• Sofia Arsenal – Museum for Contemporar y Ar t • 8 March – 1 April 2012, opening March 8, 6 pm• Curator: Maria Vassileva Artists: Adelina Popnedeleva, Alla Georgieva, Bora Petkova, HR-Stamenov, Ivan Moudov, Kiril Prashkov, Krassimir Terziev, Kosta Tonev, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Mina Minov, Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova, Nestor Kovachev, Nina Kovacheva, Peter Tzanev, Pravdoliub Ivanov, Rada Boukova, Samuil Stoyanov, Sasho Stoitzov, Stefan Nikolaev, Stefania Batoeva, Valentin Stefanoff, Valio Tchenkov, Vassil Simittchiev, Vikenti Komitski, Vladimir Ivanov
Pravdoliub Ivanov. Untitled (Curly Brush), 2009
Marcel Duchamp had an ambiguous attitude to exhibitions and museums1. He never had a one-artist show and participated in few group shows. He took on curating and designing several shows of the Surrealists. As the founder of the Société Anonyme, Inc. he was responsible for many others. For his project “Boîte-en-valise” Duchamp made scale models of 69 of his works in an edition of 350. Since the beginning of the 1960’s numerous retrospectives of Duchamp’s works were organized in Europe and the USA. He conceded to the production of replicas of his ready-mades and these are now in a lot of museums. Such a practice of both participation and withdrawal prescribes a variety of interpretative possibilities. Just like his works Duchamp’s worldly gestures are at the same time simple and full of meanings. Each “transfer” into a concrete context seems to simplify the problem. At the same time we are tempted to make such transfers all the time. We are using the 125 anniversary of Duchamp’s birth in order to once again discuss with him and about him. When in 2003 Ivan Moudov started compiling his collection of “Fragments” it was impossible not to associate this work with either Duchamp or the non-existent museum of contemporary art – fragments of art works arranged in boxes that look like suitcases… Naturally, the differences are obvious as well. By making copies of his own works Duchamp is diluting the notion of the original. That is a provocative challenge for the existing museums. Moudov insists on the originality of the work, though fragmented, as a substitute of the missing museum. The dialogue with Duchamp in Bulgaria started long before this exhibition and it involves the subject of the museum as well.
Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova. Figaro, 2012
“All exhibitions of painting or sculpture make me ill. And I’d rather not be involved in them.” Quoted after: Elena Filipovic. A Museum That is Not, e-flux journal, #4, 2009/3 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/a-museum-that-is-not/ 2 In 1993 the exhibition “Object Bulgarian Style” was organized by the Club of (eternally) Young Artists. 6 Shipka St. Gallery, Sofia, Curators: Iara Boubnova, Maria Vassileva, Diana Popova. 1
Stefan Nikolaev. Candélabre, 2010
Courtesy the artist and Gallery Michel Rein, Paris. „Holy Spirit Rain Down”, 2010, Les Eglises, Contemporary art center, Chelles, France
Samuil Stoyanov. Large small glass, 2012
That is why the project “Why Duchamp?” belongs here – in the half-finished as a building but not quite existing as a museum institution new space. This is where we have to ask – when does contemporaneity start for us from the point of view of today? Are there the notions of “here” and “there” in the logic of such a countdown? Is Duchamp the dividing threshold (for Kosta Tonev artists are only those who have heard of Duchamp)? Are there any fields left unexplored but suggested by Duchamp? What is art? What is the difference between an original and a copy? Is there art without institutions? Ultimately – what kind of a museum do we need? The debate on such issues, as seen through the prism of Duchamp’s legacy, started long before the intention to have such a museum was even “born” here – from Luchezar Boyadjiev’s “Simultaneous séance on 9 chess boards. Homage to Marcel Duchamp” (1995) to the cycle “Natural Modernism” (2004) by Kiril Prashkov. There is a necessity to expand the debate through both art works and texts. The participating artists were asked to answer – “Why Duchamp?” We wanted to focus on the personal attitudes as opposed to the uniformed use of the Duchamp label. Today the reference to his name is often routine and sometimes a simplistic