Milla Tarabanova: The primary goal of art is to elevate, yet your works lead the viewer through the trial of darkness in order to guide them beyond it, towards the light. Isn’t this the experience often described as “initiation”?
Stanislav Pamukchiev: I perceive art as an opportunity to shift beyond the rigid confines of a life bound by matter and limited by time—an activation of deeply suppressed, encrypted subconscious content that profoundly motivates the energies of life.
I understand the creative act as the sublimation of all emotional, psychological, and spiritual forces—a projection of the entire personality. To me, the creative act is an ontological act, a crossing beyond the boundaries of the finite and the limited. The provocation of spiritual curiosity is a movement beyond the threshold.
The transition from one state to another is indeed an initiatory act—a painful passage through trial and suffering, through symbolic renunciation and rebellion in the realm of the corporeal—to rediscover oneself, to be reborn into something new. “The path of light passes through darkness.” The spiritual ecstasy of Dostoevsky reinforced my intuitive encounters with these vast dimensions.
People who interpret my work too literally are often unsettled by the chthonic symbolism I employ. But the brave and the seekers are rewarded. Yes, art is truly an act of initiation, which is why the masterpieces of the great masters remain exalted and uplifting, never losing the power of their profound spiritual essence over time.
This is reminiscent of the mysteries of select groups and schools. How does the viewer respond to your challenge?
The vision of the wise has illuminated the entire course of human development. The Upanishads state: “The ultimate truth has no attributes and cannot be contemplated by the conscious mind.” This strengthens the idea that intuitive insight is deeper and more essential, and intuition itself is the primary tool of art.
The hermetic message, “…if you do not strip the bodies of their corporeal state, and if you do not form in bodies the substances deprived of corporeality, you will not achieve what you seek…,” is a formula I have embraced as a verbal expression of what I search for and create. In its ontological function, art is an Opus, an alchemical act of transformation.
Who will the viewers encounter in your works—themselves, a higher self, or God?
The creative act is an act of self-revelation. The viewer is offered a path to self-exploration and self-knowledge. The question of identity is troubling in a world of extreme fragmentation and disarray. Immersed in material concerns and the maintenance of daily life, we are trapped within the flow of time. This is why we are so anxiously restless, with an irritated and deeply dissatisfied self, overwhelmed by a sense of meaninglessness.
In my utopian artistic project, I strive to redirect the gaze toward the essential, the primordial—to integrate the individual with themselves. The work of Mircea Eliade provided me with the horizon of the Great Mythological Time—a concept of constant renewal, cyclical repetition, and the unification of end and beginning—a way to conceive of the unbearable category of Eternity.
Is art a religious experience, as Jung described it, a means through which the soul and mind are healed?
Art is a medium—a way to speak about the invisible and the indistinguishable. It is part of the spirit and ideas of every era, a visualization of content akin to that of philosophy and religion. For much of known history, art sought the face of God. In doing so, it played a role in constructing hierarchical structures oriented vertically.
Today, art has vastly expanded in its goals and functions. In an age of total secularization, the search for a metaphysical horizon is a solitary endeavor.
I believe that humanity carries within itself a deep, fundamental essence and has an intuitive recognition of it. Delving into the archetypal and atavistic layers, uncovering the psychic and spiritual sediments, will reveal the “living” energies necessary for renewal. Gazing into one’s own abyss seeks to trace the remnants of the Great Time, of spiritual and ancestral memory—to find traces of moral and spiritual experience, a foundation for a new beginning.
Let’s talk about the symbolism of materials, images, and numerical significance…
The transition from oil paints to materials like ash, charcoal, earth, stone, hay, wax, metal, resins, and others is a natural result of the effort to find a visual language that adequately expresses the intended meanings. The reverse process—recognizing these meanings in the life of materials, in their semantic density and multidimensionality—is essential in my work.
Through experimentation with visual media, I have deepened my understanding of the expressive dimensions of these materials. The struggle is to achieve a material-substantial fusion—an image-based plastic symbolism of the energies of creation and decay, materialization and dematerialization—an expression of the tension between time and matter, matter and spirit.
I insist that the visual expression remains alive and expressive, emotionally charged, and capable of striking the viewer on a sensory and psychological level. After that, each individual, according to their own experiences, can decipher the symbolic depth of ash—the witness of fire’s transformative power. They may discover the force and mystery in the darkness of voids and holes, in the creative and destructive energies of black earth; in the symbolism of charcoal, wax, hay, and stone. The sacred is to be found in the everyday, in the rituals of living.
Would you say that everything you have worked on since the early 1990s, after your painting By the River (1991), revolves around a central thematic core?
After 1991, I changed my expressive means and form, breaking with traditional pictorial conventions to experiment with an expanded understanding of painting—moving from painting-as-object to three-dimensional spatial compositions, sculptural objects, and installations. I reconsidered my artistic approach, ritualized it, and transformed the act of creation into a part of the encoded image itself.
Across a wide range of artistic practices, I seek the “faces” of a few fundamental themes. The persistence of these core ideas and the strength of my idiomatic visual language have shaped what could be called a visual-plastic mythopoetics—a mythopoetics that seeks a metaphysical horizon.
In its most condensed form, my explored theme could be defined as Passage. This enduring thematic line finds its foundation in the tension, in the emotional, psychological, and spiritual movement within states of liminality. What I create can be seen as an exploration at the threshold of boundaries. It is charged with the emotional and existential revelation of energies and tensions in transition, the turning of the finite toward the infinite, the movement from the individual and the concrete toward the universal and the whole.
Are the physical and the spiritual equally important?
We are made of flesh by the design of the Creator. By the same design, we are given a soul and carry the spark of the Creative Force. We are destined for corporeal decay yet bound to rebel against it through creation.
The dual nature of humanity—our existential drama—is the driving creative energy of civilization.
Art attempts to uncover both the questions and the answers to these existential tensions. That is why it is dramatic—majestic. As Nikolai Berdyaev put it, “Sorrow is directed toward the higher world and is accompanied by the feeling of the insignificance, emptiness, and transience of this world… it speaks of solitude before the face of the transcendent.”
For the resolution of these opposing forces—material and spiritual, male and female, light and darkness—I have found the greatest solace in Eastern wisdom, particularly in Taoism.
How does receiving the Vladimir Dimitrov – The Master Award impact you?
This award carries a high moral and spiritual significance. Those who love art and are marked by it inhabit a special space—one illuminated by the aura of the great masters and teachers.
Beyond being a recognition of mastery, I received the Master’s Award with deep emotion because it represents a symbolic act of belonging—to what I feel is a connection to ancestral and spiritual memory. This is a profound responsibility.
