CODA.market Creator of the Month: Ivan Kostov

What interested you in having your work on CODA.market?

I was interested because the main subject of CODAworx is public art. My interest is public art. There I feel I am the best, and I feel I can devote a lot of time. That’s how I am tuned. I have perhaps been a member of CODAworx for 10 years. 

What is your experience on CODAworx? 

I found it by searching for public art. Two or three years ago, there was a CODAawards call for public art. My work, The White Wave and the Brown Wall, won a CODAawards Merit Award in the Residential category. CODAworx has an amazing library, with some very nice things. 

What do you want people to know about your works on CODA.market?

I want them to comprehend visual characteristics, and not overemphasize other meanings. I prefer my work to be visual. 

In principle, I am against (and I know it is modern and even desired) the idea of descriptive text being essential to understanding the work. This is, according to me, not good. This should not be defined, in some way this creates bias in the viewer. You should not tell the viewer. The viewer should feel it. With the form, the color, the whole sense, there should be an emotion inside without a telling of what to interpret and what to feel. 

And the other thing, what particularly matters to me about public art (not just about public art, but art): artworks should be part of the living space, and they should be of the time. Not like exhibits, or web sites, or magazines, observed for a minute or two at maximum. 

And when art is so, it stays forever: 50, 100, 200 years. And it is different every day, and you do not look at it. It is different if you see it for a minute or two, and then it is not in your life again. This is why architecture is the visual identity of the city, as it withstands changes.

This is how it was thousands of years ago, and this was the way art was understood. 

Any other thoughts or stories you’d like to share about your experience with commissions?

For my last commission, the CODAawards Merit winner, the facade looks towards the street, so it’s not ideal. I thought, “Can I plug the space?” Behind the street is where the good view is. 

How can it be like a grille, but also like lace, which is wrapped around the house, which is thrown over the house, like a net that surrounds it? I played with it, and it happened. There is very complicated metal and mounted ceramic work. Thirty elements of this project were made. It’s not heavy, it’s hollow with lots of aluminum and stainless steel, developed as a montage. It was a very complicated installation, but very fast. It was wholly assembled in an atelier. It goes past two balconies.

A friend of mine said these modular structures I make when I think of something are like an alphabet. Then with this alphabet, this is a text, then the algorithm, without which it becomes an organism, like planting a seed, planting a plant, and then it grows up.

The artistic creation should feel finished, it should establish harmony. There should be an awe–not that it is of solely human effort. Then the viewer should realize the sensation that nature or God has created the whole, the details, the colors. Maybe this is the idea: The art creates a sensation. When you listen to music, do you ever feel that the music is not from this human realm? At least this is how I think. 

Because I work in architecture for a long time, I want my art to be constructed similarly to the emblematic buildings. I want my works to be read as part of the material. 

What Gaudí does, is my direction - for some reason it happens less in today’s world. In the United States of America, with the percent for art: I really like these politics. This is great. I take my hat off to politics like this. When there is work happening, there is good. 

My work is about the interaction between elements. The link between things, the contact. Each lives for itself, but when contacting, just as in life, everything is a result of borrowings between fields of knowledge. 

I have sculptures that may be of interest in CODA.market.