Access
On August 25th, the sculpture installation Access by Stoyan Dechev was unveiled on the first day of the Rivers of the City Festival – Gabrovo 2023.
Access is a work of art by Stoyan Dechev, created for the façade of the Christo and Jean-Claude Center in Gabrovo, a former building of the Textile Technical School in Gabrovo. The work consists of several parts and is located in multiple places, starting from the external service staircase that remains on one side of the building. By restoring the staircase through artistic intervention, public access to the history and future of the building is also restored.
The work interacts with the architecture and scale of the building, delicately taking over its silhouette and extending the staircase onto the roof of the building, as well as onto a nearby abandoned concrete structure and into the bed of the Yantra River.
The additions to the rooftop access column resonate with the transformation or collapse of architecture and the numerous changes, interventions, or alterations of form and purpose, turning this technological building into a cultural institution, as well as setting new directions for the city’s development as a whole.
The illuminated sculpture is visible in the night sky, softening the strict vertical lines of the column with a chaotic, dispersing manner that extends from the horizon to street level and descends into the river.
Access is the first in a series of installations in the urban environment as part of the Residence for Balance project, carried out by the Museum of Humor and Satire in partnership with the Gabrovo Municipality under the FestivalNO in the Neighborhood project, within the Cultural Entrepreneurship, Heritage, and Cooperation program.
In his work, Stoyan Dechev focuses on long-term projects, large-scale sculptures and installations, drawings, animation, and video within the context and specificity of different materials and certain locations. He brings artifacts from history and myth to current themes such as time, nature, astronomy, feminism, languages, resources, activism, or the role of the sculptor and his creativity in society.
