AMBIENCE X

Ivan Moudov​

1959, Sofia, Bulgaria

Certificate of Namegiving

Ivan Moudov is one of the most intriguing Bulgarian artists of his generation and is internationally renowned. He uses post-conceptual tools to analyze the world and the art system. His performance Traffic Control (2001 / 2003) is particularly well known. Dressed as a traffic policeman, Moudov directed the flow of cars in various European cities. Behind this seemingly mischievous act was a complex game with social and political subtexts. As Moudov himself noted, in his native Bulgaria the police symbolize the unchecked power of the regime, such that when one encounters them it is unclear whose rights they are protecting. Moudov is interested in what it means to be “on their side” but at the same time to remain beyond the law, as his actions were not actually sanctioned by any regulatory authority. His appearance in a Bulgarian police uniform on the streets of other countries gives rise to a whole array of meanings because such symbols of power are not even recognized there.

In the work Certificate of Namegiving, Moudov manipulates the art scene rather than society. The series of certificates was created for the artist’s exhibition at Berlin’s Gregor Podnar gallery, the theme of which was appropriation. When Moudov was a student, the collection at Moderna galerija in Ljubljana made a great impression on him, and he noticed that some of the works did not have a name or, more precisely, were described as “Untitled.” He was inspired to give the works names and to unite them conceptually by writing titles appropriated from an illustration reminiscent of an extract from a botany textbook, where the structures of flowers are described in detail. On the one hand this ironically plays up the conceptual abstraction created by a name like Untitled, and on the other it raises for discussion the hermetically sealed quality of the contemporary art system as a whole.