Nedko Solakov

Galleria Laura Pecci, Milan
Through November 8

At his first solo show in Italy, Nedko Solakov presented a project that was loaded with irony and contradiction, even in its title: Vitiligo People. Vitiligo, in fact, is not the name of a populace, but the Latin name of a skin disease, an affliction of unknown origins that produces white patches on the epidermis, developing in areas where there is an absence of melanin. The skin—the fine boundary that separates the self from the world—is also a surface that is home to extreme pathologies.

At first it seems to be a cold photographic work, realized according to the canons of a neutral and impersonal eye: Seven large-scale lambda prints have as their main feature enormous, clasped hands. Stained by the vitiligo, the hands seem like reproductions from a dermatology textbook, but in fact they are the artist’s, and so the images become a sort of indirect self-portrait.

Upon closer examination, one discerns that the white areas are inhabited by a miniscule population, or more precisely, the Vitiligo People, who mill around, fish in the faded lakes, and lie around in the dunes. The impersonal air is replaced with an humorous tone: The stillness of the image is overlaid with a lively story, unfolding like a fairy tale; from the macroscopic view a microscopic narrative pulses from the tiny shapes. In some of the enclosures, there is a kind of war being waged, a fight between little black and white figures, like two factions of the same people that reflect, in their colors, the territorial conflict that is being fought on the epidermis.

This refers back to another of the artist’s pieces which, on the surface, seems completely different: A life (Black & White), presented at the last Venice Biennale. It was an empty room, a sort of trial of Sisyphus, described by Daniel Kurjakovics thus: “A painter from the left-hand side of a singled out room, painting the walls black clockwise… This first painter will be followed, at some distance, by a second painter, painting the walls white, again clockwise, ensuing a double layered process of painting and re-painting, going on during the overall time span of the opening hours.”

The skin and the room are two battlefields where light and shadow oppose each other; it’s a struggle that here does not take on dramatic connotations, but rather the ironic inclination of witticism and of spiritual jocularity. The Bulgarian artist’s work can assume the most diverse qualities because what counts is not the form but the subtle game of intellect.




Laura Cherubini
Translation by Amanda Coulson