LAPIDARIUM
NIKOLAY SARDAMOV
...we wander around the wide world and collect treasures—summers, seas, kisses, sighs, shells, pebbles—like crazy kids, insatiable and truly imaginative. We carry memories that have a personal, almost archaeological significance, especially when we return to the rhythm of everyday life...
One glance at them and we are overcome with a shy smile or nostalgia for our memories... Like the most precious and special gift that children usually bring—a shell or a drawing... , and there lies hidden the entire lost paradise of our collective memory.
Nikolay Sardamov has always created "third kind" jewelry that transforms the meaning of matter through provocation. This time, he plays with the unspoken moment of collecting fragments of meaningful moments that are irrelevant when we change their location or have value only to us. He turns them into lasting amulets, wraps them in timeless material, and modernizes their role as objects that have collected many sounds, journeys, and stories.
He draws ideas from nature, his greatest inspiration being natural organisms, processes, and structures that we can apply in our daily lives, as well as simple and pure forms. Sometimes very little is needed, and everything else we carry within ourselves or find in nature.
This capsule collection is a close collaboration with the cosmetics brand Etat Pur, whose products are over 97% biomimetic, using nature and the skin's natural structures and processes as their main inspiration. Biomimetics is closely related to bionics—borrowing from nature or adapting forms that exist in nature.
Thus, the author puts us in a role, even when we ask for these treasures, and if we carry them, we become the wind that rocks them and the song of the sea, gathered in a shell—brought to the city, enveloping us in dreams and poetry.
The project is in special collaboration with:
NIKOLAY SARDAMOV
1975 Born in Sevlievo, Bulgaria
Education:
1999 BA in Fine Arts Pedagogy, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski
2003 Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, Erico Nagai
2004 Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, Johanna Dahm
2005 MA Jewellery and Metal, Academy of Fine Arts, Sofia
Awards:
2000 Grand Prix in New Technologies Competition, Union of Bulgarian Artists, Sofia
Public Collections:
Dallas Museum of Arts, Dallas
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Solo exhibitions:
2023“MEETING POINT”, V&V Gallery, Vienna
2023“MEETING POINT”, with Mihail Novakov, Testa Gallery, Sofia
2017 “GARDEN CITY”, Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow
2015 “GARDEN CITY”, with Vencislava Vasileva, V&V Gallery, Vienna
2015 “GARDEN CITY”, with Vencislava Vasileva, Testa Gallery, Sofia
2013 "BRAND NEW", Testa Gallery, Sofia
2013 "Constructions", Isabella Hund Gallery, Munich
2013 "Intersections", Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow
2012 "Intersections", Barbara Weinberger Gallery, Nurnberg
2012 "OPUS", with Tsvetelina Alexieva, Reverso Gallery, Lisbon
2012 “3 from Sofia”, with Tsvetelina Alexieva and Dimitar Delchev, Galeriehaus
Grosche, Castrop - Rauxel
2012 "Intersections", Testa Gallery, Sofia
2012 " Selected works", Altronics Light & Suspacious, architectural lighting
studio, Sofia
2010 “3x2=Schmuck”, with Tsvetelina Alexieva and Dimitar Delchev, Mangold
Gallery, Leipzig
2010 “Continuum “, Metalab Gallery, Sydney
2010 “Be-Re-Cycle”, V&V Gallery, Vienna
2009 “The secret of the garden”, Testa Gallery, Sofia
2007 “New work”, Jungbluth Gallery, Luxemburg
2007 “Taste”, with Tsvetelina Alexieva and Dimitar Delchev, Galeriehaus
Grosche, Castrop - Rauxel
2006 “Nostalgia”, with Tsvetelina Alexieva and Liliana Ploskova, V&V Gallery,
Vienna
2004 “All Roads Lead to… Glasgow”, Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow
2003 “Wee treasures”, V&V Gallery, Vienna
2001 “Sweet Nothingness”, V&V Gallery, Vienna
2001 “High Couture “, Bluecoat Display Center, Liverpool
Exhibition participations:
since 1995 Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Luxemburg, Portugal, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Turkey, United States of America
