Denica Milusheva 2/18/25 Denica Milusheva 2/18/25

WHO NEEDS ART?

Text for the Exhibition Catalog of Gallery Heerz Tooya 2019 published by JohnJohnBooks Amsterdam

“...our love must begin with one ungratefulness toward those who stayed fulfilled only to save themselves.”

The quote from Ungratefulness, a manifest by Kiril Krastev, has remained in my mind since I first read it. It has always reminded me not to put up with the situation in which I live. The writer uses love not as the love between two individuals but as the love for the freedom of expression. Gallery Heerz Tooya reminds me of such an act of disobedience in an environment with a lack of places for contemporary art. In this text, I will not analyze the artist's work presented in the gallery; instead, I will talk about the situation in which Gallery Heerz Tooya was created and continues to live.

Earlier this year, I came across sociological research on the needs of people in sparsely populated places in Bulgaria. The study reports that the most significant needs of the majority of poor populations in Bulgaria are providing meals and employment and dealing with corruption. At the end of the list are healthcare and education. Nowhere in these people`s needs does one see equal rights for people, science, or art. Where is art in this environment, and what is it for the people living here? Indeed, art is not directly related to human survival, but it is what makes us turn to ourselves, be critical of the world, and develop our ability to imagine what seems impossible. As the anthropologist Ellen Dissanayake argues, the adaptive definition of art is related to its ability to bring society together as one whole, as a tool that enhances the survival potential of individuals living within a group. Throughout 2019, Hertz Tooya has been able to bring people of different nationalities and professions together. The essential role of the gallery was to create a safe space in which one feels supported and free to express oneself. Visitors are put in situations where the encounter with art forces them to turn inwards and reflect on what is happening around them. This is a vital position to be in, especially in a country where freedom of expression is increasingly shrinking, and everyday people are faced with different kinds of restrictions that limit their ability to develop and express themselves, unlike places where people struggle to do so.

Please allow me to express my gratitude to all who attended the exhibitions during the past year. Your curiosity and understanding of the importance of the importance of art motivated us to continue our work with the gallery in an environment that has not always been understanding and welcoming. All the artists featured over the past year have made Gallery Heerz Tooya an island of salvation for those who lived here.

Catalog Launch and artist talk at TaM - Space for social events and culture, together with Plamena Slavcheva, Dimitar Solakov and Lars Nordby

The catalog at TaM - Space for social events and culture in Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria.

Denica Milusheva 5/28/19 Denica Milusheva 5/28/19

The Difficulties of Decoding Artefacts

The Difficulties of Decoding Artefacts

Text for Atanas Totlyakov's solo exhibition at Heerz Tooya Gallery

For the exhibition at the Heerz Tooya Gallery, Totlyakov chooses to present his works related to the Sitovo inscriptions located near Plovdiv in Bulgaria. The inscription has been known to scholars since 1928, and various hypotheses about its origin have emerged since then, but it remains unclear. The main object in the exhibition is an immediate print taken directly from the Sitovo inscription made by the artist twenty years ago. Totlyakov also presents photos taken with an analog camera during his visit to the site of the Sitovo inscription and paintings appropriating elements in the inscription. Together, the different works in the exhibition reveal the changes in the attempt to make a direct imprint of already existing artifacts. Even if the imprint is caused by direct contact with the inscription, each imprint is different because of the artist's hand making the imprint and his gaze that chooses which lines to connect in a sign.

There are various hypotheses about the meaning of the Sitovo inscriptions. One of them related to ancient writing, indicating hiding messages from other cultures. The exhibition spectator is not obliged to decipher the meaning and origin of this sign but will look at it as a work of art existing in a gallery context. The presentation of this inscription in a gallery space will be an occasion to reflect on how we look at signs and our desire to create meaning, stories about signs, and forms that are unclear to us. As many researchers try to discover the inscription's meaning, the spectators of the exhibition can interpret the inscription freely. The exhibition visitor may try to complete the signs and turn them into a familiar script to liken them to already-known works of art to understand them. Yet, the exhibition and its objects involve us in a vicious circle of interpretations, which can make us feel claustrophobic.

The interpretation of one sign from the exhibition leads us to another interpretation, and it to a third until our semiotic imagination leads to an unconditional end. This rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari) interpretation creates infinite possible connections and branches between us and objects. But if it is possible to break with this endless interpretation, is it possible to bring back the memory of what we saw in the first stance?

Seeing something, we often fall into the trap of interpretation because we are trained to find the essence of the images we look at as we interpret them. In her essay Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag speaks about the connection between understanding and interpretation. Interpretation means "to restate the phenomenon, in effect, to find an equivalent for it." When the image is unknown to us, we need to liken it to something familiar to understand it. Once we connect the unfamiliar image with the familiar, we can fulfill it with meaning. Sontag calls this act of connecting meaning "makes art manageable, conformable," and "thus one tames the work of art." My role as a curator of and writer for the objects you observe in the exhibition is to tame and understand them and then translate them. What is more important is your experience watching this exhibition. My appeal to you as a viewer is to let the images influence you before you try to fill them with meaning. What Sontag considers important now is "to restore our senses ... we need to learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more. "Allow yourself to observe and imagine, to create your own images from those seen in the exhibition. It is becoming increasingly difficult for us to be surprised by images and observe their sensory effects on us.

Our senses are losing their power in a world based on a surplus of images that exist in both our virtual and natural environments. So let us not accept my experience and understanding of these works as unreserved.

Artworks part of the Atanas Totlyakov's solo exhibition at the Heerz Tooya Gallery

Denica Milusheva 5/28/19 Denica Milusheva 5/28/19

Can I peer through your eyes?

It all begins with an idea.

Text for Heerz Tooya Exhbition Catalog 2023

In his work, R.D. Laing contends that while we can observe another person's behavior, the full depth of their experience and how they perceive us remains beyond our grasp. Faced with this perceptual limitation, we devise various means of connecting with others. As humans, a compelling impetus propels us—a yearning to share, to ensure our experiences resonate not solely within us but reverberate in the broader realm of others. It is through action, however, that our internal experiences can be disengaged from the recesses of our inner world and unveiled in the external world. Artistic creation aligns with this inherent desire for sharing, unveiling our internal experiences that often necessitate material form to manifest in the tangible world, even for our comprehension.

This catalog encapsulates the tangible embodiment of our experiences from the past year. It not only chronicles the gallery's endeavors but also serves as a labyrinth, guiding you back to your own experiences through the visual narrative of the exhibitions. Should you have attended one, revisiting the memory allows you to reconnect with the nuances of that day—moments illuminated by passing light, the gaze of a person traversing our path, the fragrance of freshly baked bread. These intricate sensations of confusion, elation, connection, and distraction that stirred within us during the exhibition constitute integral fragments of our experiences. In our pursuit to fathom what we witnessed, we endeavored to comprehend our inner encounters.

Engaging with art propels us through a continual oscillation between the artist's world and our own, and vice versa. Remarkably, the simple act of observation can yield a plethora of experiences within us. I may never fully experience what you undergo, but can I peer through your eyes? This inquiry lies at the heart of the profound reciprocity inherent in the act of looking, which traverses the boundary between our worlds, creating a rich image of shared experience.