ARTISTIvan Kiuranov
Ivan Kiuranov was born in 1961 in Sofia where he currently lives and works. He took his master degree at The National Academy of Arts, Sofia in 1994.
He then went to ‘Brera’, Milano to specialise in contemporary art at the studio of prof. Diego Esposito and Antonio D’Avossa.
Ivan is currently teaching at The National Academy of Arts in Sofia.
Ivan is among the founders of the art group “XXL” and the art gallery under the same
name in Sofia. The appearance of the group on the scene of Bulgarian contemporary art is associated with some of the most radical endeavours for revitalizing art forms during the 1990’s, while the gallery has turned into a synonym of art shows that are alternative to the traditional art forms.
Since 1995 the artist has embraced photography as a main medium for creating his limited editions. He has exhibited in many international exhibitions in Serbia, Croatia, Switzerland, Italy, Great Britain, Austria, Canada, China, US as well as his native Bulgaria.
Kiuranov become well-known for his pop-art series of limited edition prints, “Untitled – Pen-Up”. The series encompasses visual codes from both popular and high culture. The composition is based on the kinetic image of a ballpoint pen which, when turned up and down, presents in turn a picture of a woman first dressed, then naked. That kind of images were being smuggled into socialist Bulgaria from the West, in rare ballpoints, holograph pictures, etc. They were highly valued in mass culture and became part of the popular city folklore. Such images functioned as a kind of visual dialect of the highbrow art language. The work is a photomontage, in which the change of the pictures is photographed at 15 stop shots.
The highly professional photography, conceptualize the triviality of the original image and transforms it into a contemporary work of art. The intentionally faded colours work for the intended retro-effect and add a historic time dimension
Immediately provocative, Ivan Kiuranov’s work attracts one’s attention by examining the movement of an everyday objects. The artist presents enlarged photographs of man stripping – the type of pictures inserted in those joke pens which each of us has had and scrutinized with unspoken curiosity. HPA typical everyday object with a vision “drawn-out” of itself but which retains its formal utilitarian character and becomes an object of exposition-like meaning.
