BRUTALITY

An installation of seven objects of varying sizes, made of concrete, porcelain plates, cups and teapots, acrylic paint, and epoxy resin, arranged on top of a Persian carpet. 2025.

Part of Balkan Stories, solo exhibition at Doza Gallery, curated by Georgi P. Pavlov.

Brutality explores the problem of the lack of functioning metaphysics in people today. Concrete is an iconic material for the 20th and 21st centuries, used in both Soviet architecture and Western Brutalism. This emergence of the same severe aesthetics in two opposing ideologies is the product of the collapse of the grand narratives that occurred during the previous century – a brutal but necessary shock, that allowed us to address many historical injustices. In contrast, the porcelain objects and the carpet are ornate, powdered, even kitschy representations of a past that is idealised and unrealistic. This clash between the severity of the present and the idealisation of the past ought to be transformed into a productive dialogue between the two, in order to construct a new and better functioning system.

Photos of works by Kalin Serapionov.