The exhibition organized to mark the 120th anniversary since Georgi Mashev’s birth includes 49 works of art from different artistic periods. The main part of the collection belongs to Stanislav Dospevski City Art Gallery of Pazardjik and consists of 34 paintings and 11 drawings. Sofia City Art Gallery participates with four works from its fund.

A versatile personality and a learned artist, Georgi Mashev expresses his artistic activity into two basic but presumably opposing ways. On the one hand he is a master of portrait where his psychological insight combines with a subtle observation and a precise vivid drawing. On the other hand he’s got paintings on fantastic and fairy-tale subjects where his unleashed imagination leads him to symbolic generalizations and emotional revelations. Another part of Mashev’s works worth considering are his historic compositions which present realistic and vivid characters rich in dignity and grandeur. His keen social attitude becomes apparent in the artist’s satirical works.

A contemporary of the symbolic influences in our art and the infatuation with secession and impressionism, Georgi Mashev doesn’t remain indifferent to the aesthetic quests of our artists in the first half of the 20th century. Yet his mature works find their plastic support mainly in the precise realistic drawing which allows for an earthly rendering even of his fantastic pieces.

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Georgi Mashev was born on 1st January, 1887 in the town of Pazardjik. Until the eighth grade he studied in his home town and in 1906 he finished First Male Secondary School in Sofia. In the autumn of the same year he started attending the general Department of the School of Drawing (the present National Art Academy) under Prof. Petko Klisourov. For a short period of time he studied at the Petersburg Art Academy and then between 1909-1910 in the Special Department of Painting in Brussels under Prof. Edmond Richard. In 1912 he graduated from the Department of Painting of the School of Drawing under the professors Ivan Murkvichka, Stefan Ivanov and Ivan Angelov. He worked as a teacher in Second Male Secondary School in Sofia and then in Tsaribrod. In September 1915 Georgi Mashev organized his first solo exhibition in Sofia, which went off with great success. Right after Bulgaria got involved in WWI he was appointed military artist of the Cavalry division. In 1916-1917 he took part in the exhibition of Bulgarian artists in Berlin. After the end of WWI he worked as a teacher in Pazardjik where in 1920 he opened his second solo exhibition and took part in the exhibition of the Society of South-Bulgarian Artists. Between 1932-1945 Mashev organized solo exhibitions in Sofia, Plovdiv, Pazardjik and in 1945-1946 he took part in the general exhibitions of the Pazardjik artists. He died on 10th August, 1946.

Boris Missirkov, Georgi Bogdanov ON THE TRACKS OF THE BRIGHT FUTURE

12 July 2007 - 31 July 2007

Boris Misirkov and Georgi Bogdanov (together with: Dimitar Bojilov – interviews; Sandra Klincheva – Styling; Tsveti Hristova –make-up and hair-style) develop the On the Tracks of the Bright Future sequence inspired by the topic Cliché as Identity presented at the Visual Seminar*. The two authors are trying to find out those common grounds that create the image of the contemporary Bulgarian. They do not probe into any particular subjects but rather resort to the dreams as the most favourable territory which will enable them to identify the target group of people. These are 17-19 year-old youngsters, mainly students in the high grades, who are at the threshold of real life but are not yet active participants in it.

The conversations with the interviewees are based on the questions: ‘What would you like to become in the future?’ and ‘How do you imagine yourself in 20-30 years’ time?’ and the photographs present a visualization of some of these ideas about the future.

Boris Misirkov and Georgi Bogdanov give flesh and blood to dreams and offer a chance for those who dream to see their own forecasts come true. From the numerous interviews they have picked up only those answers which are indicative of the general trends and yet transcend the boundaries of the conventional. From here on the team builds up the images using some cinema techniques in creating a non-commercial product. The fantasies of the participants intertwine with the imagination of the authors to create something which is on the verge of reality and fiction. In the last phase of the project the characters face their own dreams while Boris Misisrkov and Georgi Bogdanov record their reactions. Are they going to like themselves or reconsider their own ideals? Are they going to stick to the cliché notion of prosperity or try to detach from it? To what extent does the visual cliché determine the mentality of whole strata and generations? These are only some of the questions Boris Misirkov and Georgi Bogdanov pose to the public.

*The Visual Seminar project was carried out in the period 2003-2006 as an initiative of the Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia in co-operation with the Centre for Advanced Studies – Sofia. It was supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation within the framework of the relations programme.

Krassimir Terziev. Background Action

10 July 2007 - 31 July 2007

Background Action is a spatial narrative that reconstructs a journey into film making and the imposition of war in a globalized mode of film production industry.
It was a three month long journey taken by 300 Bulgarian men, hired by Warner Bros as “specialised extras” for the filming of the battlescenes of the motion picture Troy (2004).
The Bulgarians were hired to represent ancient warriors from the Greek and Trojan tribes in the epic war, described by Homer in the Iliad, that was to be brought to life again by the movie Troy.
And as in the Iliad, where the entire Book 2 is dedicated to the narration of the alias of the Achaean and Trojan armies hired from all the lands in Homeric world, the 300 Bulgarians were hired along with 1000 Mexican extras to stage that war. The only difference is that they had to battle both sides depending on the filming plans of the day.
Most of them made the journey with the idea to see how the movies are made, to see Mexico and to meet the great movie-stars. Some of them hoped they might be picked up and developed in the movie-business.
In fact the trip to the movie-world turned out to be a constant shift of the way they perceived their roles.
The extras were totally confused by the technique of film-making. From Mexico itself, they only saw a piece of a few square kilometers of desert where the film-set was built
and where they spent 12 to 14 hours a day under the scorching sun. The stars were severely guarded, if they were ever there.
What was left as a memorable experience were the battle scenes that went completely out of control and became very real, with injuries and real blood on top of the emulated make-up, running horses and showers of arrows.
So that by the end of the filming, Warner Brother’s simplistic vision whereby the extras could be misrecognised as Greeks and Trojans became reality, and they became that ancient warriors in order to survive the actual fights. Just like the warriors from Iliad they brought home their trophies and ransoms in the shape of photos and video recordings.
These are the images in focus in the installation “Background Action”. They stand on a shaking ground between touristic photographs, and documents of hyperreal events and environments.
Epic scenes, coming from an ancient world, recreated by perfectly designed sets and costumes are suddenly ruptured by objects, gestures and practices from the everyday world.
The combination of these trophy-images with the personal stories of the extras, maps of the production activities and metaphoric figures creates a narrative that questions selfidentification
in a war staged by globalized film industry that far exceeds the boundaries of the motion picture.