As children, around the mid-1990s, we used to get into the water tower through the ground-floor windows, which were too small for an adult to squeeze through. By then, the tower had long been closed and was filled with neglected remnants and abandoned objects. With considerable effort, we managed to pull out the heavy metal ladder and prop it up against the glazed top. We laid planks across the circular ledge, creating a small platform where we would spend long stretches of time. Inside, we found a radiator and hung it from a wire, letting it swing.
We had a game — a stupid, childish prank. We would climb some of the taller buildings in the neighbourhood, including the tower, and throw various objects from above, watching them fall and hit the ground. Ice, glass, tyres, clothes, whatever we could find. Looking back on this memory, I find something valuable in what children naturally and spontaneously do through play: testing, feeling out reality. Something I continue to find in art — a transportation of the senses, a deeper awareness of what is being perceived.
I recall these childhood games and mischief with a desire to carefully “improve” the memories, to make them into what I want them to be now. It seems to me that this happens with all memories whenever we revisit them, though more unconsciously than deliberately. They are transformed and re-experienced through the lens of our present selves, shaped by the experiences, thoughts and obsessions we have accumulated.
I trace the fall of my small collection of objects, an event that, in real time, lasts less than two seconds. Playfully, yet with complete seriousness. An exhibition that is as much site-specific as it is life-specific. A Sisyphean climb up 82 steps leading to a place of release — where the objects are let go, left to reveal their specific physical behaviour: mass, inertia, disintegration — before disappearing among leaves and pebbles. Here, attention lasts only as long as a fall, and the vantage point of observation has left the human body behind.
With gratitude to Snezhana Krasteva, Vladimir Iliev and Terry Vreiberg for their assistance.
— M. Minov
About the artist
Mina Minov (b. 1982, Sofia) graduated in Sculpture from the National Academy of Art in Sofia and in Painting from the Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen, with an exchange at Hunter College, New York. His practice encompasses sculpture, drawing, performance, video and installation, focusing on the interaction between the body, objects and space, and creating situations of movement.
Minov is interested in the processes and habits involved in the consumption of art. He explores different equivalents and metaphors for how this consumption takes place. When these metaphors work, they can become relevant to certain fundamental existential conditions.
His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at CBK Groningen; Kunstruimte Wagemans, Beetsterzwaag; Vaska Emanuilova Gallery, Sofia; Marvin Gardens, New York; Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia; Roodkapje, Rotterdam; ZieherSmith Gallery, New York; De Vishal, Haarlem; L6, Freiburg; KCB, Belgrade; Goethe-Institut, Sofia; and Alberta Pane Gallery, Venice.
