By Iskra Velitchkova
INK speaks to the bold insistence on leaving a trace, a mark that knows it will fade, yet persists. A poetic contradiction lies in each stroke : the pursuit of permanence in a world destined to vanish.
It all began with a train. Well, not a real train, but an idea: that feeling that something is moving forward, and you need to jump aboard before it vanishes. I had been chasing it for years. I’m not sure if it was moving too fast or if I was simply running too slow, but the truth is, I got exhausted.
2024 started with a clear ambition: to think. Everyone here knows all too well what the past years have been like. Artists, collectors, gallerists—each of us chasing the same train. The train of now or never, the one that carries the weight of proving the value of what we believe in. Creating, experimenting, fighting. Breaking down walls, carving out a space, defining ourselves, surviving. And it has been extraordinary—undeniably one of the most inspiring journeys I remember.
But even the most vibrant impulse needs a pause. We all need to stop for a moment, to rediscover why we do what we do. But that only happens when we come face to face with ourselves. When we look around: the walls, the paintings we've hung, the books we've gathered. The desk where we work, the notebooks we've filled. There is an essence within each of us, and, surprisingly, it’s remarkably easy to lose it.
Because collective urgency, no matter how noble, can dilute us. The richness of what we build together will only be genuine if each of us has the courage to reveal what we carry within, to express it in our own way. So, I turned off the engines.
For personal reasons that aren't worth taking up your time with, I finally allowed myself that luxury. I left behind codes inherited over the years, those chained projects, those familiar lines of work that, though reliable, no longer felt like my own.
I wanted to start again from scratch. Free from pressures, markets, or any gaze. The dreaded blank page. And from there, to build something. To release it into the world and, with a little luck, find some peace. So I went through my notebooks and photos from over the years—moments that stayed with me from museums, galleries, even hotel rooms.
Slowly, common patterns started to emerge: lines, shapes, a kind of quiet softness in all of them.
The childlike strokes in Picasso’s sketches: women, doves, guitars, cats.
The sketches of Chillida, which I only recently discovered. His sculptures never absolutely moved me, but in his lines, in these notebooks exhibited, in the work of his left hand, I found a striking vulnerability.
The raw, blazing chaos of Basquiat—a visual language that once left me puzzled but now resonates deeply.
Then I revisited my own work. The forms, and color—always an ally—began to irritate me. They felt noisy, clunky, childish. They lacked strength. I began to wonder: could I ever break free from the confines of the pixel, the stiffness of straight lines, the harsh angles, the cold glare of the screen? I wondered if I could ever use a computer to evoke the same emotions those sketches stirred in me.
Maybe it was a fleeting madness—I don’t know. But I wanted to feel that stroke, to experience the marks paper carries: the snap of a pencil tip when anger takes over, the way paper softens when a tear falls mid-process, or how my fingers stain with ink because pens always seem to break. Just this once, I wanted the computer to truly hear me.
And then, just as my plans seemed on the verge of collapse, an invitation appeared. Sarah Rossien (Associate Artistic Director of Art Blocks) reached out, inviting me to join this new Curated adventure, as part of the show Poetics of the Infinite with Zach Lieberman and Lars Wander.
A year to create something meaningful. It felt like a sign, a reassurance: we’re here, walking this path with you. What better place to start, I thought. And so, the journey began.
Slowly, I let myself explore again. My thoughts, my readings, my sketches. Then one day, staring at those sketches, it hit me: the beginning was already there. It was always the sketches. Sketches.
I sketched aimless shapes. I ran systems to unravel what might emerge from them. Would silhouettes appear? Connected elements? Recognizable patterns?
And then, one day, an idea struck me like lightning.
For years, I had been captivated by the world of scents. My shelves were filled with books on perfumery, biographies of master perfumers, and studies on plants, dyes, and pigments. I thought of Marrakech: its vibrant streets, the colors, the sweet warmth, the air heavy with fruits and spices. I remembered the rose fields of Bulgaria and Turkey, places I had always dreamed of visiting, the plants in my garden, and that alembic I impulsively bought without any idea of what I’d do with it.
