More or Less is the major exhibition within the second edition of Sofia Design Week 2010. The idea for the exhibition was initiated by Vasil Iliev, art director of the “One” magazine.
What exhibition participants, namely the KesselsKramer communications agency, journalist Andrew Losowski and multidisciplinary artists Helmut SchmizH Thomas Mailender, Daniel Eatock and Francois Nouguies, have in common is that they approach modern design with a sense of humor, thus questioning its value.
The Dutch artist Helmut Schmiz comes up with designer solutions which strike us a quite uncommon. The English artist Daniel Eatock, on his part, playfully touches upon the issue of the smoking ban in Bulgaria, presenting a collection of unusual alternative versions of the classic “No Smoking” sign. The exhibition witl also feature a presentation of an action entitled “Do a plastic bag” by the KesselsKramer communications agency, which is famous for its nontraditional approach to advertising. Basically, the action seeks to create new designer objects out of used plastic bags. Another highlight of the exhibition are the works of French artists Thomas Mailender and Francois Nouguies s, who are trying to eliminate the boundary between art and design through their work. Another participant in the exhibition is Andrew Losowski, who is a passionate fan of independent magazines, fond of transforming hardcopy editions into design objects.
The exhibition is one of the events featured within the SOFIA DESIGN WEEK 2010. it is organized by the “One” magazine with support from the America for Bulgaria Foundation.

18 May 2010 - 11 June 2010

Bogdan Alexandrov NOISE. Portraits of a Dear Person

11 May 2010 - 06 June 2010

Autism. A disorder of neural development that prevents adequate perception of and interaction with the surrounding world and affects the processing of information acquired through the senses. A neurological condition that affects the functioning of receptors.
Bogdan Alexandrov learned the above in 1989, when his daughter, Emiliana, was two and a half years old. What came next was a visit to a Swiss clinic applying a method for the treatment of autistic people that consists in an attempt to correct the sound receptor by exposing the latter to filtrated sound that is gradually becoming louder and louder until it reaches, at the end of the therapy, the tolerable limits of loudness. The method is based on the assumption that you get accustomed to loud noise. You no longer hear the trams passing by your window by the end of the second week of exposure to that sound.
Twenty years later this personal story provided the basis for the creation of a cycle of works, namely large format portraits, through the addition/layering of color noise to the point where the image vanishes. The idea is based on a physical phenomenon occurring in the process of using technical or digital equipment for image fixing or reproduction – the so called visual noise (grain structure remarkably reminiscent of white noise) is added (generated) to the image to produce an extra-rational effect.
Change in the positioning of meanings and the reversal of the works’ message transforms them into an artistic and symbolic “therapy” targeted at “normal” people.
The exhibition features eighteen 130cm/200cm works, arranged on the mirror principle. Each pair of binary works is connected with headphones and a flash-stick that take the viewer into the sound environment. Color noise and mirror (binary) images are generated with the help of foam.

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Bogdan Alexandrov was born in 1960 in the city of Vidin, where he lives and works. In 1989 he graduated from the “SS Cyril and Methodius” University of Veliko Turnovo, majoring in painting. He works in the field of contemporary art (painting, video, installation), and also as a curator.