ZIYATIN NURIEV – sculpture, drawings  12-27.10.2023

ZIYATIN NURIEV

THE WHITE LIGHT

sculpture, drawings

 12-27.10.2023

40 years have passed since the appearance of the first sculpture named by Ziyatin Nuriev White Light (which is now in the Art Gallery of Kardjali). The previous year he made Sleep (National Gallery), the following year- Silence (National Gallery). Dozens of works followed, most often called Mask, in which he, through the face, explored the state stretching between quiet sorrow, meditative absorption and hermetic ignoring of the surrounding world.

Now in the Arte Gallery we have the opportunity to touch his last feelings of the power of silence as a means of communication, as an indoor wail, as a call for empathy, as a killing of time, as a poem beyond words, as the sound of the clapping of a palm.

„Just as white light contains all the colors, so the expressionless mask, which my masks look like, contains all the expressions and states of the person“, says Ziyatin. (I can accept that statement if he talks about a Person deprived of malice, envy, anger and selfishness).

I suspect that while chipping away at the gray basalt back in 1983, in the female head that appeared, Ziyatin felt the delicate vibrations of the hushed, silent, speechless, silent, hiding his feelings and therefore radiating light – a human being that oozes holiness.

Sculpted with incomparable tenderness, the masks of Ziyatin Nuriev challenge us to touch them to convince ourselves of their mysterious presence, of their real unreality. Made of different materials – basalt, bronze, terracotta, THEY convince us of the ghostliness of matter, the apparent truth of theories, the elusiveness of deep feelings, the fragility of longings, the unbreakability of the spirit.

Krasimir Iliev

The project is implemented with the financial support of the National Culture Fund.