My work is a combination between performance, installation and social experiments.
My aim is to create new connections between the private and the collective.
To establish new systems of thinking and offer authentic experiences to the viewers by creating environments where the public is engaged in activities, games, tasks through which the border between artists and audience merge and new ideas and visions emerge.
The work is closely connected to the body that goes through different transformations and changes, examining the effects of time- both leaving traces on physical and mental plane. Psycho-geography, displacement, new languages are key words to it.
I often deal with portrating people or myself as a way to express and confront efflicted altered states and situations.It is a somatic way to bring the external world into comprehensive insights.
It is a journey of discovering unknown reasons for living in fear, getting aware of examining psychological patterns, making images become real which I enclose as cliches followed by the desire to break them.
The work is a way to create an inner mirror to reality projected into the outside world - transformed and into a new state of elevation, hanged or poised in a transitory limbo, deconstructed in its manifestations.
I often take on speculations or conspiracies in order to confront the reality of the subjects in its never ending quest of Truth finding.
Surrounding the tetrad of consecutive “blood moons” (full lunar eclipses) in 2014 and 2015 and the Apocalypse as foretold by the ancient prophets, building on commonly held notions, languages, visual and narrative clichés to introduce the theory of the advent of the post-apocalyptic Mental Age. asking the question if the Apocalypse already happened and might we have failed to register it? In a post-modern, post-nuclear, post-human, post-Internet era, I find myself, as a living being, trapped in various codes, psychic delusions and ‘catastrophobia’. Is the Apocalypse a phenomenon that only occurs in people’s minds?
I look to find an evidence for our post-apocalyptic existence in the object’s loss of essence, which he believes results from [psychic] repression. Describing the phenomenon, i use the psychological term displacement, which denotes the unconscious transfer of intense emotion for one object to another – a process that has its own logic and patterns of thinking. Simultaneously thrilling and disturbing, it is one of an unconscious disguise of anxieties related to aggressive and/or sexual impulses. Thus the experience of reality becomes more of an escape route than a way of dealing with fears; a space where values generated by outside factors (such as governments, technologies, capital or natural disasters) are appropriated.
It is by denying “space” its meaning as a distillation of essence and presence, I find more useful to make use of new invented language and terms and introduce notions as “the inner imaginary”, “escape boulevard”, “the melting of the sexes’ ice caps”, “psychology of nature”, “new eco system”, “global warming as an element of creation”, “the atom as a demonic concentration”, “reproduction and mutation”, “the opportunity to humanize through the oral tradition”, and poses questions about the possibility of relating: Perhaps love is only possible after the physical death of the body?
Building on these borders my idea of the “advent of the Mental Era”, which i see as an inner state arising from a new desire for the preservation of life – a desire for a life of the soul. Mental Era’s goal is to abandon all representative images and work with the non- image/non-object, which are born out of the future imaginary.
Thee work is somehow a quest for Freedom - the ultimate core and a sense for creating and living.
BIO
Voin de Voin (born 1978) lives and works in Sofia .
He got his Master’s degree from Das Arts -The institute for advanced research in
the performing arts, Amsterdam.
Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam.
Goldsmith College, London.
EICAR –International School for film and
cinema of Paris.
SNDO -School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam.
Since july 2016 he is running an independent art space in Sofia ÆTHER.
He is represented by Sariev gallery, Plovdiv.
Voin de Voin works in various fields of the Visual Arts, ranging from
Performance to installation, incorporating his research in
rituals, metaphysics, psychology and intersecting interactive
experiments.
He has participated and shown in different places and institutions
such as - side projects to Venice Biennale 2015, Melbourne
International Art Festival 2009, Nylo Living Art Museum-
Reykjavik, Documenta 13- Kassel, Manifesta 11-Zurich.2016, MoMa-
NewYork (2007), Karlsruhe Kunstverein, Tanja Leighton Gallery- Berlin,
France Fiction Gallery- Paris, De Appel- Amsterdam, La Fabrica
-Madrid, PSM gallery- Berlin, Somos- Berlin, French Institute- Berlin,
Mediamatic Supermarkt-Amsterdam, Stedelijk bureau- Amsterdam,
Van Abbe Museum-Eindhoven, Cite des Arts- Paris,
Cricoteca-Krakow, Sofia city gallery, La Vallée- Brussels,
Corner college- Zurich and others.
In the past years his practice is also involved in curating and
organising art related events and exhibitions; Æther Sofia;
Nordic Biennale (Doma Arts Festival, 2015) -Sofia, Manisensations- Leap gallery-
Berlin, exhibition at Fridge -Sofia, La Valeé - Brussels, Dutch fashion Biennale (Performance program)
Arnhem and others.
