Opening of Noise, May11th,2010, Sofia City Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria

The exhibition "Noise" continues until June 6th 2010.

Bogdan Alexandrov NOISE. Portraits of a Dear Person

11 May 2010 - 06 June 2010

Autism. A disorder of neural development that prevents adequate perception of and interaction with the surrounding world and affects the processing of information acquired through the senses. A neurological condition that affects the functioning of receptors.

Bogdan Alexandrov learned the above in 1989, when his daughter, Emiliana, was two and a half years old. What came next was a visit to a Swiss clinic applying a method for the treatment of autistic people that consists in an attempt to correct the sound receptor by exposing the latter to filtrated sound that is gradually becoming louder and louder until it reaches, at the end of the therapy, the tolerable limits of loudness. The method is based on the assumption that you get accustomed to loud noise. You no longer hear the trams passing by your window by the end of the second week of exposure to that sound.

Twenty years later this personal story provided the basis for the creation of a cycle of works, namely large format portraits, through the addition/layering of color noise to the point where the image vanishes. The idea is based on a physical phenomenon occurring in the process of using technical or digital equipment for image fixing or reproduction – the so called visual noise (grain structure remarkably reminiscent of white noise) is added (generated) to the image to produce an extra-rational effect. 

Change in the positioning of meanings and the reversal of the works’ message transforms them into an artistic and symbolic “therapy” targeted at “normal” people.

The exhibition features eighteen 130cm/200cm works, arranged on the mirror principle. Each pair of binary works is connected with headphones and a flash-stick that take the viewer into the sound environment. Color noise and mirror (binary) images are generated with the help of foam. 

* * *

Bogdan Alexandrov was born in 1960 in the city of Vidin, where he lives and works. In 1989 he graduated from the “St.St. Cyril and Methodius” University of Veliko Turnovo, majoring in painting. He works in the field of contemporary art (painting, video, installation).