V L A D I S L A V  K O L E V

VLADISLAV KOLEV is London based visual artist whose work examines the various relationship to the photographic image as documentation of truth, purveyor of memory, and a symbol of modern culture.
Vladislav’s current photographic practice explores issues such as representation of identity through conventional still photographic portraiture and time-based media.

Artist Statement. “ My fascination with photographic images began before I even got my first camera. My interest in photography grew almost instantly after many years of collage making and mixed media experiments. I see it as a natural progression that I moved into photography full time where a combination of things that dwelled inside me found their way out through this medium.

" My photographic work is self expression of relations between the manmade and the man, its surrounding space and natural environment. My work is self-referential statement of the obvious and yet the not so apparent beauty of nature.

What I see through photography is interactions. Ideally, between man or manmade, surrounding spaces and the natural environment. It's a statement of the obvious, but I am also drawn by nature. Not in the orthodox idea of natural beauty, but rather in its magnetizing influence which it has over each one of us.

I think that the most essential thing in art is a personal interpretation, which may as well allow for endless possible perspectives in the interpretation of an artwork. This on the other hand can inevitably lead to abstraction where most things appear to blur and lose their meaning. However certain aspects at the core of our consciousness tend to survive the chaos and allow us to communicate and achieve understanding on a non-linguistic level. With this in mind the study of signs and symbols becomes the elements of the visual alphabet and thought itself. A language with which we interconnect causing deeply felt understanding and basic response ".

Group Exhibitions

2012

MADFest, University of Westminster

2013

WALL, PAGE & SCREEN, London Gallery West
MisTaken Portraiture, London, MOWLEM STUDIOS

2014

University of Westminster Photography Degree Show 2014, London, T1 Old Truman Brewery