Lubomir Krastev was born in 1983 in Rousse, Bulgaria. At 2008 he graduated with a masters degree in Graphic Arts at the Academy of Music Dance and Fine Arts, Plovdiv. Some of his solo participations include: 2024 - Inconsistent Spaces - curated by Maria Vassileva, solo exhibition at Structura Gallery, Sofia; 2016 The Industrial Temple, Night of Museums and Galleries, Plovdiv; 2013 Forcing the election, National Autumn Exhibitions Plovdiv; 2011 exhibition at Art Alley, Sofia.

Among his group participation can be mentioned: 2019 BACKGROUND: Young Artists from Plovdiv, curated by gallery Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv; LISTE / Аrt fair — Basel Generation between Enthusiasm and Destruction, curated by Albena Mihaylova Manz; 2017 Tractatus Locus — The space in contemporary artwork, curated by Christina Schrei at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute — Wittgenstein House, Vienna; 2012 New Acquisitions 2010 - 2011, Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria; The Fifth Beijing International Art Biennale; Fusion-International Contemporary Intaglio Print Invitation Exhibition, China etc.

In 2016 Krastev is a Beneficiary of the Support Program; to the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award. In 2010 and 2015 he is a visiting artist in the resident program of International Artist Village, Guanlan, China; 2012 he receives a prize for the National Allianz Competition, Plovdiv; 2009 was awarded at the National Competition for Young Artists, Critics, and Curators, Sofia, Bulgaria.

Lives and works in Plovdiv.

“But the contrast doesn’t overwhelm me, it frees me.”
F. Pessoa

Lyubomir Krastev’s art is a complex and virtuous process of observation and reinter- pretation of the real object and reality itself. His work include the infinite in its abstract composition.

His subtle, meditative approach transforms real objects and places into utopian and mel- ancholic landscapes with a metaphorical meaning and a state of existence out of their natural context.

Using firstly the suggestion of black and white photographic images, and manipulation with multiple print graphic technics after, he is searching for a different objectivity and aesthetic environment. The result is a completely new image, portrayed with supreme in- taglio technique, multi-layered, overexposed and dramatic in contrast, unpredictable and unrecognizable, sometimes romantic, nostalgic or even disturbing. Thus, he merges the image, the exact time and space dimension, the artist’s jest and the altered object into a new structure and matter, giving it an unexpected form and function.

The early series “Coils” and “Against the sun” are images from abandoned industrial sites near the Danube river. He extrapolates the industrial bodies from their utilitarian function and gives them another essence, treating them as abstract objects. Observing the light falling on them, the texture, the movement, the corrosion, he draws a document of the state of the object. The metal wires are eradicated from their usual condition and be- come sculptures, still-life objects, affected and exposed to the atmosphere conditions. Just like the real object, deteriorated by time and nature, through classical and experi- mental printmaking techniques on the copper plate, he restores the individual character of the element in the final image.

Krastev’s highly precise touch, gives the elements a sense of beauty, where contrast, chiaroscuro and texture produce a sublime aesthetic trait of the composition. The hard- ness of industrial landscape does not appeal to the beauty of a sentiment, but to the beauty of a metaphorical connotation of these inanimate objects.

The observer finds himself questioning about the material, the place, the time and the purpose of these objects. Sometimes they are part of some industrial process and you never see them in their original utility state, but as an integral part of something else. In a metaphorical aspect, Lyubomir’s works are exploring the reflection of the human interference in nature, and the traces that we leave behind.

This reflection is even more tangible in his most recent works. “The Industrial Temple” is a multidisciplinary and stratified project. A powerful abstract object, reminding an imag- inary industrial machine, is standing in empty and cold space. Etching, aquatint, motion and sound are creating a monumental vision of this hypothetical post-apocalyptic place of the industrial cult. The title itself is a conflict between a raucous manufacturing en- vironment and a silent place of worship. The observer is captured by the raw, detailed texture and the overwhelming size of the artwork. It’s also a metaphorical representation of diaspora of the human being in the industrial world.

“Scar Field”, on the other hand, is a representation of what is on the opposite side, what remains after the human impact – an abstract place, somewhere on the Earth’s crust. The composition is a wide landscape with striated and barren surface. Red pastel strips are erupting from a crater in the core of it, just like a volcanic magma. Soot and carbon black is raising in the air. The image is a disquieted picture which conveys a sense of anxiety and even fear, but also nostalgia of something missing.

Krastev’s art transforms the stillness of raw industrial elements into sublime aesthet- ical objects, across the introspective glimpse of the artist’s thought. Finally the object disappears. The landscape leaves the mind desolate. He creates secret allegorical and imaginary places, where the observer becomes a lonely traveler, a lonely walker… not alone with oneself, but behind oneself.

The self is left behind.
Zlatina Kostova