‘’If you observe things for a long time, you start to love them.’’ Dimitar Genchev (1985, Plovdiv, Bulgaria) has hungry eyes. Lovingly, he observes how light touches the surfaces and structures of life, from soft skinned bodies, glazed ceramics to rusty iron or peeling walls. Genchev depicts the world around him, but never simply copies it. Striving to renew the tradition of painting, in the past ten years he has been experimenting with different paints and ways of depicting reality.
Hyperrealistic elements emerge from abstract painting surfaces. Aided by the computer, he fuses strange motifs into hybrid, dreamlike sceneries. Or he combines different viewpoints, zooming in or out, as if he moves around while painting, resulting in a cinematic effect.
Triggering our perception, he creates a mysterious world in which nothing is what it seems. Painting what he observes around him, sometimes extended with motifs he finds on the internet, the viewer gets familiar with Genchev’s life in post-Communist Bulgaria. You peek
into chaotic backyards, sunlit rooms with outdated furniture, join his family around the table, spend hot summers near the Black Sea, or enter derelict manufacturing plants, his latest topic, revealing the pitfalls of the Communist system and the impact of passing time.