sailing

Sailing emerges from a tension in Ivan Peychev’s poetry between the paper vessel and the real voyage. Paper flotillas belong to the imagination: they lead nowhere, yet open an infinity of possible directions. The real ship carries sadness, fear and the risk inherent in discovery.

In these painted collages, the ship is not represented literally. It is broken down into hull, sail, mast, trace and direction. The red-brown textures evoke weight and lived time, while the white fields become sails, light and silence at once. Stitches, torn edges and layered surfaces preserve the fragility of a paper construction while giving it the material resistance of a real vessel.

The series approaches sailing as an inward act. Between the call to remain and the desire to discover, the creative gesture becomes another kind of journey—not towards a geographical territory, but towards image, memory and one’s own direction.