Mitko Karakolev
Mitko Karakolev
Website: www.mikospace.com
Instagram: @mikospace
Bio: Mitko (Miko) Karakolev is a London-based visual artist. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2017. A traditionally trained painter, he employs a broad spectrum of media in his creative practice: from painting and drawing to illustration, animation, moving image and sculpture. Although his avenues of expression are diverse, his body of work consistently addresses related themes and imagery.
Artist Statement: Taking inspiration from personal experience, dreams, films and music, Mitko’s work examines the subtleties of human relationships and aims to convey feelings of tenderness and intimacy. Hands are a recurring visual element in his work, due to their ability to express emotion through non-verbal communication. He also emphasises and plays with gesture, as it can be interpreted in different ways: a touch of a hand can be gentle and caring, but it can also imply power and control. Other notable motifs include the concept of the double and an intentional blurring of the boundaries between past/present and reality/fiction, which give his paintings and animations a surreal quality.
Mitko is interested in the domestic space as a site of emotion and memory and his work explores how nostalgia and melancholy can influence the way people perceive and reflect on the past. The interiors and landscapes in his paintings and drawings frequently allude to the inner worlds of the characters that inhabit these spaces.