The first exhibition in the Anatomy of Process series will present "A Tale of the End" - a multidisciplinary project by artist Aksiniya Peycheva, in which she collaborates with physicist and engineer Martin Yordanov and microbiologist Yordanka Dermendjieva. The work creates a premise for dialogue and exchange of the same visual information over and over again between the fields of visual art, artificial intelligence and microbiology.
The same image, a portrait of a non-existent human generated by artificial intelligence, is painted by the artist as a classical portrait on canvas and then transferred through a specially created matrix, fed with different strains of bacteria, onto a bed of agar where they evolve to reproduce the portrait.
These three radically different methodologies lead to different outcomes, through which Aksiniya questions the effectiveness of communication systems and how visual information (or lack thereof) can be seen as an indicator of the functionality of these systems.
In the context of Anatomy of Process, the work A Tale of the End and Aksiniya's practice as a whole express the multidisciplinary quality of artistic research. It represents the application of research methods and processes to the conceptualisation and production of artworks.
"Tales of the End also falls into the tradition of artistic practice that is based on the observation of organic processes or the application of experiments that have a biological component. The exhibition uses the final form and function of the object as a starting point and moves in the opposite direction, following the path from materialization to idea.
During this journey, we will question the role of Aksiniya's visual search in the production of knowledge related to how information is transferred across different media, what is lost and what remains. Is the medium simply subject to our will or are there other forces that give it some form of free will? This question can be reframed to resonate in the rest of the curatorial programme. To what extent is the process a controllable system of thought and action, or an "organized chaos" of experimentation and exploration?
"Anatomy of Process" is a four-part curatorial project by Vasil Vladimirov that will explore the complexity of innovative artistic practices characterized by a spirit of discovery independent of fixation on the final object. The series of exhibitions will present existing works by four different artists.
Rather than in their materiality and 'finished form', they will be present through ideas and references related to the artistic research and creation process behind them. The gallery space will be transformed into a kind of studio where viewers will be involved in a process of 'reverse engineering', tracing the research methods at the heart of the respective artistic practice.
Aksiniya Peycheva is a transdisciplinary artist based in Sofia, Bulgaria. The focus of her work is the process of "visual translation", where she explores possible ways of translating pieces of information between different fields of knowledge - "how one or several scientific fields can be combined to answer a question important only to art".
She often collaborates with scientists, and her projects are accompanied by a theoretical part, the result of a long study of certain topics, among them the subject of the visual translation of music or pain. Luminous, kinetic, interactive installations made of multi-layered glass, her works contain different layers of information, using a variety of scientific methodologies that can be explored as an attempt to redefine fields of knowledge and rethink the original necessity of setting boundaries.
The project is supported by the National Culture Fund.