Nedko Solakov

This monograph on the work of Bulgarian-born artist Ned Solakov presents a selection of work since the 1990s. Solakov gleans his ingredients for his fictive, often absurd narratives from classical works of art history. In his 12-part series of representative paintings, he juggles with the cliches of Romantic landscape painting. The pictures, painted in the manner of the old masters, quote the painterly rhetoric and construction schemes of German Romanticism but make its theoretical superstructure disappear. All the pictures have missing parts, blank spaces, which are meant to irritate. On some pictures, there may be a moon missing, or a boat, on others a reflection. The viewer finally turns to the inscriptions of the pictures for help, and there Solakov meticulously describes what the respective composition is lacking. This way, he deconstructs traditional art historical preconceptions and the recipient's expectations.