THE WORKS OF STANKO
FROM JK’S MAGAZINE ISSUE 3: INNOVATION
KYUSTENDIL, BULGARIA
ARTIST: STANISLAV BOJANKOV
BULGARIAN ARTIST STANISLAV BOJANKOV, ALSO KNOWN AS STANKO. BOJANKOV HAS RECEIVED NUMEROUS INTERNATIONAL AWARDS AND GRANTS, INCLUDING TWO FROM THE POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION AND A GOLD LISTING IN "ART MARKET MAGAZINE." HIS WORK ENCOMPASSES PAINTING, DRAWING, GRAPHIC ART, AND INSTALLATIONS, AND HAS BEEN SOLD TO PRIVATE COLLECTORS AROUND THE WORLD. TWO OF HIS RECENT WORKS ARE HIGHLIGHTED: "A LARGE HEART ICONOSTASIS," A PAINTING INSTALLATION MADE OF SAND AND CARBON-COPY PAPER, AND "SUB-STATIO," A MIXED-MEDIA PIECE INSPIRED BY CULTURAL ARTIFACTS.
STANKO'S TALENT AND DEDICATION HAVE BEEN RECOGNIZED THROUGH NUMEROUS INTERNATIONAL AWARDS, MENTIONS, AND DIPLOMAS. NOTABLY, HE RECEIVED GRANTS FROM THE PRESTIGIOUS POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION IN NEW YORK IN BOTH 2003 AND 2007. IN 2016, HIS WORK WAS ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE AMERICAN ART AWARDS IN THE CUBISM CATEGORY. IN 2022, STANKO WAS SELECTED AS ONE OF THE "TOP CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS OF TODAY" IN THE "GOLD LIST" BY ART MARKET MAGAZINE.
HIS ARTWORKS HAVE FOUND HOMES IN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS AROUND THE WORLD, INCLUDING IN THE UNITED STATES, AUSTRALIA, CHINA, THE UNITED KINGDOM, ITALY, SPAIN, THE NETHERLANDS, FRANCE, CANADA, AND MANY MORE. STANKO'S ARTISTIC VISION AND INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION HAVE SOLIDIFIED HIS POSITION AS A PROMINENT FIGURE IN THE ART WORLD.
STANKO IS A RENOWNED ARTIST WITH AN IMPRESSIVE EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND. HE HOLDS AN MFA IN PRINTMAKING FROM THE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS IN CRACOW, POLAND, WHERE HE STUDIED UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF PROF. ANDRZEJ PIETSCH. HIS ARTISTIC EXPERTISE SPANS ACROSS PAINTING, DRAWING, GRAPHIC ART, AND INSTALLATIONS.
CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR INSPIRATION FOR THE PAINTING INSTALLATION “A LARGE HEART ICONOSTASIS” AND THE “SUB-STATIO” SERIES? HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE CONCEPT, AND WHAT MESSAGE DO YOU HOPE TO CONVEY THROUGH YOUR WORK?
The idea behind the painting installation "Great Heart Iconostasis" relates to the dominant role of life, the most crucial and leading value that defines the eternal need for harmony and beauty. The heart is the main compositional element and acts as a kind of Perpetuum mobile, carrying the "process of living" through the long centuries and epochs of civilization- and civilization. Initially, I worked on "Big heart iconostasis-1" for twenty years - a large installation (840/240 cm) that I completed and exhibited publicly in 2018. The artwork is a standard acrylic painting on canvas, using ready-made elements, including 200 annual boards corroded and painted naturally by the wood-eaters and covered with icons with gold foil. The title's allusion, conventional form of the polyptych, and reminiscent "iconic" composition, through its gold coating and the "drawing" of the wood-eaters on the old, "bicentennial" boards of my country barn, represents the understanding of the most important and leading value. It offers a purely intuitive attempt to sacralize the "abode of the soul (heart)" that carries the process of life through all these long centuries and epochs of civilization and (un)civilization. Then the second "Great Heart Iconostasis-2" appeared as the result of the 4th wave of the coronavirus, which happened suddenly, spontaneously, and unexpectedly. It was completed in a month and exhibited to the public in 2022, shortly after the quarantine.
The "Sub-Statio" series is a work inspired by different artifacts from different cultures, located in different regions and times in the long history of civilization. The idea is the same as with the "Iconos- tases," which is the eternal need for beauty, harmony, and self-understanding, embedded in every human being throughout the ages and eras and achieved through art. The work is filled with hand-made papers, and collaged on canvas, on which symbols, signs, and visions inspired by different cultures are printed with different technologies, using ready-made objects found in nature. The series is like an aristocratic "Game of Glass Beads" (according to Hermann Hesse), filled with the necessary dose of creative play of the imagination and lots of fun with art materials.
