Yuliy Takov

For me, paintings are like a record of time, a kind of self-portrait for the day, week or year. Sometimes the direction is predetermined. Other times, I start somewhere and continue without knowing where it will take me. Throughout the entire creative process, however, I know that what is most essential to me, where the idea is and what keeps my senses awake, is hidden behind the image. And I want it to surface above the surface.

In the exhibition, I present several cycles of paintings that are part of my searches over the past two years. In them, I examine the questions of the limits of freedom, ego, and the subjectivity of the individual in interpreting the world around them. Man is at the center of my work. He is immersed in his illusory world. He encounters the barriers he himself has set before him and, overcoming them, finds meaning in his existence. In my works, I seek ambiguity. I am also interested in the influence of the surrounding environment on the inner world of a person, as well as vice versa, their interrelationship.

Юлий Таков

Yuliy Takov was born in 1971 in Sofia, where he lives and works. He graduated from the National Art High School for Stage and Screen Arts in Plovdiv, 1991, as well as the Private Art Academy “Jules Paskin” in Sofia in the class of Prof. Nikolay Maistorov, 1995.

Yuliy Takov’s exhibition “Above the Surface” is a multi-layered analysis of the human psyche, of our self, but not in the way we would immediately reflect. Yuliy Takov treats the selected topics as a Buddhist, shaman or sage, the goal is not a specific answer to a posed question, the goal is to get to know and master the personality in all its facets. The watercolor series “Reality is a Mystery” is a male world that seems to strive to overcome itself, its strength and its reason, to rise as a winner, without having an end point of the rise. As if the experience itself is self-sufficient. The path is the goal. In other watercolors we see men’s heads in disorder or symmetrically arranged. Men with beards, black and white or in color. Men as the thinking sex? A game of intellects? Or a satire of intellectuals? The mystery also lies in the fact that it has no exact name and, respectively, no exact action and counteraction. We can freely interpret and derive our own truths. The selected colors are the denominator of the mystery. In gray and in various shades of green, which rub lightly against each other, they are neither in harmony nor in disharmony.

Julius forces us to rethink his philosophical messages for a long time. The long journey is also a victory over the elements, the man over the waves as a winner or as having defeated himself. Neon green and gray, six figures in a group, each one alone in his thoughts. V – Victory, the price of success that sometimes almost kills us, paid in gray or red. An unbearable but desirable risk. And yet, the head, the mind prevails.

Something happens in the works of Yuliy Takov, in some we seem to see an escape from hell, but which one – his own or the collective one? The watercolor is in black, purple, brown and beige. We have to give him time to distinguish the figures, the chaos is perfect, one succeeds.

The artist Yuliy Takov stages situations, everyone has to realize them for themselves. His artistic narrative is only a beginning. The end is for us. He throws down the gauntlet and challenges us to give an answer to each work with which we communicate. I strongly suspect that the challenge is not addressed only to us. Eternal topics seek eternal answers.