The opening of the exhibition is from 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 25, 2024, Varna, 22 Ohrid St., Art Marconi Gallery.
Hear more from our reporter Vanya Slavova’s conversation with artist Reneta Pavlova and gallerist Vanya Markova:
Two years ago, Reneta Pavlova opened the door to provocations with the idea that an artist can always draw inspiration from the best. In one of the highlights of her exhibition, she threw down the gauntlet to Maurizio Cattelan, another artist who heralded the end of art and our return to consumerism, taping a banana and declaring it a work of art. Reneta Pavlova depicted this attempt at originality and attention-grabbing in her painted copy of Johannes Vermeer van Delft’s The Girl with the Pearl Earring.
The new exhibition is a continuation of “There are always flowers for those who want to see them”. As a motto, she then used a quote from one of the most famous representatives of modern art, Henri Matisse. This time the title of the exhibition is suggested by Van Gogh – another colossus in painting. It is rather a tease and the author’s desire to hint that it will be about sunflowers. There is no person who, when mentioning them, does not associate with Van Gogh. His passion for them, expressed in several cult canvases, has become a symbol for endless solar interpretation.
Unlike Van Gogh, Reneta used blue in only a few of her works, and mostly in the portrait of the author, which is a kind of accent in the exposition. In fact, Leonardo da Vinci’s reproduction of the Mona Lisa has no less claim to prominence. Inserting it into a composition with sunflowers, Reneta creates a unique and original work in its own way, much more interesting and aesthetically durable than the one that has become popular, by Marcel Duchamp. /Mona Lisa with a beard and mustache/.
And while the sunflowers of Van Gott’s paintings radiate a sense of spring, tranquility and sunshine, in those of Reneta we find maturity, fullness and generosity. They’re past the bee- and lens-attracting ecstasy of bloom and are now in their autumnal maturity phase – fruit-laden, humbly bowed, monotonous with very few accents. From “There is no blue without yellow and without orange”, Reneta enters mostly yellow, passes into orange and lands in the brown range. Van Gogh used 38 shades of yellow in his sunflowers. I am far from thinking to trace exactly how much Renetta used, but certainly, she captured the emotion in his works without imitating him. This swirling and free undulating movements of stems, flowers and leaves gives the feeling of infinity that also flows from Van Gogh’s paintings. This is actually the real tangent in which Reneta’s pictorial world approaches this cult theme, adds Vanya Markova from the gallery “Art Marconi”.
Worked on the publication: Vanya Slavova
Also follow us on Google News Showcase to learn the highlights of the day!
