Houben R.T.
Bulgarian painter
Houben Tcherkelov, (Bulgarian: Хубен Черкелов; known as Houben R.T.; American, born in Bulgaria on January 23, 1970) is a painter and experimental artist who lives and works in New York. In his early photographs, film, and installations post-communist Bulgaria and Bulgarian art is a recurrent theme. In his more recent work, Tcherkelov paints images from American and other national currencies using impasto, glaze, foil, acrylic and watercolor techniques. In all of his work the artist seeks to suggest the way in which symbolic images legitimize national power.
Life and work
Houben Tcherkelov was born on January 23, 1970, in Kardzhali, a town in southeastern Bulgaria. Tcherkelov studied painting at the National Academy of Art in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, and was associated with the radical movement around the XXL Gallery.
Tcherkelov's early works in Sofia analyze space and life structures in a society transitioning at once to a new social system and acclimating to the rapid pace of globalization. Freezing, a 1994 exhibit of frozen animals in Sofia's National Museum of Natural History (Bulgaria) pointed to the moribund state of museums in Bulgaria, grossly out of sync with the normal pace of events. Perhaps Tcherkelov's most well-known work from his series of interventions is Suitable Suit, a video still from which served as the cover of Menschenbilder: Foto- und Videokunst aus Bulgarien. In this video the artist lumbers through a field in a suit many sizes too large.
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