A new exhibition of paintings by Vasil Abadzhiev, called "Contradictions," runs at the Rakursi Gallery until October 17, gallery art manager Rumyana Yoneva told BTA. It brings together 14 large paintings, all portraits, with faces that look distorted and broken apart.
Abadzhiev says the show presents people as unfinished, as beings who never stop changing. Identity, he says, takes shape in the gap between desire and disgust, closeness and distance, fear and courage, loneliness and the need for other people. "Inner life doesn't happen despite these contradictions — it happens through them," he says.
He works through portraits because he sees the face as the line between what's shown and what's hidden — the point where what a person lets others see meets what they keep for themselves. "I wasn't after physical likeness, but the traces of feelings born from inner contradictions," Abadzhiev says.
Yoneva calls him an award-winning stage designer. Born in Sliven in 1966, he holds a master's degree in painting from the National Academy of Art. He has worked on more than 40 stage productions in five countries — Bulgaria, Germany, Russia, North Macedonia and the United States.
He has won the Askeer award for stage design twice, in 2009 for "Endgame" and in 2010 for "Miss Julie".
The gallery says Abadzhiev has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions both in Bulgaria and abroad.