Critique by Timothy Warrington
2017

A LYRICAL FLOW OF COSMIC ENERGY

Alexander Kaprichev’s impressive corpus of paintings shows an evolution in language, style
and poetry. Completely astounded, the viewer is impressed by the heterogeneity of pictorial
results communicated a whirlwind of brush strokes and intuitive spontaneity of this
Bulgarian master. Sometimes reasoned, other times instant, tumultuous and passionate,
Alexander navigates his canvases with delicate chromatic harmony alternating between
ardent and created ferocity. The brush strokes never rest, in an endless struggle between
curvilinear riddles an angular plasticity.
Kaprichev’s artistic influences, parallel an enhanced by his innate passion for music, connect
his work to the delicate watercolours by Jean Miotte, one of the founders of pioneering
Abstraction Lyrique, a Post-war Modernist movement. Similarly, these two artists
materialised and give life to the lyrical flow of jazz, echoing the dynamic art of dance with
their inventive lines and gesture. Kaprichev’s forms radiate and vibrate from the canvases, a
magical place in which his creative mind gives life to unexpected beauty, producing
mysterious scenarios inspired and within the scope of Art Informel.
Stylistically speaking, Alexander cannot be said to have identified with a single school or
movement. Rather, his artistic career has been characterised as one of persistent research
and a lifelong attempt to overcome himself and investigate knew artistic mediums.
Kaprichev’s gestural nature bears resemblance to Miro’s nebulous forms, spatial shapes, and
abstracted objects, floating in a mysterious background impregnated with possibilities and
vibrations.
Indeed, Kaprichev's pictorial space is constituted by recognisable objects and perspectives
wisely amalgamated within a realm of hypnotic illusions and fictitious elements. This artist
has kept his boundless fantasy within the realm of the “ordinary”, leaving the observer the
perception that subjects depicted have always coexisted both in the material sphere and in
the evocative pictorial space of Kaprichev’s art.
Kaprichev skilfully balanced improvisation with scrupulous precision availing of an elegant,
ethereal and multifaceted palette, albite with the colours that are frequently audacious and
highly expressive, in an inexhaustible alternation of divergences.
Ergo, Kaprichev’s paintings become mirrors of the artist subconscious, a cryptic nook where
the spontaneity of evocative brushwork integrates with a new thoughtful compositional
structure. Thus, the spectator is absorbed by contemplative paintings enhanced with
perspective, depth and glimpses of exquisite technical mastery.
Kaprichev directly conveyed emotional impulses on each work, with the veiled aim of
moving our senses and influencing the environment around them. Kaprichev’s genius is
about liberty of expression, disclosed through primal and is instinctual sensations that speak
directly to our collective consciousness. The magnificent absence of contrived structures,
conceptions and approaches leads to a striking aura of exuberance and vitality where cosmic
energy and subjective vigour inescapably intertwine.

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Timothy Warrington, ICAC