In "This month" section, artnewscafe bulletin offers a wide selection of exhibitions, events, and open calls in the field of contemporary art in Bulgaria – Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Veliko Tarnovo and in Europe.
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Gábor Máté
untitled, personal archive, 2022.
Photography
Details
- Photographer: Gábor Máté
- Description: issue cover : Gábor Máté / Inner sky / solo exhibition / Synthesis Gallery, 55 Vasil Levski bul., Liszt Institute - Hungarian Cultural Center, 16 Aksakov St. / November 3 – January 14. ©Gábor Máté, personal archive
- Copyright: Gábor Máté
SOFIA - ART TALKS SOFIA - PLOVDIV - VARNA
SOFIA
¬ Andres Serrano / Torture / Masters of photography, Edition XIV / solo show / National Gallery, The Palace, 1, Knyaz Alexander I Sq. / September 16 – November 10. Presented in his largest scaled photographs, akin to Renaissance masterpieces, the exhibition comprises twenty works from a monumental body of work that elucidates the decay at the heart of society. Torture captures the empty spaces of interrogation rooms, immigration detention centres and concentration camps, alongside historical torture devices from prominent museum collections and replica devices used as tourist attractions. Serrano photographed preeminent Whistle-blowers on torture and the victims, who generously offered their testimonies. https://bit.ly/3Cizv2n
¬ Misirkov/Bogdanov / The cars we drove to capitalism / joint exhibition / National Gallery, The Palace, 1, Knyaz Alexander I Sq. / October 6 – November 27. This exhibition and the accompanying eponymous documentary do not relate the history of automotive manufacturing in Socialist countries, nor are they retrospective in character. With their inherent sense of humour, unique visual language and obvious love for cars, Boris Missirkov and Georgi Bogdanov explore the phenomenon of sotz cars in Europe and their present owners. https://nationalgallery.bg/exhibitions/
¬ Yona Tukuser / Hunger / solo show / National Gallery, Kvadrat 500, 1, 19th February St. / September 27 – November 27. In an interdisciplinary project, the artist Yona Tukuser, who works in the style of Metamodernism, interprets in her paintings the tragic consequences of hunger in the 20th century, while casting a troubled look at the present in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine. “Philosopher George Santayana’s aphorism that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, should sound like an alarm, the power of which will be amplified by the historical paintings that are part of the project”’ commented Yona Tukuser. https://bit.ly/3SH49I4
¬ Lilyana Rousseva (1932 – 2009) / retrospective exhibition / National Gallery, Kvadrat 500, 1, 19th February St. / October 18 – December 12. Through landscapes, portraits, self-portraits, still lifes, figural compositions, and nudes, an attempt has been made to encompass the entire genre and thematic variety of Lilyana Rousseva’s paintings. Included are paintings and drawings from the inventory of the National Gallery, the Sofia City Art Gallery, the art galleries in Pleven, Gabrovo, Kyustendil, Plovdiv, Ruse, Varna, Lovech, Sliven, and Smolyan, from her heirs and from private collectors. https://nationalgallery.bg/exhibitions/
¬ Lenka Klodova / From the black shadow / solo exhibition / Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art, 2, Cherni Vrah Blvd. / October 20 – December 4. In her first solo exhibition in the gallery, Lenka Klodova presents works that connect the performative and the sculptural approach developed by the artist since the 90’s. Exhibition’s main theme revolves around the cultural and gender stereotypes. https://nationalgallery.bg/exhibitions/
¬ Women artists. New horizons between the two world wars / group exhibition / Sofia City Art Gallery, 1 Gen. Gurko st. / September 14 – November 27. In the early 1920’s, an impressively large group of women artists having rejected traditional gender role beliefs became active in the art scene. Self-confident, determined and devoted to her talent, the woman artist of the time between the two world wars managed, from today’s perspective, to establish herself in the art scene. The exhibition features more than 200 fine art and craft works. Most of them were created in the period 1919–1939 representing a wide variety of genres and themes. https://sghg.bg/en/exhibitions/women-artists-new-horizons-between-the-two-world-wars/
¬ The Neighbours: Forms of Trauma (1945-1989) / joint project and installation / Sofia City Art Gallery, 1 Gen. Gurko st., Studio The Neighbours, 40 Georgi Benkovski Str. / November 3 – December 4. “The Neighbours” is a multi-site installation that engages silence and fragmentation surrounding memories of political violence in post-socialist Bulgaria. It is the outcome of 20 years of scholarly research and 8 years of collaboration. Through object, video and sound interventions, Julian Chehirian and Krasimira Butseva compose spaces for bearing witness to silenced trauma built upon 40 interviews conducted by the authors (2002-2022) with survivors of repression and forced labor. Inviting us to listen to their listening, they offer a space for attention to an unsettled forgetting. https://bit.ly/3WmLrbn