Curriculum Vitae
Voin de Voin (1978)
Education
2006-2008 Das Arts, Institute for advanced research in the performing arts, MA
1998-2002 Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Audio Visual (VAV), BA
1998-2002 AHK, Amsterdam, School for New Dance Development, BA
Solo Exhibitions
2016 How do you see this?, Fridge art space, Sofia
2015 ἀ-μετά-καλύπτω, Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv (BG)
2015 Disconnecting Intergod, Vaska Emouilova Gallery, Sofia (BG)
2013 33 ̊ North - 33 ̊ East, Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv (BG)
2012 Retrofuturo , France fiction gallery, Paris
2011 Dematerialization, Het Veem, Amsterdam
Curatorial
2017 Domus Aurea, Sofia Art Weekend, curated with Pavlina Krasteva in collaboration with Swimming pool (BG)
2016 Founding of Æther, Art Project Space, Sofia (BG).
2015 Nordica Biennale Doma Arts Festival, Sofia (BG)
2015 Silver lining, Group exhibition at La Vallée, Brussels (BE)
2014 Manisensations, Leap gallery, Berlin
2011 Arhnem Fashion Biennale
Group Exhibitions, performances and projects (selection)
2018
Upcoming: Golden Hearts and the House of the Bodies, performance with Marie Civikov at Ground Festival, The Grey Space in the Middle, The Hague
The Revolution will not die with Us #2, Robotic Thought, performance and installation in collaboration with Marie Civikov, Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia (BG)
2017
2017 Femmely, Arsenal museum of contemporary art, Sofia
The revolution will not die with us, opening performance with Marie Civikov of the sixth Biennial of Miniatures, Ruse Art Gallery, Ruse (BG)
Polyphonia, curated by Frans Oosterhof, Goethe Institute Sofia, (BG)
Colonising the moon, Museum Night Plovdiv, performance, Plovdiv (BG)
A Character's Quest, film production , presentation of work in progress with Simone Gilges, co-produced by Tim Voss, Künstlerhäuser Worpswede (DE)
Light at the End of the Tunnel, performance installation with Andrew Smith, as a side project of Documenta 14, Latraac Athens (Gr)
What's wrong with Performance Arts, symposium, contributed with a lecture and performance, Corner College and Zurich institute of contemporary art, Zürich (CH)
The Frame that blinds Us, performance, FLUCA, Austrian Cultural Pavilion Plovdiv (BG)
Get involved, be involved focus direct urbanismus 2, Symposium exhibition, Fluc, Kubatur des Kabinets, Vienna (AT)
2016
Tomorrow Is A Day Said Max, performance with Andrew Smith, Manifesta 11, Cabaret der Künstler – Zunfthaus Voltaire, Zürich (CH)
Viennacontemporary art fair with Sariev Contemporary, Vienna (AT)
Manifestations of the personal, Sofia queer forum, Sofia (BG)
Let them draw, Sariev gallery, Plovdiv (Bg.)
Dematerialization 11, performance , French Institute Berlin, (De.)
2015
All Tomorrow Exotic, Czech Center, Sofia (BG)
Lets twist and cross, Gallery Bertrand Jordan, Paris (FR)
Play,Istanbul contemporary art fair, opening performance, (TR)
Anne and the giant apple, performance, De Apple institute, Amsterdam, (Nl.)
Dr.Strangelove , performance installation, Tanya Leighton gallery, Berlin (De.)
Radical languages , Kantor museum, Krakow (Pl.)
Paracettamor, performance with Sarah Shoenfeld, Augsburg Kunstverein (De)
2014
My friend the artist,
Co-existence art space, St. Petersburg
(RU)
Spiritus, group show with Honey-suckle company, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (De.)
Last supper performance installation , Mind pirates art space, Berlin, (De.)
Spring rituals, performance, NASA Amsterdam (NL)
Book presentation, Pocket guide to psycho geography, Mediamatic Post CS, Amsterdam (NL)
2013
Round Robin, performance, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Amsterdam (NL)
120 minutes to paradise, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK), Berlin (2013)
If not, tomorrow, Artitude V.E., Berlin (DE)
2012
That's how we stand, performance at Documenta 13, part of Critical Art Ensemble Program, Kassel (DE)
Creation of the myth, Sofia Arsenal, Museum for contemporary art (SAMSI), Sofia (BG)
Poor, but sexy, Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv
Ai Wei Wei is in China, Тhe Bunker, Berlin
Presence is the artist - General public, Berlin
Holly Shit, PSM Gallery, Berlin
Grants / awards
2016 Gaudenz B. Ruf award for contemporary art
2010 Production- and travel grant, Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam
2006-2008 Das Arts, Stichting voor de kunsten
Press / publications
2017 Art Forum, Article on Pane per Poveri at Documenta 14
2015 Frieze Magazine, article on Radical Languages, The new Avant Garde
2014 Mister Motley, Net als Jezus wissel ik van gedaante, Kim Bos
2014 Interview Magazine, interview
2014 Sleek Magazine, The Berlin Shaman who makes his audience do anything
2014 Stamm Magazine, On self portraits
2013 WAD Magazine, Uropa, article