Vladislav Noxoff uses one of the most ancient cultural-religious objects – the mask to create sculptures, combining various cultural elements in order to achieve a creative individual style. Born in the village of Kopanitsa, west from Sofia, the artist inherits the local tradition of making mummer masks, which exists for centuries and nowadays is presented in the local festivals. The making of the traditional wooden sculptures, most often by families or groups of people in the villages, is one of the steadiest festive-religious practices in diverse areas in Bulgaria, one of them the region of Pernik and Radomir, where the village Kopanitsa is situated. The technology of making wooden sculptures is passing on as a traditional knowledge from generation to generation, which Noxoff follows and reworking it by contemporary means he achieves an individual style formed out of the inherited tradition. The Masks have various shades from the light, natural wood color to dark, suppressed colors. Coming from the depth of the human subconsciousness they bring elements of the Slavic folklore and the ancient Egyptian ritual masks, which the artist combines with contemporary decorative elements. Like materialized visions, static dream images, formed at the point of intersection between the collective and the individual subconsciousness, they bring forth the ancient visual world through the millenniums.
Vladislav Noxoff - Art And Crafts
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