assumption. I was surprised by the answer given by Sasho Stoitzov: “The radical thinking of Duchamp had a direct influence in Bulgaria at the end of the 1980’s. The ‘ready-made’ works were the strongest challenge presented to the formalism of the imposed notions of ‘plasticity’ in art”. I doubt however that at the end of the 1980’s in Bulgaria there were all that many people who had even heard of the name Marcel Duchamp. It is a fact though that the transformation of visual arts here did go through the purifying power of the found object. In the beginning there were the objects related to the old traditional Bulgarian folklore way of life – wheel from horse driven carriages, wooden fences, shovels and pitchforks. They had a potential for ritualistic refusal of worn-out formulas and a return to unpolluted sources. The chronology of contemporary Bulgarian art is full of ‘ready-mades’2. I suspect that happened unconsciously. The Duchamp ‘bug’ caught on with us… Duchamp has influenced generations of artists – in a hard to define way but forcefully and lastingly. He was a combination of contradictory elements – responsible and negligent, precise and absent, consistent and compromising. Maybe that is why there is not one single text on his work that would exhaust the subject. There is always something more to say. We are offering here more statements on this elusive figure. The works in the show demonstrate a parallel of diversity and contradiction – they in turn adore, repeat, analyze, comment, and reject. Some works remain within Duchamp’s aesthetics; others are referencing it while insisting on its ethical legacy. We get a narrative in result – from the urinal to the water fountain, and from the object to the museum. Maria Vassileva
Kiril Prashkov Natural Bicycle Wheel, 2004
Luchezar Boyadjiev. Descending Body, 2012
Everything that an artist appropriates becomes art because of its interpretation in a particular context. Duchamp invented the concept of open art where the viewer is on equal terms with the author as far as the interpretation of the work goes. Hi cleared the road for understanding art as communication. However, in order for a work to be recognized as art it has to be acknowledged by the institutions – museums, galleries, art critics, curators. The liberal; idea of Duchamp is a new utopia which is clashing with the oppositions between individual and collective, nature and culture. The non-material understanding of art is clashing with the material context which is embodied by the institutions. Boris Groys compares Duchamp’s revolution in art with the communist revolution1. Both these revolutions are aiming at the expropriation and collectivization of private property either real or symbolic. In this sense one can claim that some forms of contemporary art and practice in Internet are now functioning as a symbolic communist collectivization within the environment of capitalist economy. According to Groys the liberal software is clashing with the capitalist hardware. The role of the artist is changing too. The institutions of today no longer need the artist as a traditional author-producer. On the contrary, today the artist is more often hired for a period of time as a worker in order to realize this or that institutional project. My contribution to this show is the video „C’est la vie” not only because it is made via an “appropriation” of a fragment from real life, or because it was already produced, or because it was already titled “C’est la vie” thus coinciding with the name of Duchamp’s alter ego Rrose Sélavy. It is mainly because it reveals human nature that is manifested in every cultural context and across all social strata. To appropriate something made by somebody else seems like a necessary condition for survival. This is inherent in both human nature and our culture. Contemporary art is related to the real life; beyond the sphere of the transcendental is the world of contradictions, the world which we inhabit. One of the ironies of life is that no matter what you do, it will be bad for somebody else; to stay alive means that you have to eat something that is alive. This fact cannot be either disregarded or solved by the new technologies. At least for now. Is it possible to unite opposites? Is this the goal of human development? And why is it that at the end of his life Duchamp was only interested in the game of chess? Adelina Popnedeleva Boris Groys, Marx After Duchamp, or The Artist’s Two Bodies, e-flux journal, #19, 2011/10 1