¬ Martian Tabakov / The Circumstances We Create Are The Ones That Change Us / solo exhibition / Vaska Emanouilova Gallery, 15, Qnko Sakyzov bul. / October 25 – December 4. The current exhibition revolves around the idea of the architectural design of the human world and all things human, as well as its possible transformations and reincarnations. Regarding the project the artist says, ‘Striving to create more and more comfortable living conditions we give up on our natural capabilities of dealing with life.’ The environment created by Martian Tabakov at the Vaska Emanuilova Gallery reveals a mirror of human alienation and loneliness hidden behind the concept of comfort. https://fb.me/e/3OBigmEel
¬ Marina Demchenko / solo show / Toplotsentrala Regional Centre for Contemporary Art, 5 Emil Berzinski str / October 28 – November 13. “In our fragile world everything is connected with subtle bonds. Could these bonds be restored once they are broken?” asks the artist focusing on the human experience connected to collective feeling. The exhibition reflects her personal and symbolic reaction to the war in Ukraine. https://fb.me/e/3AN28LKfw
¬ Vassil Ovcharov / retrospective exhibition / UBA, 6 Shipka str / November 10 - 26. About this idiosyncratic look-back, the author shares: “Each painting was inspired by some memory of mine. What I am interested in is the purely “pictorial moment”. I'd let my intuition guide me, improvise, do my best not to interfere roughly in the process. To me drawing is a thrill and a passion, and quite often the result surprises me… I am hoping to convey this feeling to those who contemplate my paintings”. https://sbh.bg/en/exhibition-schedule/exhibitions
¬ Eternal Flame – The Radiating Archive / group exhibition / Goethe-Institut Bulgarien, 1 Budapesta St. / October 20 – November 18. The exhibition Eternal Flame: The Radiating Archive works with the legacy of Germany's first Nuclear Research Center, opened in Karlsruhe in 1957. After the center was closed and its facilities transferred to the local technical university. Later in 2017 began a digitization process. Since then, the archive has become the starting point for numerous artistic investigations, exhibitions, and publications dealing with its visual regime. In the frame of the current exhibition the legacy of the archive is seen as a cosmos that was opened to artists investigating its visual regime. They are united in the attempt to translate, interpret and understand the policy of image making in the context of cold and post-war West Germany and beyond. https://bit.ly/3h6zDJZ ¬ Free Fall / conceptual fashion project / Structura Gallery, 9 Kuzman Shapkarev str. / November 3 – 17. Free Fall is the fifth conceptual fashion project of “Ivan Asen 22”, a foundation whose mission is to support and present contemporary fashion designers. The project provokes a bold experimentation with unorthodox materials, surfaces and silhouettes. Its starting point is the origin of life – the Big Bang, the transformation of particles. The textile sculptures and accessories presented in the exhibition are inspired from the chemical element copper and reflect its different physical states. https://bit.ly/3FIV3Hw
¬ Nevena Ekimova / Pyjama Party in the Belly of the Whale / solo show / curator Chiara Cartuccia / ICA-Sofia Gallery, 134, Vasil Levski Blvd. / October 13 – November 8. “This exhibition attempts to produce a different space/time within the gallery walls, for other, new people to come play, lie down, sit, affect and pollute the former white cube. However, alongside a whimsical representation of visceral animal abysses, still stand lopsided versions of an art space’s peripheral infrastructures, as the gift shop, or the omnipresent private-view-time makeshift bar. Far from radical otherness in its formalisation, as well as in its acceptance of digestion as a functional method, the exhibition rather wishes to create a moment of quiet disruption of the ordinary.”, says about the show the curator Chiara Cartuccia. https://bit.ly/3Ef1e5f
¬ Todor Andreevski / Portrait-express / solo show / CREDO BOX, Credo Bonum Gallery, 2 Slavyanska str. / October 28 – November 27. Credo Box transforms itself into a fictitious mini photographic laboratory, where Todor Andreevski presents his first Sofia exhibition. The works are conceived as a kind of trajectory through the faces and bodies shown, traveling portraits. The artist offers a journey through the various places where the photographs were “captured”, only we do not travel from city to city but rather from character to character. He photographs various characters, anonymous or from a circle of friends, who blend into the landscape, be it urban or in a desolate environment. His models parade in front of the lens and suggest the idea of a deliberate pose, but there are also shots taken in motion without prior preparation. https://fb.me/e/3hlV7F7XM
¬ Nikolay Petrov – GLOW / MULTICOLORVERSE / solo exhibition – installation / Depoo Gallery, 12B Vrabcha St. / October 20 – November 18. MULTICOLORVERSE takes the form of a single, gallery-integrated "walk-in" artwork in which the floor, walls and ceiling become canvases and the exhibition hall becomes a metaphorical flight into the universe of colors, shapes and sounds created by the artist. The sound environment developed especially for the exhibition by musicians Biljana Grudanska (piano, vocals), VOLEN (sound design) and Boris Nenov (sound engineer) complements the artistic concept, adding new layers to the overall experience and enhancing the sought-after effect of entering a fictive world "dissolving" into reality. https://fb.me/e/29TlkNcYY
