ZavodExodos.jpg WBC2010_cb.png logo_mol.jpg 60_eu_kultura_si.jpg MK_slo.jpg logotip_TL-2.jpg
Paulo Coelho

Just before a dream is fulfilled, the soul of world decides to test everything that was learned on the journey.

The artist's idea

Walking has a long cultural history, from vagrants to Japanese wandering poets and English Romantics and contemporary long-distance walkers.
Walking (as art) inspired me to explore relationships between time, distance, geography, and measure. It also enabled me to extend the boundaries of sculpture, investing it with the potential to become de-constructed in space and time. The sculpture of material and form, as well as of place.
I was thinking about a work of art that could change in time.
In such a case the artist must renounce the control over the work and allow that the form follows its own development and change according to natural laws.

To create a labyrinth means to place nature in the centre of artistic work. It also means to promote a new, unusual place for reading, thinking, and meeting, which attracts both local inhabitants and curious visitors.

Venelin Shurelov

Born 1977 in Sophia, Bulgaria, where he continues to live and work.
Graduated from Bulgarian National Art Academy, where he also completed his MA and PhD studies.
Co-founder and lecturer of the Digital Art post-graduate course at the same Academy.
Permanent member of Sfumato theatre laboratory.
Founder of international art groups Via Pontica (2002) and Subhuman Theatre (2004).
Set designer and visual artist.

His works can be seen in art galleries, as well as along roads and on facades of buildings.
His solo exhibitions were held in Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, and Belgium.
He participated at art festivals throughout Europe: the Black/North Seas the Black/North Seas (Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Sweden, 
Denmark, Norway, Great Britain); Theatre of East II (Viterbo, Italy); 13th Biennial of Contemporary Art (Pančevo, Serbia); VGIK (Moscow, Russia); Agorafolly Outside/Inside; Europalia 2007; Balkan Art Festival (Ljubljana, Slovenia, and London, Great Britain); 10th Biennial of Young European and Mediterranean Artists (Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina); and – last but not least – Ana Desetnica and Lent International Street Theatre Festivals (Ljubljana and Maribor, Slovenia, in 2009).

Although his work is quite diverse in form and content, the leading idea throughout his creativity has been art in movement. He explores human body, movement, physical and spiritual journeys, but also the counter-effects of movement on human body, behaviour and character. In his work he is most attracted to theatre and performance, but also interested in drawing, sculpture, installation, video, and art theory.

Facts about the labyrinth

Man has been creating labyrinths (mazes) for more than 4000 years. We can find them in different cultures, in different periods, in different parts of the world – from India and Sumatra to Crete, Island, Arizona and Brazil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The classical, one-way labyrinth adapts to its surroundings; it is both attractive and intricate. Its construction is quite simple: the procedure is repeated until we get the appropriate size. Walking is essential, of course: the path must be adequately wound so as to give the feeling of hiding and exposing, nearing to and distancing from the centre – suddenly we find ourselves in the centre, without even knowing how did we get there. The modern, ramified labyrinth – as its name suggests – comprises multiple paths, entanglements and returns. In the past 50 years, large and complex variations have spread both throughout the real world (as parks, playgrounds, thematic parks) and the digital one (computer games, SF films, pyramid schemes). Regardless of technological contrivances, labyrinths still attract with their elementary charm and potential for transitory deferral of time and space.

Labyrinth – between superstition and reality

Labyrinth served as defence against the intrusion of evil: the wound and curved pathways were supposed to prevent the ancestral spirits dwelling in the centre of the labyrinth to break out into everyday life.

It was also used as a ritual and reverential way, for pilgrimage, as a space for dance, or for courting the promising bride …

It might be that the origin of cosmology – the ancient understanding of the revolution of time enciphered in numbers and movements – is hidden in labyrinth. The circular path widens and narrows, as if following the journey of the sun, its daily and yearly naissance; at the same time, it symbolises our life – from day to day, in every season, from birth to death and to rebirth.

The original labyrinth had only one path leading from the entrance to the centre – without riddles and blind ways. Later, a multi-path, ramified labyrinth developed in addition to the single-path labyrinth.
Cursorily we could claim that the world labyrinth entered the Slovene language quite late, in the time when multi-path labyrinths were already known. As the Dictionary of Slovene Language puts it:
blodnjak (maze) – a place where one can wander around; labyrinth
zabloditi (to wander around) – to go without a goal; to go astray

The Western civilisation learned about labyrinths from the Greek mythology – Ariadne's thread, a ball of red thread that helped Theseus to come out of the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur, half man and half bull.