object for these lands here and the bicycle wheel presupposes some sort of an effort in any case… There were obviously not enough words available to us to renounce the anti-art – it was playing on rejection anyways on its own. There was also the sweeping, as I thought of it, Duchamp irony there which was a counterpoint to the numerous, otherwise exceptional artworks without moustache, that I was already exposed to. So, I was wondering if this irony was not actually the reason why his brothers, a sculptor and a painter, choose different version of the family name – to dissociate from Marcel, the mutt… Kiril Prashkov Once a long time ago (at least 7 years back) I was asked how can I tell if somebody is or isn’t an artist. Why is it that somebody is an artist and somebody else who is also drawing and “creating” is not? (I must admit that I was quite zealous in my views) Or why such things as, let’s say, the paintings sold at the sea cost are not art? I remember (although I do not like to quote myself) that my answer was that I have only one criteria to make a judgment – only those who have heard of Duchamp could be artists. If you do not know about Duchamp it does not matter how “creative” you are; you are something else. Kosta Tonev In the high school for fine art I went to our perspective teacher claimed that there are only two questions confronting the artist: how and why. At 14 years of age together with a group of school friends we were exercising Renaissance techniques – layers in grisaille, over painting, etc. At 16 we were copying the methods of Abstract Expressionism – we were totally possessed by the question of how. The why was left for the indeterminate future; and the future as we know, was renounced by year 1989 and the collapse of the profession which was but a part of the total collapse. Maybe it was this collapse indeed that posed the question of why with the kind of weight and urgency that threw out the question of how into some senseless periphery. Naturally, this is where Duchamp walked in to split my artist’s body in two halves. The first half insists on its uniqueness while referring to the history of art. The second half is submerged in various kinds of otherness while trying to overcome its shadow by constantly changing its place and form. Why? I do not know but I still hear the question: Is this Art?. However, the really relevant question would be: Isn’t this art? Krassimir Terziev
Bora Petkova. Nail, Ribbon and Hook, 2012. Photo: HR-Stamenov
Vassil Simittchiev. Intermission, 2008
I am paraphrasing here the title of the essay: Boris Groys, Marx After Duchamp, or The Artist’s Two Bodies, e-flux journal, #19, 2010/10, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/marx-after-duchamp-or-the-artist%e2%80%99s-two-bodies/ 1
Because he is a player. A man for whom playing is the meaning of life. The substance of playing is the pleasure to discover the new manifestations of the world. Playing is creating imaginary worlds, the joy of sharing, a contest of skills, and emanation of freedom. Playing is the substance of life for the creative individual. Playing is the only acceptable alternative to the endless repetition of life’s ritual with its eternal battle for survival. Duchamp is totally free from any enslaving dependencies on society such as possessions, admiration, respect for hierarchies, and search for commercial effect; from ideological and nationalistic dogma. Of all kinds of playing Duchamp selected the most superior – the plays of the mind. By establishing the priority of the idea (the concept) over the execution (the craft) he transformed once and for all the traditional notion of art as a blind copy of life. By opening up the limits of the imagination and by mixing analysis with provocation and humor, he transformed caricature with its typically humorous and satirical content accompanied by text into a new visual form; while enriching the means of expression. Duchamp absorbed and juggled all contemporary styles thus escaping from their restrictive effects. He put his creative freedom and ironical view above all else thus anticipating the later art of post-modernism. Alla Georgieva, 1/02/12
- Why Duchamp? - And why not…?!?
