Nedko Solakov, A Life (Black & White), 1998–ongoing. © Nedko Solakov
For Nedko Solakov’s touring retrospective, ‘All in Order, with Exceptions’, each of the four venues presents a unique set of works chosen according to strict curatorial criteria imposed by the artist. First, Solakov prepared a comprehensive image catalogue of every work he made between 1980 and 2010 – a collection of 5,683 digital files. From this archive, curators from IKON Gallery in Birmingham, S.M.A.K in Ghent and Museu Serralves in Porto each selected a set of 30 works for their own institution, under the strict condition the each could only include one work from a given year. The exhibition’s final venue, Galleria Civica – Solakov’s commercial gallery in Trento – will feature the artist’s own selection from the works rejected by the curators.
At S.M.A.K., Solakov slyly expanded this salon des refusés by making images of all the unchosen works accessible to the public in folders containing an overwhelming 1,353 pages of documentation.THE FOLDERS (2011) – the ‘31st work’ in the show – constitutes a unique archive scattered throughout the gallery space, smuggling in everything that was initially excluded by the curators. It’s hard to tell if Solakov’s choice undermines the very idea of a retrospective or genuinely seeks to present his achievements in their totality. There is a paradox embedded in ‘All in Order, with Exceptions’, a contradiction between an overdose of information and a haunting impression of incompleteness (we are, after all, aware that there are three more versions of the exhibition). This ambiguity is characteristic of Solakov’s often humorous and ironic oeuvre.
Read the full article here