"YES", Doza Gallery, 2022
An exhibition of Yonko Vassilev and Ina Trifonova (YO\KO+INA)
In the ‘YES’ project YO\KO+INA are together again as an artistic pair, but this time the conceptual tendency of the show is completely subject to the mere worldly aspect of their relationship and actions in life, that is, their contraction of marriage and the vows they make uttering the cherished word “yes!”.
Why do the two artists decide to dedicate their artwork during the period 2021 to 2022 to this remarkable moment in their life? This is a question with an obvious answer, especially distinct in the exhibition environment. Undoubtedly YO\KO+INA stand their ground when it comes to two things - Love and Art, but the challenge is much greater when a statement on conceptual level is to be made in the space of “the white cube” of DOZA GALLERY and separate those microtopics, gleams and accents in the global word “Yes” which we have to use so often in our everyday lives but some of us utter only once in life in this context.
What makes an impression even at the slightest peripheral glance cast by the way at the exhibition are the surfaces of all objects, their monospectral lustre and silver laid films on some of them designed for walls. The ‘YES’ work of art made of artificial roses in ecru encompassing the neon sign with the word is probably symbolic in terms of the theme of this project. The opposition of the crude canvas and subframe to the delicate roses and the neon ‘YES’ in the geometrical centre of the object give the raw conceptual sound of the otherwise mawkish subject of love. Just this play with the kitsch, gloss and the candy pink side of love is a characteristic of the self-irony and the full awareness of everything that evolves from it in the daily round.
The Love is luminous, symbolically charged and slightly tattered by the daily chores that YO\KO+INA encounter leading a simple and ordinary lifestyle reflected with the precision of an incision made by a scalpel which remains with the creation of works like the ‘Glamorous Monumental Object’ - a symbol of the mundane gains with material flavor accompanying the couple. The object consists of the assortment of both artists’ possessions bringing joy and tangible delight of the little things in their mutual life, which is harnessed in this acquisition to ensure quality lifestyle. Both of them have chosen here to bring to life this peculiar “dowry” with ready-made polyresin figurines of animals with glossy surfaces shining like jewels but in reality being just ornaments.
The video “Interaction With the Word ‘YES’ positioned on the front wall of the display space of the DOZA GALLERY expresses the microstates through which both artists pass interacting with the word ‘YES’ distinctly pronouncing it and awaiting each other.
The series of silvery canvases ‘Couple of Portraits’, ‘Silver Layered Painting’ and the work executed on metal “Blur” are also part of the peculiar concept of the duo YO\KO+INA of contemporary minimalism and the influence of the ‘colour field’ style trend on abstract expressionism which is paraphrased in contemporary media. Objects like ‘Rabbit Hole Cake’, ‘The Glamorous Duck’, ‘Queen’, ‘The Invisible Butterfly’ and ‘Unicorn In a Brocade Environment’ speak with the vehicles of expression of symbolic connotations which both artists put in the great subject of love and the collision with the humdrum of everyday life and chores which prevent the free roaming in the field of art and the erudite emotional conversations both artists enjoy very much.
The title of the work ‘Guns’n Roses’ borrowed from the ‘glam rock’ music band also has an effect almost like a poster art using the language of self-irony, the gag, the slightly caricatured love war that both artists wage in the latest constructive discussion or clarify emotional misunderstandings.
„OBJECTS AND OBJECTIVE PAINTING“, Credo Bonum Gallery, 2021
An exhibition of Yonko Vassilev and Ina Trifonova (YO\KO+INA)
Four years after Yonko’s Room exhibition Credo Bonum Gallery presents again Yonko Vasilev, this time in a complex co-authorship with the artist Ina Trifonova in the project “Objects and objective painting”. The duo has been together in art and life since 2018 setting up their own trademark and their own conceptual platform named YO\KO+INA.
Before getting together both of them have their own paths in art. Yonko’s beginning goes through a painful period of physical isolation and his art in these years operates with the language of ready-made and collage. His objects are intensely emotional but with a crude conceptualist aesthetics. To counterbalance that, Ina Trifonova starts from the fashion design and her works are vivid and light.
In “Objects and objective painting” YO\KO+INA create a variegated and attractive visual and object world that can be understood and rationalized on different levels. On the one hand, the authors express their attitude to modern consumer society, to the glossy industrialization of everyday life passing into human relations. The subject of art is an attractive value, a designer’s modification for which the glutted person strives.
On the other hand, the subject is in a direct reference to the tradition of pop art, in which irony and humour are the main characters. The idea of authorship experiences complex transformations as well. Both artists quite deliberately cross brushes upon almost every object. The painting started by one of them is covered with little transparent bubbles by theother, a sculpture made by one of them is sprayed with motley streams of paint by the other one. Art is a territory of collaboration, of mutual inspiration, but a battlefield as well.
Credo Bonum Gallery seems to be overpopulated. It is full of attractive objects, rich vibrant colours, pictures which have gone through a multiple complex processing, illuminated or set in motion sculptures. Attractive and active in terms of images and colorfulness the works of Yonko Vasilev and Ina Trifonova take possession of the gallery’s space in order to give an account of the complex relations the couple gets into in the field of art.
Curated by Vessela Nozharova