Intervention in a photograph by the Transformers Group from participation in their action in front of SAMCA (Sofia Arsenal - Museum of Contemporary Art) on the occasion of 40 days since the opening of the place. July 2011, Sofia Luchezar Boyadjiev
Kiril Prashkov. Natural fountaine, 2006
Maria, hello, In spite of the delay and thinking about it I would not want to answer the question “Why Duchamp?” If giving an answer is the pre-condition for taking part in the project than it follows that I should not take part; if not – I will send material for the newsletter before February 10th. Greetings, Bora, 3.02.2012, 12:13 am The French art historian Jean Clair1 is directing us to Duchamp’s work “La Mariée mise а nu par ses célibataires, même” while offering an esoteric reading of its symbolism and relating it to the “Voyage au pays de la quatrième dimension” by Gaston de Pawlowski. It is possible that in fact it is there where the brilliant chess player Duchamp is constructing a logical hypothesis about the fourth dimension. Years later visual experimentation is still going on and attempts are still made to define what might happen if we move the sun where we want it to be2 if we were to travel in time3 or if we capture a thunder storm in a room4. HR-Stamenov
Vladimir Ivanov. The silence of Duchamp is not to be underestimated, 2001. SGHG, 2002
Kosta Tonev. Gasoline Fountain, 2008
Jean Clair, “Marcel Duchamp ou le Grand Fictif” Nikola Uzunovski, “My Sunshine” 3 Susan MacWilliam, “The Only Way To Travel” 4 HR-Stamenov, “Space 0 Space” 1 2
Because he was lazy! Ivan Moudov Why Duchamp? Well, I prefer not to answer through the prism of my current belief that this is the main artist from the beginning of the 20th c. who made it into the 21st c. without being “renounced”. I will answer through where my belief stood, let’s say 40 years ago. When we were in high school we heard the judgment “even my daughter can do that” (usually applied to Picasso). However, a statement like “even my daughter can pick up a urinal” was never heard. For sure it would not have been appropriate if little girls were interested in urinals; the bottle rack is a rather abstract looking
Alla Georgieva. The Last Supper, 2012
Nina Kovacheva Lady’s Fountain, 2012
HR-Stamenov. Space 0 Space, 2011 Documentary video from installation. Courtesy the author
Mina Minov. Go and Se, 2012
Krassimir Teziev. Space Enlargement Tool, 2010 “Museum Souvenirs”, ICA-Sofia Gallery, 2010
Adelina Popnedeleva. C’est la vie, 2011
Stefania Batoeva. Light, 2012
Sasho Stoitzov. Urinal in Puck Fair Bar, New York, 2012
Stefania Batoeva. Shades, 2012
The last time I thought of Duchamp was when I saw a phone booth with cracked glass sides – I wanted to write a note for somebody to look at it with one closed eye. This is something important for me – the first prescribing rather than describing tile. I read in a Duchamp biography that he was trying to sell his rotoreliefs on a stand and how only the one-eyed people like them because they would be able to see in 3D (right after WW I). Besides, if you are looking through a tiny hole on a door you can only use one eye. I read in the same biography how together with Man Rey they made the first 3D film in which a certain baroness was shaving. I have not seen the film but I guess it looked like the Étant donnés. And so with a lot of his works I feel misled and cheated just like in some kind of chess traps and situations… Mina Minov Being a convenient example when developing various theories, the works of Marcel Duchamp are quoted by art theoreticians as well as by other writers in their attempts to relate or explain contemporary art. Easy to spot and remember these works have turned into kind of a “matrix” through which one can “squeeze” a lot of contemporary works. Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova Duchamp – because of the Ready-mades, because of “Portrait of Dr. R. Dumouche”, “Sonata”, “Portrai (Dulcinea)”, “Portrait of Gustave Candel’s Mother”, “Portrait of Chess Players”, “Nude Descending a Staircase”, “Coffee Mill”, “The Passage from Virgin to Bride”, “Sad Young Man in a Train”, “Bride”, “Paradise”, “L.H.O.O.Q.”, “Chocolate Grinder 1 & 2”, “Self-Portrait in Profile”, “In Advance of the Broken Arm”, “The Brawl in Austerlitz”, “Large Glass”, “Rotary Glass Plates”, “Comb”, “Fountain”, “Fresh Widow”, “Sketches for chess figures”, “Why Not Sneeze, Rrose Sélavy?”, “Bicycle Wheel”, “Bottle Rack”, “50 cc of Paris Air”, “The Green Box”, “Spirale blanche (White Spiral)”, “With Hidden Noise”, “Box in a Valise”, “Please Touch”, “Female Fig Leaf”, “Dart-Object”, “Chastity Wedge”, “Pocket Chess Set”, “Pharmacy”, “Sink Stopper”, “The Deconstructed Painting”. Nestor Kovachev
