The new exhibition season in Vaska Emanouilova Gallery starts with the inauguration of the on-going project Sculpture within which different authors working in that field are going to present their works. The aim of the project is to create an interest and to develop a better understanding of contemporary sculpture and the problems it poses. The initiative is also provoked by the desire to draw the public attention to the development of sculpture in Bulgaria. The most suitable place for this turns out to be the gallery possessing museum collection with works of the eminent Bulgarian sculptor Vaska Emanouilova.

The first author chosen within the framework of the project is Bora Petkova (b. 1979). Her offbeat and eccentric approach to the sculpture object is known to the viewers from her participation in a number of exhibitions connected to the National Contest for Young Artists, Critics and Curators with the St. St. Cyril and Methodius International Foundation as well as from the exhibitions presenting the selections to the 2007 M-Tel Awards for Contemporary Bulgarian Art and Gaudenz B. Ruf Awards for New Bulgarian Art.

Bora Petkova’s exhibition in Vaska Emanouilova Gallery – Exhibition in Progress. You are invited to come again! represents the process of forming a sculpture object within the exhibition space. The exhibition period itself is divided into four separate stages during which the object is in different phases of completion (from February 7th to February 18th, from February 18th to February 25th, from February 25th to March 3rd and from March 3rd to March 9th ). Each week the artist is going to work on the sculpture gradually adapting it to the exhibition space until the last week when it is going to be presented as a complete sculpture object. The presenting of the exhibition as a working process poses a few questions like how the artist works with the object in real space, what the meaning of sculpture is, how we as viewers perceive and communicate with the sculpture objects as well as what the boundaries and the frames of the exhibition space are.

Snejana Simeonova SAILBOATS

05 February 2008 - 02 March 2008

The Sailboats series was created in the last two years. It is a logical sequel to the Nets and Pairs series where shapes rise and extend in space, allowing the latter to flow into them. As in Nets and Pairs, shapes in Sailboats extend outward, as though a centrifugal force were acting.

Made of various materials, namely iron, Depron foam, polyester resin, wood, paper pulp, and chaff, the eleven sculptures presented in the Sofia Art Gallery convey both hope and despair, the balance between the two shifting with each sculpture.

The exhibition’s focal point is a sculpture featuring five human figures. The “dismembered” clothes levitate the bodies floating between the heavenly and the earthly.

Metaphors of the journey, Snejana Simeonova’s Sailboats are drifting between the possibility and impossibility of change, anchored in fear, gently driven by longing.

The compositions were created in the artist’s atelier in the village of Illindentsi, a place that has become a centre of sculpture in the last few years. The magic of the village has been a major influence on Snejana Simeonova’s art.

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Snejana Simeonova majored in sculpture at the National Academy of Fine Arts, Sofia. She graduated from it in 1976. Her work features a wide range of rendering styles, varying between monumental sculpture and small sculpture. She regularly participates in national sculpture exhibitions, as well as in international ones – she has presented her works in Latvia, Germany, Hungary, the Republic of South Africa, Japan, Spain, Belgium, Israel, and Turkey. Her works are characterized by easiness mixed with hidden tension, a blend of exquisiteness and passionate energy.