Exhibition
“The Long Farewell”
SIMEON STOILOV
19 October – 12 November 2021
Simeon Stoilov’s new painting is a natural continuation of his 2011 exhibition “Far So Close” in Rakursi Art Gallery. In it the artist explores the impossibility of recovering our memories of past experiences. Now he continues with the observation of certain emotional states that are elusive to “document” but leave an indelible mark.
Farewell, departure, expectation, return, saudade*… Inevitability, memories of feelings and experiences which brought us emotional excitement, pleasure and emptiness at the same time… Faceted contemplative states that we experience during the realization that something or someone is gone irretrievably and forever, but we remain with the hope, and with the dreamy sadness.
* Saudade (from Portuguese and Galician) is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never be had again. Saudade describes a feeling both happy and sad, and could be approximated by the English expression ‘bitter sweet’.