Kotev’s fourth solo exhibition in Bulgaria. According to Nadya Pavlova, founder of Paris Art Gallery, light occupies a central place in the artist’s work. Kotev creates multilayered paintings in which landscape often serves as a starting point for exploring memory, absence and the perception of time. Among his preferred subjects are landscapes from Sicily and the United Kingdom, including dramatic seascapes and abandoned houses where human presence survives only as a trace, she notes.

“One might say that he paints portraits of absence. It is a state in which human presence is missing, while the houses have somehow begun to lead lives of their own, steeped in an irrepressible nostalgia for the past. Something is glimpsed in the distance, perhaps a church dome, rooftops or the silhouettes of trees, but nothing is ever sufficiently concrete,” Nadya Pavlova adds.

Edited by Miglena Ivanova