Solo exhibition by Kiril Hadzhiev, recipient of the Artrise 2025 Homegallery Award: this new body of work explores the human figure as a site of tension between interiority and outward form, instinct and symbolic construction.

Working in acrylic on canvas, the artist embraces a fluid, intuitive process in which painting becomes a register of emotional states rather than a vehicle for narrative. The figures - often solitary and suspended in ambiguous spaces - emerge from an existential inquiry that resists fixed interpretation. While grounded in figuration, Hadzhiev’s practice integrates abstraction as a generative force. Painterly gestures disrupt and reconfigure the image, intensifying its sensory impact while destabilizing its boundaries. The artist avoids rigid planning, allowing material, color, and form to guide the evolution of each work. Chance and responsiveness are central to the process.

In Umanima, painting unfolds as both unsettling and seductive - an experience that slows perception and invites sustained looking. The works do not ask to be decoded; rather, they function as relational spaces activated through proximity and encounter. Meaning remains open, constructed in the exchange between artwork and viewer.

Here, painting becomes a field of exposure: to matter, to the gaze, and to the instability inherent in the human condition.