There was something about my own search for the essential that inevitably led me to the purest of instincts: scent. There was something beyond shapes—something abstract, intimate, personal. Something we might poetically call an aroma. Then let’s do it.
Maybe it would help me understand, to unlock certain discomforts I still feel when interacting with the machine. Maybe the mistake lies in always being so rational. Perhaps I would grasp it through scent. Either way, I didn’t overthink it. The decision was made.
But the idea of creating a perfume was both electrifying and terrifying. How could I distill the essence of my work into something so fleeting? How could I capture its soul? And where, exactly, does one even begin to conjure a scent from nothing? Future problems, I told myself.
When I shared this vision with Sarah and Holladay Saltz (General Manager of Art Blocks), something extraordinary happened. Holladay, revealed that she came from the perfume industry and had a deep understanding of fragrance creation. I was floored. What were the chances that she would have exactly the expertise I needed to bring this dream to life? And that she wanted to be part of the journey?! It felt like the stars had aligned—as if this project wasn’t just mine but part of something much larger, something waiting to come to life.
A series of initial reflections, a quick trip to New York, a morning spent with Sarah smelling perfumes in the most hidden corners of Soho… and we began.
This wasn’t going to be some botanical experiment in my garden; it was Holladay crafting a real perfume. Something that would embody the essence of my work—not as an accessory, but as its shadow, its reflection, its echo.
I had the structure, the idea, but one question haunted me: what would the focus be? What would the scent be? The perfume, like my digital work, had to answer that lingering question: what does all this smell like?
As always, I began at the origins. Would this project respond to my eternal questions? Would I find something in the sketches that brought clarity? Perhaps I could deconstruct the forms to shape their randomness. Would the perfume smell like my places? My past? Would we blend it with the present? Would it be a scent that spoke of identity?
I shared these ideas with Holladay, who encouraged me to write everything down: places, scents, memories—anything that could serve as a starting point. She would find a way to bring it all together, to give shape to the intangible. I took on the exercise, and I have to admit, it moved me more than I expected.
But then, one day, in its infinite contradictions, the universe delivered a lesson. In the middle of my creative process, I experienced a profound personal loss. It consumed me entirely, leaving no space for anything else. The ink, once confined to my notebook, began to spill—onto the table, the walls, even the streets outside. The sky itself seemed to absorb its weight, heavy and suffocating. It felt as though I could no longer contain it, as though black demanded more space. Each uneven stroke became a branch reaching toward the surface. And then, suddenly, everything somehow came together.
The canvas vanished. It evaporated. Strip everything away, I thought. Remove the background, the shadows, every distraction. Leave only the line. That line—drawn on paper or screen—demanded its absolute space. Once again, the eternal question arose: what holds a greater truth? The tangible weight of the canvas or the infinite expanse of the screen?
These questions had haunted me for years, but in that moment of shadow—when clarity emerges from despair—they all felt irrelevant. There are times when the shadow, with its sobriety, allows you to think more clearly. Like Junichirô Tanizaki taught us: it is in the shadow that we see the light. And in that light, I found purpose. Or something like it.
I realized then that INK could not be a digital work complemented by a physical object, nor a physical creation with a digital extension. INK had to be free. I was furious, deeply furious. I refused to make any concessions. I wouldn’t let it depend on the inevitable decay of ink on paper or the unavoidable obsolescence of pixels. INK would rely on the one thing that truly depends on us: our memory. That would be its foundation. Its container.
INK would speak to the human desire to leave a mark, the pursuit of permanence in a world destined to fade. Each stroke would reflect fragments of the human experience: figures, letters, dreams. But none of it would be purely tangible. It would be memory, shaped by contradictions.
I wanted the act of remembering to trascend the act of seeing.
