In his more recent work, Tcherkelov paints images from American and other national currencies using impasto, glaze, foil, acrylic and watercolor techniques.
[2] Tcherkelov's early works in Sofia analyze space and life structures in a society transitioning at once to a new social system and acclimating to the rapid pace of globalization.
[3] Perhaps Tcherkelov's most well-known work from his series of interventions is Suitable Suit, a video still from which served as the cover of Menschenbilder: Foto- und Videokunst aus Bulgarien.
Tcherkelov's analysis of Bulgarian society culminated in Reality Show (1998), a video that, with numerous art historical references, satirizes the affluence and decadence of the international film and music industry transferred to Sofia.
[10] Tcherkelov cites the panic in the Bulgarian banking sector in the 1990s, which forced the government to devaluate the national currency, the Lev, by removing three zeroes, as the initial impetus that drove his consideration, from an aesthetic perspective, of the symbolic power of money.
[11] He also points to his arrival in New York as an immigrant, and his reliance on coins to make calls from payphones, as having "left [him] with the feeling of communication," and that money is a component of expression.
In 25 years, artificial intelligence will make many professions redundant, but there will be room for traditional human activity that cannot be multiplied or created by robots.
In order to experience Houben's works, "[o]ne has to move, to change their stance, to exhaust the spatial relations, and there will still be an elusive remainder.