April 2, 2010 – Solo Exhibition Opening @ Alfa Art Gallery

Opening Reception: April 2nd, 7:30-10:30pm
Exhibition Duration: April 2nd – April 21st
Currator: Julianna Ritter

Starting in the early 1990s, Vesselin Kourtev has exhibited his artwork worldwide. Now in April 2010, the Alfa Art Gallery in New Brunswick, New Jersey will present his newest exhibition in collaboration with the release of Virginia DeBerry’s newest book Uptown where the title of each painting correlates to a chapter in her novel. There is an overtone of alluring energy in the figures and their composition with the background, offering the viewer ghostly, yet harmonious, visions of an abstract world. His tones and hues, especially in his painting Full to the brim of future (Chapter 20), express a sense of liberation as birds cascade over a saturated green landscape presenting a celebration of hope. The product of this process of creating a relationship between language and image is to build the bridge between different art mediums and to create a layer of ideas, a central theme in Kourtev’s work.

 

About Vesselin Kourtev’s exhibition by Virginia DeBerry

New Year’s Celebration leads to a Cross-Cultural Collaboration when bestselling author Virginia DeBerry attended a New Year’s Eve dinner at New Brunswick, New Jersey’s Alfa Gallery, she anticipated only an entertaining evening with friends old and new, and a different way to begin a new decade. Instead, the event gave rise to the Uptown exhibit, pairing Uptown, the latest novel by DeBerry and her writing partner Donna Grant, with the paintings of noted Bulgarian artist Vesselin Kourtev.

“I visited the gallery and was shown several canvases of Vesselin’s new work,” says DeBerry. “One painting in particular struck me as representative of both the closeness and the struggle between cousins Avery and Dwight, the main characters in our book.” This realization led to a discussion about the relationships between different art forms which proved to be the catalyst for gallery co-owner Galina Kourtev to put together a show called Uptown. Each painting is named for a chapter in the book, and Vesselin drew inspiration from the story for one special work entitled “Uptown.”