The Mirror in the Hands of the Artist
author: Ilina Koralova
Milena Tzochkova is a Bulgarian artist living in Bremen, Germany. To most people, this fact would seem insignificant, especially to those who are long accustomed to globalization and the free movement between different countries and cultures. However, art enthusiasts around the world find that it is the artist’s life between two cultures, between two artistic traditions, that makes her art interesting. On one side is her academic education in Sofia. The term “academic” refers specifically to the technical methods employed in the execution of her works: classical (realistic) construction and recreation of form, in this case – the human body, precise brushstrokes, and perfect color. On the other side is the “non-academic” perspective, the unusual, sometimes painfully “cut” and focused view of certain parts of the body, suggesting a release from boundaries, a striving to evoke a certain impression through form. The conceptual framework within which Tzochkova places her works hints at the influence of another formal and intellectual context.
A central motif in the artist’s work is the human, more specifically – the female – body. It is graceful, flexible, delicate, clothed in fine lace or silk, under which perfectly proportioned forms emerge. With photographic precision, but since this is about painting and drawing – with the precision of a Dutch master from the 17th century, Milena Tzochkova conveys the materiality of fabrics, their patterns, the soft folds, and the reflections of light upon them. However, her female bodies are neither lying in seductive poses, nor triumphing over a crowd of worshippers, nor enjoying refined pleasures. They are captured in an isolated, neutral environment, more in an effort to free themselves from the prison of their expensive clothes and their status as objects for consumption. It is no coincidence that Tzochkova’s models have no faces; they are anonymous, standardized, a collective image. The suggestion of physical, and thus psychological discomfort, is heightened by the strange perspectives of the images. The artist most often presents the most erotic parts – the torso, arms, neck, or back of the woman – but they are somehow “twisted,” “broken,” or striving to move away from the center of the composition, and thus from the viewer’s gaze. Expectations of a superficial play of forms, colors, and clichéd female images are not fulfilled. Eroticism and sexuality are pushed to the background by a sense of burden, reinforced by the omnipresent presence of ornamentation on the clothes, where the body sometimes seems to dissolve, ceasing to exist independently. Sometimes, the artist goes even further, presenting part of the torso, draped in a dress, but without legs – a porcelain figure, broken in two.
Still, Milena Tzochkova’s paintings are not brutal. They are beautiful, but their beauty disturbs. They are suggestive. They are mirrors in the hands of the artist, directed toward the viewer, who, depending on their sensitivity, clearly or not so clearly, becomes aware of the inherent dualism present in every person: the intertwining of good and evil, love and hate, tenderness and brutality, happiness and suffering.
