“The full picture” project could be defined as a study of the ways through which visual perception overcomes the fragmentariness of image . This too general definition in fact refers to a series of ambiguous images created to lure the vision of an abstract plane between the fragment, active on its own and the whole picture . At the same time, they form a series of impossible and absurd situations.

Kosta Tonev draws the viewer into the telling of stories brought together by elusive hints and metaphors . Despite the inexistence of a storyline, his photographs and pictures take in towards the recreation of an occurrence facilitating the rationalization of the image.

“The full picture” is the name of the exhibition’s central work. This is a photographic installation consisting of nine parts, ordered as a unit, like a puzzle makes a whole picture. Every single module of this picture contains the endless triviality of a situation, easy to recognize and decode. These are three identical kinescopes in different configurations, turned towards the terrain on which they are arranged. Gathered, they transfer the eye to an entirely different reality – an idyllic green landscape, which turns out to be strewn with the fallen overripe ‘fruit’ of our technical times. Already a part of the whole picture, the three kinescopes multiply on the terrain in a weird rhythm.

This photo installation offers several planes of perception . To reach the eventual metaphor of the fast rhythm of nowadays ’ s technologies development , the author takes us first through an optical illusion and then through a new rationalization of simple objects and everyday situations.

The concept in the photography named ‘One isolated moment’ has been constructed in a similar way. It depicts a girl in a ‘low start’ position. Contrary to all expectations, her whole pre-start impetus is directed towards a flat, white wall. And it is here, where the tragic story of conflict with reality starts and ends.

The video ‘ Switch Over ’ is also a part of ‘The full picture’ . Its object is a building in the center of Vienna , predominantly remarkable with its untypical length of 1.5 km . – completely in the characteristic spirit of socialist megalomania .

In this sense , the ‘ Switch Over ’ video includes an interesting background. Kosta Tonev is amongst the numerous contemporary young painters, for whom conditionality is the concrete cultural context, as he inhabits two at the same time – Sofia and Vienna. And yet, with his interest towards Karl Marx Hof, to great extent he transmits associations that could also be interpreted as a kind of connecting component between the two contexts.

The video documents a performance in which one person runs the whole distance of Karl Marx Hof. For the time for which he reaches its opposite end, the night is changed by day . This occurs for about 15 minutes at real time . The video is 3.35 minutes long . Everything in it is a trap consisting in the confusion of logic through which time and space are changed. An active factor in this confusion is the building’s ridiculous length. Despite change of time and intensive traffic, the background of the action is unchanged – a permanent and unshakable product of a utopia. The whole meaning is subdued to irony and another re-reading of reality and delusion.

The paradox comes from the common aim of all these optical illusions and provocations and it is the most objective re-discovery of truth. The very expression “ the full picture ” is like a model metaphor of “ the whole truth ” , which suggests exposure of the controversial reality.

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