Ink, the universal symbol of permanence, became the centerpiece of it all. A vessel for capturing loss, for anchoring stories in time. For generations, ink has carried the weight of memories, experiences, and histories. It has written names that defy erasure, holding them safe from the tide of forgetfulness. Ink declares: you were here. It fades, it smudges, it weathers. And yet, somehow, it persists. Perhaps this is what existence is—the audacity to insist on being, even when unseen.
And so, the perfume had to be ink. I let go of the idea of origins and the vanities tied to them. Ink. It didn’t need a more elaborate explanation. Black on black. What does black smell like?
We got to work. Holladay embraced this new direction in her research and spent weeks experimenting, searching for ingredients that could distill this essence. And finally, she found them: iron gall ink, India ink, sweetgrass, black and pink pepper, fir balsam, hinoki cedar, Bulgarian rose absolute, ambrette seed, Buddhawood, cistus, guaiacol, and Peru balsam.
Just beautiful, I thought.
It was ink in all its forms: India ink, ballpoint pens, fountain pens, charcoal. But it had to smell good—a challenge I thought might be impossible. And yet, when I smelled the perfume for the first time, I knew we had done it.
The pieces came together as if they had always been meant to. The ink, the perfume, the visuals—they all merged into a kind of pact with time, as if the sent whispered to the screen: “We exist. For a moment, we were real.”
Perhaps it is in this quiet persistence of existence, that we find redemption—an echo of those who remain and those who are already gone. A tribute to life, to what truly matters, to what we long to preserve.
And so, the series revisits the history of inks.
Iron Gall Ink: Used to preserve medieval manuscripts, it paradoxically corroded the very pages it sought to immortalize.
Blue Ink: A staple of modern life, blue ink serves the mundane and practical, grounding us in the everyday.
Black Ink: Solemn and eternal, black ink has recorded humanity’s final words and monumental decisions.
White Ink: Rare and luminous, white ink exists solely to illuminate and contrast, used sparingly for moments that demand brilliance.
I worked in parallel with my notebooks and code, constantly printing pieces and pouring ink over the drawings. The results amazed me. The ink would flow across the drawing, following the grooves of the printed lines to recalibrate its path. Once dry—depending on the amount of ink, the drying method, exposure to direct sunlight, or simply letting the drawings air-dry—the compositions created a sense of confusion that I found fascinating. The distinction between what was digital, what was printed, and what was real ink completely dissolved.
Once again, the medium didn’t matter at all. It didn’t matter what surface the work was built on. Only the lines mattered.
What fascinated me most was the feedback loop between processes. The prints of the digital work inspired how I poured the ink, and the way I poured the ink completely influenced the tones I would create with the code. It was during this piece, when I spilled an entire bottle of ink, left it to dry, and illuminated it with a warm light, that I saw the color of rust. And I coded it—in my own way.
That’s why, among the features, Oxide stands out. Everything else is part of the same sequence of ideas. But this one felt special.
From all this, six distinct fragrances emerged, each uniquely tied to the moment of its creation. Produced at the time of purchase through an algorithmic process, every formula is completely one-of-a-kind, yet they all share a common ethos. To you, dear reader—what can I say? A long form, just as it’s always been.
And finally, the hand-blown bottles—luminous drops of crystal—became artworks in their own right, holding the liquid ink within.
Each composition is anchored by a song from Travis—a band that has unknowingly accompanied me through every chapter of my conscious life. Their music has been there for everything, a constant witness, perhaps understanding me better than I understand myself.
This work carries a quiet gesture of gratitude. Whether in its lyrics or titles, their influence lingers within INK—a testament to how music shapes us, holds us, and transforms us.
***
When I finished, I opened the window in my studio. The air smelled of ink. I couldn’t tell if it was the perfume or if it was something else. I only knew that, for a moment, the world felt clearer. And as the wind came in, I realized that it didn’t need to be seen to exist. That was, really, more than enough.
Photography credits
Luis Gaspar
Casey Joiner
Iskra Velitchkova © 2024