Raised in the Eastern Orthodox faith, Parmakov is deeply familiar with its visual lexicon. Through his virtuosic, free-style draftsmanship he both references and reimagines Orthodox iconography, reclaiming its significance for a modern-day viewer. He applies his signature, free-style technique of hand-engraving and hand-coloring unglazed porcelain, a fine white ceramic material, to create religious items, all rendered with intricate detail and shimmering in muted silvers and golds. Intimate in scale and meant to be appreciated up close, even handled, the works on view engage the senses, solicit sustained attention, and invite reflection. The delicately outlined and interlocking forms, together with the resplendent hues, recall stained-glass windows, but also a broader cross-cultural history of East-West artistic influences and exchange.
Parmakov’s art transcends time and technology further to draw on his homeland’s rich cultural heritage. His porcelain creations reactivate the magnificent ceramic production that flourished in the 9th and 10th centuries C.E. around the first two Bulgarian capitals of Pliska and Preslav located in the northeastern part of the country, where Parmakov spends his summers and fires his works. Besides their use for architectural ornamentation and luxury tableware, ceramics were utilized in the local icon painting tradition with ceramic icons ranging in size, shape, subject matter, and purpose. Through his choice of material and imagery, Parmakov recovers the splendor and impact of Bulgaria’s medieval decorative ceramic arts which have reached us largely in fragmentary state and gives us ways to encounter them whole again.
The exhibition will be on view in Miller Hall at 406 Prospect Street, New Haven from March 27-May 7 and is free and open to the public.
Svetlozar Parmakov is recognized around the globe for his exquisite porcelain icons, paintings, and decorative vessels which draw on millennia-old visual and material traditions from his native Bulgaria but deploy an artistic technique entirely his own.
Liliana Milkova, the Nolen Curator of Education and Academic Affairs at the Yale University Art Gallery is an art historian, museum educator, and curator. She has published on, and organized, several exhibitions of contemporary and historic art from Eastern Europe.
Robert Nelson is the Robert Lehman Professor of the History of Art emeritus at Yale where he taught medieval, and especially Byzantine, art.
Visit the exhibition webpage for full details.
For more information email Anesu Nyamupingidza.
