Stefan Nikolaev

The Glassbox case

Text Yana Penkin

Stefan Nikolaev speaks so quickly that I cannot understand right away what he is telling me. After those years in France – I think – it is no wonder... And I listen carefully. At the end of our conversation, he explains that this peculiarity of his is not an influence of his French, but comes from his childhood – his enunciation turned out to be a disappointment in the actor’s family. Stefan’s father is Nikolay Nikolaev – the beloved Bate Nikolay from the children’s TV shows of the near past. So, instead of becoming an actor, Stefan studied at the High School of Art. Then he left for France and, as due to some problems with the Young Communist League (Comsomol) he was not allowed to apply to the Art Academy in Sofia, he applied to the Beaux Arts Academy in France. There, he spent the period between 1988 and 1994, and in the meantime also participated in an academic exchange with Winchester School of Art.
England definitely sounds like a soft spot of his. Even the idea for Glassbox stems from there. Young British Artists, making artist-run spaces – that is what provoked Stefan to work with some friends of his for the glass space in question in Paris. If we have to signify with one name what we mean when we say Young British Artists – that is Damien Hurst. And if we have to point out directly the source of Glassbox – that is the exhibition Life/Live of YBA in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.
I have always been very lucky, things happen somehow intuitively – that is what also happened with Glassbox, Stefan Nikolaev says. Back then, in the second half of the 1990’s, he used to live in East Paris (sounds London-like, doesn’t it?). In an otherwise old neighbourhood which had come back into vogue, where the new building of Frederic Borel made of glass and concrete stood at the background of the historic Parisian facades.
And there I saw this empty space, I asked the mayor of the area, he said “Why not”, and we managed to take the space at a pretty low rent. This was the beginning. And Stefan Nikolaev entered the list of the Bulgarians abroad who became famous there, but not in this country. Next to the gallery, in a very French manner, there is a cafe, Charbon, owned by Jean-Claude Serge, a famous collector. He helped with funding, bought pieces of work, and as a whole supported Glassbox all the time. This was very emotional, absolutely voluntary work for all of us, and back then it was all extremely hot – there were comments everywhere, in the best magazines all over the world. Concept, place, epoch gathered very successfully together and the result was something more than an art venue. Glassbox made things related to the collective way of thinking, of reacting – it was a rather strong period of some, even though short, very constructive force.

The name of the gallery evolved naturally, out of the combination of the glass walls and the idea of the white cube as a perfect space for contemporary art. A container which is absolutely transparent to the world and with which you can see what is out from the inside, and what is in from the outside. The short life is relative – Glassbox stayed in Borel’s building for the whole of 10 years, until 2007, when the “glass box” was moved to Cite Internationale Universitaire and the names behind it changed. An author has to manage to control the time of his life.
Yes, things change. The road of the artist to the audience is becoming shorter and shorter in recent years – this was one of the purposes of YBA, of artist-run spaces, of Glassbox, which has definitely been achieved now. When I was at the Academy, a 40-year-old painter was a young one. Now the young painter is 25. But this also has its reverse side – a painter who is successful at 25, might not remain successful until he or she gets 40 – explains his words on life management Stefan Nikolaev. I ask him how he works. He says that he works in quietness, that he does not believe in the formula for the distribution of talent and effort, and that he is an ecological artist – before making something, I consider it, so that it does not turn out that I am simply making some piece of trash in space. What is he doing now? Since the beginning of this year, he has already had a solo exhibition in Paris, another one in New York, in Brussels, in Munich. Forthcoming are a participation in Hong Kong, and then another French exhibition – in the suburbs of Paris, in an old Catholic church which has now been turned into an art centre. I am trying to do what, a little egoistically, all authors do – our works – and to show them. I ask if he has any time left for other arts – cinema, theatre, music, books. Music, books... He starts considering the question and decides to abridge the answer – these are pretty huge storylines. But one of Stefan Nikolaev’s dreams is to do cinema at some point of his life. My mother is a film director and I have always admired, on the one hand, her ability to work with a team, and on the other, to stand up for "her film" as an author, in addition to the fact that the cinema space is probably the most amazing created time-place, as a visual art, that is, cinema is an important art, even the most important one. (And here Stefan quotes Lenin with the smile of the generation which is aware of the consequences of this statement.) At the end, we mention architecture – something very exciting, more than anything else – we live there, it shapes our environment, remains for centuries, creates an outlook, a way of life, inside, outside... And the attitude to art and the difficulty in distinguishing it from the fun, fair-like presentation – that type of exhibitions and projects of entertaining interactive character which are often seen in contemporary museums is extremely meaningless and polluting for the environment, the ecological artist says. Art is not entertainment. It could not fill up museums with people because it is fun there. Generally, pictorial art is the least popular one, and it is much more difficult for it to change the world. This is the logical conclusion. But it does not sound lamentable.