Stefan Nikolaev

Stefan Nikolaev was born in Bulgaria in 1970 and studied at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. He now lives and works between Paris and Sofia. Stefan Nikolaev’s work is largely imbued with his dual cultural background, which is why it manifests itself through an aesthetic of discrepancy.

Stefan Nikolaev is imbued with the codes that govern our society today, invaded by logos and signs in identical places. His art is a synthesis of minimalism and pop art, combining economy of means and bright colors. Like a modern-day Andy Warhol, he makes his own the images of mass culture to compose his luminous still-lifes. His creations are made of Murano glass neon fixed to hammered copper supports. He has developed an international vocabulary of objects and brands, trying to recreate the haphazard effect of duty-free zones, where cultures and histories meet in suspended time.

In “Composition à la pipe et mandoline”, which he is presenting this year for Private Choice 2024, we find the pipe motif a reference to the emblematic Pipe by Magritte, the master of Belgian surrealism, but there is also Nikolaev’s favorite object: the cigarette, which appears in several of his works. This object, a product of consumer society, is the symbol of a civilization that is consuming itself and heading for extinction. The mandolin, meanwhile, can be seen as a nod to Gauguin’s paintings, particularly his “Nature morte à la mandoline” in the Musée d’Orsay. In this way, he fuses different pictorial universes, belonging to very distinct currents in the history of art. Finally, while this piece abounds in explicit allusions through the elements that make it up, the whole is reminiscent of the cubist collages of the early twentieth century: it is undoubtedly the presence of the mandolin that reinforces this idea, half-heartedly evoking the works of Braque or Picasso.