“Faraway, so close”

Mark Milen

September 1st 2010

Arosita gallery opens the new exhibition season with Mark Millene's “Faraway, so Close”.

Mark Millene, as the artist is known abroad or Milen Markov, his given name, is a bulgarian born in Burgas and currently lives and works in the United States.

From his internet site Millene, we see that he studies at the National Acadamy of Fine Arts in Sofia till 1992 and emigrates to the United States. He studies there one year at the School of Visual Arts in NY. From there on he participates in group and individual exhibitions in different cities in the US, in NY, San Francisco, Washington DC. At the same time he works for some time in Jeff Queens’ atelier. During this last year Mark Millene took part in the Fine Art Biennale in Burgas.

The intimate space of the gallery vibrates with the abstract canvases incorporating vivid colors, spread in an expressive manner, combined with drawings and hard to distinguish photographic images. The artist himself characterizes his method of work as " the opposite of the abstract expressionists, the spontaneous moment and technique 'a la prima' is eluded and each work is sketched and planned in advance. These are collages of photographs, drawings and monotypes embedded on the canvas in several stages". The use of glitter - a sparkling substance of small dots resonant of the glitter of a lady's lipstick or nail polish adorns the paintings and is part of the author's trademark. Glossy, flirtatious with kitscheffects provoke associations with pop art. The artist appropriates, typical of post-modernism, the eclectic use of different styles and artistic techniques and develops his own artistic language to manifest his point of view - that everything undergoes transformation and change, and is constantly growing. In this manner, art becomes an important incentive for imagination, a "visual pill" against banality.

Aside from offering quality painting, in my view the exhibition marks another up-to-date theme - in the contemporary world, physical distances and borders increasingly lose their meaning; the free flow of ideas assisted by modern media and technologies create a new community of intellectual and artistic interests, where people are closer than ever.

Stefanja Janakieva