ARTIST STATEMENT. Marina Kálcheva, photographer and visual artist in Barcelona

MY ARTIST STATEMENT


DUALITIES

The essence of things is ambivalent to me:
the world is beautiful and cruel in its every second.

Pain and sweetness, simplicity and complexity, tenderness and brutality — these and other dualities find expression in my art through complex colours, as well as through light leaks and bright spots contrasted with deep shadows and almost black figures.

TEXTURAL ROUGHNESS

I add images from a kid’s camera to my work — deliberately imperfect, but truthful and sincere. This also allows me to convey contrasts in perception of the world, and it’s an homage to the technologies of my childhood.

PIECES AND REFLECTIONS

Diptychs, collages, mosaics — from multiple to particular, nuances are revealed through contrasts, and differences are important on the path of exploration.

In others, I see myself as if in a mirror, piecing together and understanding myself. 

From a young age, I often felt out of place. I learned to catch the slightest fluctuations in people’s behavior to anticipate their actions and feel protected. This led me to feel and interpret them deeply, allowing me to be attentive to my protagonists and create sensitive, delicate portraits.

QUIET BEAUTY 

My photos are a quiet reflection, a dive into bright melancholy, an enveloping warmth; a moment to pause and feel something, to ponder something.

I take photographs of people from behind, creating a field for reflections and interpretations. I capture close-up portraits, which means something spoken, the person trusted me,
and I saw beauty in them.

Meanings, forms, and colours are intertwined and become part of the narrative.

EN