People like Marcel Duchamp who are ahead of their time, remain important for generations to come (although this is already a cliché). So much has already been written about Duchamp that whatever I might write will be in some way a repetition, something I would not allow myself. This text should not be related to the concrete work participating in the show, I know - it must answer the question “Why Duchamp?” (is still so important even today). However, I will offer a short description and a phrase that I think are answering the question. In 1917 Marcel Duchamp submitted the “Fountain” for the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York. In 1918 Edyth Lacy introduced the “female urination device”. In 2012 Nina Kovacheva exhibited the “Lady’s Fountain” in SAMCA-Sofia (the Sofia Arsenal Museum of Contemporary Art) as an art object in homage and as a comment on Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”. Prière de laisser cette œuvre d`art aussi propre que vous l`avez trouvée en entrant (Please, leave this work of art as clean as you found it when you came here). Nina Kovacheva Why am I attracted to the ephemeral practice of Duchamp where the secret of the objects and the notion of their material presence in reality is just the starting point? Everything created by Duchamp after 1912 can be seen as multifaceted, multilayered manifestations that are in substance intricately encrypted devices. Their evolution leads to the introduction of the ready-made as an “encrypted” object. Duchamp has been praised as the “one-man movement” and at the same time stigmatized as the “black hole” of the avant-garde. I would suggest the following metaphor for Duchamp – after 1945 Duchamp started functioning as a kind of a secret tunnel through which his numerous followers are attempting to leave the “illusion” of the artwork while ultimately ending up even more absorbed and submerged into the superstitions surrounding its presence. Indeed, the strange position that Duchamp has taken regarding the psychological threshold between the internal and external elements of the space of an artwork that is one of the greatest unresolved mysteries of art from the 20th century. Peter Tsanev …maybe because he opened up a few doors where nobody suspected there were any. He did not say how far and where exactly you are supposed to get to if you go through those doors; but he left them open so that you can go back any time you want – however, just like in the “Alice” books, you always go back to a different place. P.I. January 2012 John Lennon is not dead; he is living on a deserted island with Elvis Presley.1 On August 25th 1993 in Nimes (France) the artist Pierre Pinoncelli stood in front of Duchamp’s “Fountain”, urinated in it then took a hammer out of his pocket and smashed it to pieces. This act started a long and convoluted lawsuit which presented numerous questions of legal nature. Is it possible to legally consider a ready-made an artwork? Pinoncelli insists that he is actually finishing Duchamp’s work but this argument is rejected by the tribunal, which gave him a one month jail sentence on probation.
The “Fountain” is restored and exhibited again in 1996. At the same time the expert of the AHA insurance company reaches the conclusion that the artwork has lost approximately 60 % of its value while in the view of a staff member of the National Museum of Modern Art it has mainly lost its status of a ready-made – a new object without a past; and its function of a found object ready to be used by art. Pinoncelli is put to trail and convicted once again, this time he is sentenced to pay for the restoration and for the lost 60% from the value of the artwork. It is necessary to remember that the “original” of the work from 1917 was lost and in 1964 Duchamp makes “reproductions” of it. From a legal point of view the case may have only one of the two verdicts – either the presented object is not an artwork and the only damage is equal to the cost of the urinal; or the presented object is an artwork and what Pinoncelli should pay is the 100% of the estimated value of the “Fountain”. Ever since 1917 the law is confused on this matter.2 Duchamp insists that we should stop making judgments; that the search for the correct or the mistaken is nonsense. As such contemporaries are lacking intuition for the merit of their epoch. To be a judge of one’s own time is a huge mistake; an epoch acquires significance only depending on the way other epochs are appreciating it. The unpleasant thing about life, according to Duchamp, is that you do not know what actually is going on; those who think they know are framing themselves up into a dangerous place (at least in his own view). While some are offering Presleyburger3 from the corpse4 of the King in order to feed on his genius, others are ritualistically covering Duchamp’s grave with objects in the hope that his spirit will come back.5 Rada Bukova Greil Marcus. Dead Еlvis: a chronicle of a cultural obsession. 