Sofia City Art Gallery presents an exhibition of contemporary Bulgarian photography.

The exhibition features works of the following authors: Alexander Evtimov/ Svetoslav Stoyanov, Boris Misirkov / Georgui Bogdanov, Boryana Pandova, Ventzislava Vassileva / Gabriela Alexandrova, Dimiter Dilkov, Elena Spassova, Emil Hristov, Ivo Hadjimishev, Iordan Iordanov- Uri, Lubomir Mladenov, Milen Stankov, Nadejda Oleg Liahova, Nadejda Chipeva, Simeon Levi, Stanka Tzonkova-Usha.

The project “Images from the blind spot” is also presented (in cooperation with the ‘Red House’ center for culture and debate and with the support of the ‘Pro Helvetia’ Swiss foundation for culture), and its participants are: Vesselina Nikolaeva, Ivo Hadjimishev, Krassimir Andonov, Marina Trayanova, and Simeon Levi. It was started at the beginning of 2003, and for one year, a team of photographers, sociologists, and specialists in culture studies, has been occupied with visual research of ‘blind spots’ and their surrounding reality. These are themes and images from the trite way of life of about eight million people populating the territory- story lines that do not appear in media and drop out of the ‘artistic’ circle, nor are a subject of ethnographic, ethnic or historic research.

MEETING POINT Assen Emilov. Background

19 October 2004 - 12 November 2004

The “Background” series of photos represents a fiction of the distance to the “background”, whether this distance is infinite or the background is a kind of a huge set-scene, which creates an illusion of infinity that people are “scared to death” to experience.
The perception of the background as a border zone is fictitious; it is also a challenge to our senses, i.e. what our location is and what the space dimensions that we inhabit and perceive are, or the so called time-space.
By means of blurred shots, in sequences of retakes – each one nearer the object and independent images, the photographs in this series represent objects from the peripheral reality resembling cut-outs from the background.
This exhibition consist 57 c-prints under Plexiglas 106/76/20 mm and inject c-print on canvas 1500/2000 mm.

JOAN LEVIEV PICTURES IN PRIVATE

13 October 2004 - 07 November 2004

This exhibition is connected with the 70th anniversary of the great Bulgarian painter. It includes 82 drawings, watercolors and pastel, created from1977 to 1993. Among them, there is the cycle of 30 erotic ink drawings created in the period from 1981 to 1985 and are shown to the audience for the first time.
The drawing always had a special place in the Yoan Leviev’s rich and artistic course of life of versatile and dynamic creative activity. Looking for revelation, an intimate confession and at the same time- a correction of his personal achievements and a bridge to new plastic discoveries, the painter finds in painting a pure and independent way towards creative expression.
The ‘Drawings in Private’ exhibition is an attempt to come near, and with respect and compassion, to the intimate world of the creator, in the silence where the roots of his profuse and vivid art are.

Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova VANITAS

05 October 2004 - 15 October 2004

The Vanitas Exhibition presents a performance of the same name and a series of Digital still lives.
Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova: "Without any claim for authorship but rather for co-compilation, I combine in the series of digital still lives an image taken from the street (a picture of a casually passing-by woman in a dress with painted flowers) with computer-generated background. The image is entirely technically reproduced and unites digital reality with “ordinary” reality. It juxtaposes chance in life with the infinite regularity of numbers. Again there’s the fundamental problem of finitude – a human figure against the infiniteness of the computer-generated background.
Digital still lives, reproducing an assembly reality, express the infinite bearing of finitude, filled with hope and fear. The Vanitas Performance offers a momentary reality, filled with the meaningless dignity of life in itself and presents an opportunity for direct physical participation in this moment."