Years ago, new to her colleagues because of the received artistic education in Europe – the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Angelina established herself in the Bulgarian plastic culture as an author with provocative thinking. As a person seeking provocation what often turns communicating with her into a test of thinking and erudition in contemporary art, Angelina surpassed theorists and introduced into the vocabulary of the profession the “virgin” term – an oxymoron – or juxtaposition of opposites. It turned out that she helped all of us by finding the closest metaphor to its essence as an artist.
The common notion about glass is that it is only an art of the caught and crystallized light, translucency, tenderness, poetry. Resuscitating from deep antiquity the technology of pate de verre, Angelina Pavlova developed this concept of glass. One of the paths in her work is the classical sculptural form with its inherent aggressiveness to space.
Sculptural monolith is not included in space, but pushes it out to formulate the idea of the author. In 2002, for her work “Flowers of Love” II, Pavlova was awarded the special prize for the best sculpture of the Biennale “Glass Sculptures & Garden” in Munster, Germany. By this pictorial approach Angelina Pavlova achieved his first oxymoron of glass as both intangible and at the same time a form of sculptural materiality.
The second oxymoron is in the presence of colour in the works of Angelina Pavlova. Bright colours, having attracted many admirers to her works, do not carry the value, classical for painting. To the concept of colouring in painting she opposes the autonomy of the colour. Another oxymoron in the works of Pavlova is the incomplete concept of glass as a material only in design. The artist creates forms in their full existence of unique works.
The creative style of Angelina Pavlova is a unity of two opposite approaches. Let call it an oxymoron of extroverted and introverted. The extrovert approach is a consequence of polishing technology. A perfectly polished surface transforms the form into an energetic nucleus that emits colourful light energy from the inside out. A kind of an oxymoron/an opposite is the introverted suggestion achieved by the impact of the colour ton in depth. It draws the viewer inside, in the imaginary spaces of the work, as it dematerializes the surface – the boundary between reality and the magic world of emotion.
The creative nature of Angelina Pavlova is like an oxymoron. Being in a permanent search for the principles of avant-garde schools of art, authors and technologies, she formulates her task as a rediscovery of the already discovered. She does not get excited that she will be wounded for the lack of interest in shocking artistic gestures, without analogies, but also with no future.
Selfishly closed in the creative process, Angelina Pavlova enters the next oxymoron – through her work she makes her personal impenetrability in a path to others. As she herself says, “The thoughts I’m trying to suggest are harmony and love. I measure my Love in Glass”.
Irina Avramova