1991 Agnès Tricoire. L’épreuve de droit retour sur «l’affaire Pinoncelli», Vacarme 15 3 In: Greil Marcus, ibid. 4 “Art is dead – do not consume its corpse!” anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968. 5 Duchamp is buried with his family in Rouen; the inscription on his grave reads: “Besides, it’s always other people who die.” 1 2
“Sometimes I make things that I do not understand myself”. This statement of Marcel Duchamp awards him some special eminence that is typical for the kind of art, which he himself was trying to renounce with his works where the main method is “singling out”. He is asking people to trust him in the choice he makes as an artist, and at the same time he is acknowledging that there is something beyond, which is not conceptual because it cannot be clearly defined. I was attracted to this lack of responsibility. But what inspire me about the ready-made in general are the consequences that we have now. Namely this is the possibility to use the language of “selection” (singling out) in order to make meaningful changes not only in the way people relate to each other but in their lives as well. That is – because of the specifics and the power of this language to transmit, share and to install socially relevant ideas that are reaching more people. In this way what the “art world” is appropriating from everyday life of people will be given back with a certain surplus value. I think that the new things in contemporary life that could be created on the basis of Duchamp’s innovations and the new language for communication which he (as well as others) is creating could also be refuted, transgressed and improved precisely by the addition of meaningful content which brings about real change. I think that would be a “step forward” worthy of the steps he took with regard to the art of the past. Samuil Stoyanov The reversal of the urinal is something that had to happen. It is on the other side of “making”. A very big world. The radical thinking of Duchamp had a direct influence in Bulgaria at the end of the 1980’s. The ‘ready-made’ works were the strongest challenge presented to the formalism of the imposed notions of ‘plasticity’ in art. Sasho Stoitzov
Valio Tchenkov. Imagination with holes, 2011
Ivan Moudov. Already Made, 2008
Nestor Kovachev. Untitled (I want to amuse myself), 2011
Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Photo: Åsa Lunden
Rada Boukova. Colour Blue, 2011
Peter Tzanev. Gray Matter, 2012.
Vikenti Komitski. Permanent, 2011
HEAVENLY JEST You are in despair you are in turmoil you mate Art trends are spinning ‘round all your head. You come up with something for now and ahead Like turning the garbage to honey-filled plate! Let your ideas enjoy recognition Be shown and admired and full of ignition! Let puzzle they all with all that you do Be liked and feared and great as they do! To artist discarding brushes and paint Who painted no more people nor saint Provide him with tips on how to succeed And seeing the light for how to proceed! To have the success without overwork Supply ready-made not canvas to rig For Capital’s waiting outside to embark For art is a prey awaiting as pig… Marcel Duchamp replying: If only I knew that goes it like that That there are the hungry and many they are… So feed them I will with what I do have With fountain, a glass, with bicycle bliss… With paintings I found stuff them I will For years to come all mouths to fulfill… Valio Tchenkov Few are those who did not let the current drag them into the mud while under the illusion that they are making progress and gaining recognition. M.D. does not make art out of things. HE is making NOTHING out of them. He is turning them into nothings. He walked up to the SOURCE, he took a sip of pure water and he waved us good bye. But he stayed. Vassil Simitchiev
Samuil Stoyanov. Rocket Descending a Staircase, 2011
