Red Hook, New York
Riv Bulgari
Eastern Light
Duckworth GalleryDuckworth Gallery is proud to present Eastern Light, a solo exhibition by Bulgarian-American artist Riv Bulgari, who has spent most of his life in Brooklyn. His work — spanning painting, sculpture, printmaking, murals, and documentary film — is born from the collision of East and West, tradition and modernity, ritual and rebellion. The title Eastern Light is not accidental. It carries the Masonic sense of the guiding light — the illumination that leads humanity toward knowledge, truth, and perhaps a better future. It is a beacon rising from the East, refracted through the restless energy of New York City, and projected onto a world shaken by wars — both human and corporate. At the heart of the exhibition lies Bulgari's monumental canvas The Signs of War — a work where fractured pink tones and unsettled, sharp-edged forms collide with echoes of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the unyielding cry of Guernica. Yet here, these references are reimagined as contemporary prophecy: visions of climate urgency, broken dreams, and political struggle woven into abstract signs, hidden codes, and figures that look back at us like witnesses from another realm. Bulgari's practice is charged with tension — between homage and defiance, clarity and secrecy, despair and renewal. His canvases bear scars of labor: scraped surfaces, overpainted gestures, rebuilt forms. Out of this process, symbols emerge like relics unearthed from time — spirals of life, fractured flags, the ever-watchful eye that observes us all. These are not static images but encrypted messages, carrying both warning and promise. Eastern Light is not simply an exhibition. It is a passage into a coded world where art becomes both a mirror and a compass — reflecting humanity's turbulence while pointing toward what may come next. In a time when empires fade, values fracture, and freedom itself feels unstable, Bulgari reminds us: all is unsettled, and all is temporary. And yet, through light, we seek direction.