¬ Anna Komitska, Vikenti Komitski and Juliusz Grabianski / Pattern Recognition / group show / Gallery "Little Bird Place", 7 "11-ti Avgust" Str. / November 8 – December 4. ““Pattern Recognition” invites us into an environment of the deep future to observe the interplay between human intervention, other-than-human agency, and networked industrial artefacts. In a parallel landscape populated by tentacular matter, we are nudged to acknowledge the agency of the inanimate and our state of displacement at a time of emergency.” – Anna Komitska https://bit.ly/3UbE2Ku
¬ Gábor Máté / Inner sky / solo exhibition / Synthesis Gallery, 55 Vasil Levski bul., Liszt Institute - Hungarian Cultural Center, 16 Aksakov St. / November 3 – January 14. The exhibition is presented in the two spaces of Synthesis Gallery and Liszt Institute - Hungarian Cultural Center. It traces the complex link between the personalities of parents and the characters of their children. If we accept that the future does indeed belong to the children, then it sits at stake in the hands of their parents. Does it matter whether a child has grown up with divorced parents, or in a family which has stayed together against all odds? What trace does the relationship between the parents leave on the child's soul? Gábor Máté uses the language of photography to seek answers to these questions, giving the children a voice. https://fb.me/e/35sQqLSVH
¬ Petya Boyukova / Influence / solo exhibition / Gallery Gallery, Ploshtadka, “Elisaveta Bagriyana” str. / October 13 – February 28. Influence is an AR sculpture of a cat made of body parts of Barbie dolls that can now be seen at Ploshtadka, and Container VOX POPULI as part of the Object programme. Petya Boyukova is best known for her extraordinarily daring stage and costume designs in independent and alternative theatre. https://www.gallerygallery.space/en/petya-boyukova-influence
ART TALKS SOFIA
¬ Photosynthesis Library: Open doors - Focus: Hungarian photography / Synthesis Gallery, 55 Vasil Levski bul. / November 28, 17:00 - 21:00. Part of the side-program of the exhibition Inner sky of Hungarian artist Gábor Máté. ‘The photographs become a strange mix of orderliness and lyrical documentary, of concrete and general, of real scenes, situations and photographic vision,’ writes the curator Károly Kincses of Máté’s work. https://fb.me/e/35sQqLSVH
PLOVDIV
¬ Valio Tchenkov / solo exhibition / Sarieva Gallery, 40 Otets Paisiy str. / November 11 – December 30. The exhibition features a selection of the newest paintings by the painter, along with works from the 2017 – 2021 period. "Soma" is the daily dose of the substance, which Aldous Huxley described in his dystopic novel "Brave New World" as a drug, prescribed to each member of a happy and steady society. No one is supposed to be pensive, careworn or saddened in it. The spirits must be high and the public must be content and well-functioning. Every citizen carries their daily portion of “Soma” in their pockets and is always urged to consume it, if feeling wistful or worried. https://sarieva.org/
¬ Studio NO\ON / Tróchia Collection [τροχιά] / solo show / artnewscafe, 38 Otets Paisiy str. / November 12 – December 12. In "Tróchia Collection [τροχιά]", the design duo Julian Mikov and Dimitar Vranchev focus the public's attention on natural processes. Their works are a contemplation on the vital functions of nature, blended harmoniously with the manifestations of modernity that manage to transform the object. For better control of the processes, the studio experiments with integrating aging or now forgotten craft techniques. https://bit.ly/3NKhb6b
¬ 5/6/7 / group show / Gallery of Fine Arts Plovdiv, Kapana Gallery, 29 Rayko Daskalov St. / November 8 - 27. 2019 The exhibition presents 13 authors, members of the association of Plovdivian artists. The numbers in the title relate to the anniversaries of the authors. Every number is connected to a color – yellow for those who celebrate their 50th anniversary, blue for the 60th and red for the “most mature”, the 70th old artists. https://bit.ly/3EcwFgl
VARNA
¬ Ivan Minchev / A moment / solo exhibition / Varna City Gallery, Georgi Velchev Studio, 8 Radko Dimitriev St. / October 19 – November 21. “I chose the title of one of my paintings as a moto of the exhibition – A moment. I wanted something contemporary and short and chose to what happens in the moment – a moment and that is all. The moment, begging and end, yin and yang, these themes make me think. I don’t paint an abstract work on a given subject because it could come out something completely different, it is not like painting something concrete. https://fb.me/e/2mHkBzr4k
Monthly edition by artnewscafe and Sarieva/Hub
¬ news selection : Desislava Mileva
¬ logo : Nedko Solakov
¬ cover : Gábor Máté / Inner sky / solo exhibition / Synthesis Gallery, 55 Vasil Levski bul., Liszt Institute - Hungarian Cultural Center, 16 Aksakov St. / November 3 – January 14. ©Gábor Máté, personal archive