Pravdoliub Ivanov from the series “Non-Works”, 2007One day Justin-Isidore (Eugene) Duchamp, Marcel’s father, said to his six children (as related by Marcel Duchamp himself): “Well then, I will give you what you want but what I give you while I am alive you will not get after my death”. And that’s what he did. “He had calculated all the money that we had meanwhile received over the years and after he died these sums were taken out of our inheritance. That was not such a bad thing because in fact it was because of this money that each one of us was able to survive”*. Unlike his father M.D. (who was also known for his endless contempt for money) left an inheritance with no accounts. This inheritance is used to this day by many artists, sometimes even by myself, to get by… The thing that fascinates me in Marcel Duchamp’s life could be illustrated with the words of Dostoevsky: “The human being is a delicate and illogical creature: just like a chess player it loves the process of getting to the goal, not the goal itself”**. Stefan Nikolaev * Marcel Duchamp, Bernard Marcadé, Flammarion, Paris 2007 ** Quoted after: http://www.mjae.com/citations.html
I choose these quotations: “What prompted Duchamp to develop this initially idly conceived concept into a major part of his output, one he came to regard as ‘the most important single idea to come out of my work’? The very difficulty in finding a single term to describe what is done to the readymade is instructive: choosing, designating, signing, inscribing, encountering, exhibiting are all possible but incomplete to account for the action whereby the object is ‘elevated’ or a ‘new thought’ given to it.” “There are perhaps three ideas behind the ready-mades in their various guises. Firstly, a concern to challenge by example contemporary assumptions about the nature of artistic creation, especially the roles of conception, manual skill and accident or chance in the making of art. Secondly, a desire to expose the role of institutions and social groups in defining what counts as art. Thirdly, a fascination with industrially manufactured, and therefore usually anonymously produced, ‘objects of desire’”. In: Marcel Duchamp, Dawn Ades, Neil Cox, David Hopkins, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1999 The quotations were selected by Stefania Batoeva iMarcel dimension 4S “J’ai pensé à l’idée d’une projection d’une quatrième dimension invisiblesqu’one peut pas la voir avec les yeux” / “I was thinking about an idea to have a projection of the fourth dimension which is invisible to our eyes”. Marcel Duchamp … Valentin Stefanoff “Nu descendant un Escalier” / “Nude descending a Staircase”, 1912 – Marcel Duchamp A hundred years later – 2012 – vibrations from the “Nude descending a Staircase” filled up with sound the space between the fourth and the fifth dimensions of SAMCA (Sofia Arsenal Museum of Contemporary Art) in Sofia as realized by Valentin Stefanoff, after an invitation from Maria Vassileva, with the passive support of Marcel Duchamp. Valentin Stefanoff
My work for this show is actually a tattoo on my pointing finger based on a quotation from Marcel Duchamp which goes like this: “The artist is no longer the hand that creates but the finger that is pointing out”. Or something to this effect. I could not find the correct quotation and I cannot even be sure that it belongs to him. Regardless - even if the quote is from Agatha Christi it still captures perfectly the change which Duchamp instigated in the very model of art making. I think the message of this quote is: do we really have to make new objects and images if every existing object or image is already loaded with context as it is and all we need to do is look closely in order to read through it? In this sense I like another quotation by Jean-Luc Godard (this time I am sure) who says that it is not important where you take things from but rather where you bring them to. Vikenti Komitski It is hard to add something to what has already been said about this genius artist. And yet (as Kenneth Clark would have said) here is a personal point of view: 1. Duchamp opened up an endless space for creation for the 20th century artist; he gave him the richest possible set of tools to play with – reality itself. 1:1 And he did so not on the retinal but on the intellectual level; although he preferred the notion of “faith” before the notion of “intellect”. For good or for bad his church turned out to be very popular lately. 2. Chess. I love this game very much and I was overjoyed because of the way it was “introduced” into art, that is to say – how it is possible to make it part of the tool set of the contemporary artist. 3. The name of this artist is identical with FREEDOM and in as much as it is always and everywhere in short supply, his skeptical smile remains forever relevant. Vladimir Ivanov 29.01.2012 Translation: Luchezar Boyadjiev Sofia Arsenal – Museum for Contemporary Art 2, Cherni Vruh Blvd., Sofia / www.samcaproject.org