One of a Kind Donation from Nedko Solakov to Institut Mathildenhohe Darmstadt

Written by Ralf Beil Wednesday, 25 November 2009 21:13

DARMSTADT, GERMANY - Nedko Solakov is donating 27 wall and floor objects from the total installation "Emotions (without masks)"; as well as the complete water reservoir installation "No Ideas (for the water reservoir)"; with more than 600 entries from the public on the successful conclusion of the Solakov exhibition to Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt. This is the largest site specific donation by the Documenta XII artist and Biennale star Nedko Solakov. He is one of the most important Bulgarian artists. He actively exhibits internationally and is very prominent in the modern art scene. 

Dr. Ralf Beil, Director of Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt was delighted to announce that "for the second time in just a few weeks we are receiving a major donation. With his precious gift Nedko Solakov is also honoring the courage and great dedication on part of Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt in staging the spectacular project "Emotions" (without masks). The artist has ever since a very special link to the 'hill of the muses' in Darmstadt: I am very happy that I will be so extensively present in the collection of Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt."

Purchases and collection policy
As a result of the purchase of the 40-part series of drawings "...And They Lived Happily Ever After", and the extraordinary generous donation by Nedko Solakov, Städtische Kunstsammlung/Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt now possesses a unique collection of works by the internationally highly traded Bulgarian. Together with the "Wella Donation" currently on exhibition, which features 100 high-profile works from the second half of the 20th-century, including 36 works by Joseph Beuys, this represents a major expansion of the collection in terms of contemporary art.

The donations and purchases made since Ralf Beil assumed the position of Director in 2006, which, with works by Christian Boltanski and Rémy Markowitsch include further bridgeheads in contemporary art, are producing new tasks for Institut Mathildenhöhe. “With its striking works from the 18th-century to the present day, Städtische Kunstsammlung Darmstadt has now reached a point where a new building for the collections can and indeed must be planned, preferably on the presently undeveloped eastern slope of Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt”, Ralf Beil said.

The publication
As a documentation of the unique total installation "Emotions" (without masks) Hatje Cantz Verlag is soon publishing the comprehensive, 268 page catalogue "Emotions" (without masks), edited by Ralf Beil, including texts by Nedko Solakov and an essay by Ralf Beil (English/German). As Nedko Solakov comments: “I will miss the show tremendously, but I am glad that there will be this book about it.” There will also be a Hatje Cantz Collector’s Edition with original drawings by Nedko Solakov on wall fragments from the exhibition "Emotions" (without masks).

Nedko Solakov is one of the most important Bulgarian artists. He actively exhibits internationally and is very prominent in the modern art scene. 

His installations can take the form of elusive interventions. Or they can comment on their own improbable presence. A painted shadow, a coffee cup, and a spotlight on a blank wall were among his 13 nearly invisible interventions lurking among the historical exhibits in a 1998 project in a history museum in the heart of Europe. As an artist from Bulgaria, a country marginalized even within the Soviet system and remaining on the periphery not only in the new post- Soviet Europe but also in the international art world, he has firsthand experience with the absurdities and indignities and the advantages of a marginal position. „Always we're waiting to be accepted somewhere" he says. His stance is, first and foremost, this position of marginality. Solakov's work takes ironic pleasure in the absurdities of presence and absence, and never quite fitting into the system, whatever the system is.

In terms of art systems, he takes the most basic premise of Conceptualism and turns it inside out. The early Conceptualists proposed the notion that the artist's idea was all that mattered. It didn't need to be embodied in an object. Solakov personalizes, interiorizes, and updates this old Conceptualist dictum. He uses his imagination, he dreams up improbable stories, he lets his tall tales spin out of control to ludicrous (and preposterously logical) conclusions. Wildly inventive, rambling yet pointed, innocent but sly, full of eccentricities and absolutely personal, his narratives materialize as fragmentary installations, fabulist stage-sets, annotated pieces of documentary evidence brimming with implausible ideas.

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