The first exhibition at Collect Gallery’s new space in Taksim… With its long-standing presence in Bulgaria and its Land Art Project space in Greece, Collect Gallery continues its international activities. Following its Karaköy location, this exhibition in Taksim features Todor Rabadzhiyski as a guest artist, setting the tone for the gallery’s Istanbul program: engaging the city’s dynamic art scene in dialogue with bold contemporary practices, and coinciding with the 18th Istanbul Biennial.

In the series of panels featured in the exhibition, Rabadzhiyski places abstractions based on gestures onto metal sheets. Layered brushstrokes and sharp angles evoke body parts and fragmented forms, as if bodies have been stretched and reassembled. The instinctual surfaces in the paintings recall the Istanbul Biennial’s three-legged cat metaphor: wounded but defiant. Like a cat that disappears after being wounded and then reappears, Rabadzhiyski’s figures oscillate between control and collapse. Here, the changing rhythm of paint and form carries echoes of an unspoken horror that signals trauma and psychological fracture. Subtle anatomical signs, almost recognizable within the abstraction, such as teeth, eyes, and limbs, evoke fragmented bodies. Abstractions based on distinct lines and familiar shapes: these raw fragments imply what is missing and severed.
Additionally, Rabadzhiyski’s works are made of memory and remnants. Metal sheets, cuts, rust, and paint drips become historical archives. The artist depicts a landscape of metals, crushed and compressed waste, as a metaphorical tower city where meaning is both sought and rejected. Bright but rusted metal carries the echoes of industry and decay. Each accent bears traces of destruction and reconstruction. In this way, Rabadzhiyski’s palette becomes a diary of time and trauma, similar to the Biennale’s vision of bodies forced to adapt through destruction. The surfaces of the paintings appear as a duality, both industrial and intimate, chaotic and delicate, reflecting a blend of the fragility and cunning of a three-legged cat.

The movement in these works is definitely not linear or predictable. Energetic swirls and diagonal lines draw the viewer’s gaze into an irregular path. This unbalanced rhythm parallels a cat’s frequent, graceful completion of its various physical movements. The compositions sway as if in a moment of collapse, yet somehow find their balance. The forms stretch and bend as if captured in a moment of leaping or stumbling forward, yet embody a harmonious equilibrium. A double movement is seen in the paint itself, formed by frequent and rapid advances where thick strokes give way to fine cracks, then thicken again. Uncertainty is woven into the architecture of the works; even if there is solidity, the possibility of slippage is felt.

The ceramic works in the exhibition resemble organic fragments adhered to the wall, evoking remnants of geological or bodily memory. Their irregular, almost fossil-like textures evoke both natural erosion and human intervention, bringing to mind the tension between permanence and decay. Arranged in clusters, they create a rhythm, as if each form were part of a fragmented narrative. They appear somewhere between object and relic, part sculpture, part archaeological find. In dialogue with the biennial’s themes of fragility and resistance, these ceramics embody the idea of survival through transformation: broken, wounded, and irregular, yet possessing a unique beauty in their material reality. They present themselves not as polished, finished works, but as living traces.

Ultimately, Rabadzhiyski’s works serve as a testament to survival. In every cavity and re-painting, traces of destruction meet acts of rescue. Amidst the chaos, the artist takes another step toward balance, or in other words, re-constructs the scene as if re-constructing himself. The works reflect the Biennale’s theme with their worn beauty: they record wounds as much as they promise renewal. Like a three-legged cat basking in a fragile moment of sunlight, these works find solace in transformation and prove that something wild and resilient persists even within destruction.