The "Sub-Statio" series is a work inspired by different artifacts from different cultures, located in different regions and times in the long history of civilization. The idea is the same as with the "Iconos- tases," which is the eternal need for beauty, harmony, and self-understanding, embedded in every human being throughout the ages and eras and achieved through art. The work is filled with hand-made papers, and collaged on canvas, on which symbols, signs, and visions inspired by different cultures are printed with different technologies, using ready-made objects found in nature. The series is like an aristocratic "Game of Glass Beads" (according to Hermann Hesse), filled with the necessary dose of creative play of the imagination and lots of fun with art materials.
YOUR WORKS HAVE BEEN EXHIBITED IN VARIOUS GALLERIES AND EXHIBITIONS.
CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE OF DISPLAYING YOUR WORKS AND THE RECEPTION THEY RECEIVED FROM AUDIENCES AND CRITICS?
Yes, for almost 30 years now, my works have been exhibited and shown in many places both nationally and internationally. They have been well received and have received many awards, but most importantly, their messages have reached a wide range of art admirers, collectors, institutions, and museums, as well as curious people who found in them their fears, hopes, emotional connections, and bridges to themselves, but also to our common life and present time. This is due to the achievements of new technologies and digitalization, but also to the natural and deep cultural and historical archetypes that stand in the depths of the consciousness and subconsciousness of the modern contemporary personality. We are all temporary inhabitants of this tormented planet at the beginning of the 21st century.
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT ANY UPCOMING PROJECTS OR EXHIBITIONS YOU ARE WORKING ON? WHAT CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE?
It was during the pandemic that I created my last installation - ”Large Heart Iconostasis-2”, which I exhibited at the beginning of April 2022 in a very prestigious and alternative space - in the City Gallery in Kyustendil, Bulgaria. A work that closes, makes sense, and builds on my searches since my initial steps in the 90s... For it, I received good reviews, an award, and many publications in specialized art publications around the world. So the pandemic, in its own strange way, bore fruit in my studio as well. And just recently I did a retrospective of my 30 years of work in the field of graphics called ”Retro Sectio-30” in a prestigious gallery. I saw myself in a ”compressed” version, of course, and so did the audience. Right now I’m in the process of rebooting... Resting, and renovating my studio. I am cleaning the old energies after the pandemic... I am thinking about new works, rich in color, emotions, sensations, and love, which are deep and full of different meanings... And the viewers themselves can choose, feel and empathize. To have the freedom to be co-authors and interpreters. We need in general, new air and a new spring in our spiritual spaces, especially in this post-pandemic period. And in the context of this insane and thoughtless war, what a civilized Europe does not remember for a long time and cannot accept...
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO EMERGING ARTISTS WHO ARE JUST STARTING OUT AND HOPING TO MAKE A NAME FOR THEMSELVES IN THE ART WORLD? HOW DID YOU GET STARTED AS AN ARTIST AND WHAT CHALLENGES DID YOU FACE ALONG THE WAY?
I’ve actually been a freelancer all my life. I work a day job, it pays my bills. I draw, read books, and poetry, and listen to a lot of different music - mostly jazz, classical, and ethno-world, and this is the intellectual background of the creative process. I am in my studio every day. Without it, I feel nervous and often dissatisfied, because I miss the magic of this ritual... And this is a special” intellectual hunger”, ”addiction”, without which our work is doomed... Our work is not only intellectual but also physical.
I love being tired at the end of the day. I also have two walks to work. The first is emotional - energies that I try to master through various means of expression, mainly watercolors, acrylics, drawings, and monotypes while enjoying the spontaneity of the process - just as a composer creates his music, extracting from the depths of his consciousness the abstract sounds that express his feelings, emotions, and personal vibrations - such are my series of abstract landscapes inspired by jazz or by my beloved Chopin. A kind of intellectual ”jam session”... The second step is conceptual - first I choose the sentence, the important message or thought that I want to recreate, and then I choose the technique, means of expression, and form. These are important philosophical or existential questions. I work in different formats - my largest works are painting installations of 840/240 cm (”Ikonostas” which have already been mentioned), and the smallest is the size of matchboxes.
MORE ABOUT THIS INTERVIEW IN JK’S MAGAZINE ISSUE 3: INNOVATION
