END OF THE QUOTE

Kiril Cholakov’s works are presented in Sofia as part of the exhibition:
The End of the quote,
Sofia University “ St. Kliment Ohridski”,
april-may 1990
Organized by the Young Artist’s Club on the idea of Lachezar Boyadzhiev

This work is a quotation of the murals in Buzludzha / the pompous museum of the Communist Party (partito comunista bulgaro), in which the old symbols of the Communist Party / the portraits of Blagoev, Dimitrov and Zhivkov / are replaced by new ones, in a chaotic pop-art sauce. In his 1990 text “The End of the Quote”, Lachezar Boyadzhiev writes that they function similarly to a quote from a “foreign”, other tradition, unrecognized by the then-existing authorities, which begins to challenge the right to define art, namely, the right to define what is art and, more precisely, what is true, original art. Thus challenged turns out to be none other than the right to name! And along with this, the division that has deepened over time between “here” (in Bulgaria) and “there” (mostly the West) is emerging.
Looking at it with irony and from the distance of time, I think that this work quotes most of all the naivety, the great enthusiasm, social pathos, expectation, hopes about the Great Change, characteristic of the year in which it was painted (1990) and which soon after were displaced by processes of social, economic and political displacement and the creation of models , or most of all quotes of models…(controlled by the former political police State Security). I quote from memory the great Bulgarian and European film director Teddy Moskov who, in my opinion, most accurately defines this period: ” Our capitalism is disgusting, as was our socialism, because it is made by the same people”.
Kiril Cholakov