This is Ziyatin Nuriev’s first retrospective exhibition. Over 35 years of creative work are presented, including both sculptures from his years as a student and some of his latest works.

Ziyatin Nuriev’s depth and innovativeness place him among the most talented Bulgarian sculptors. Already with his first participations in national exhibitions, his works were noticed and bought, almost with no exceptions, by the National Art Gallery, the Sofia City Gallery as well as leading galleries around the country. Initially he worked in basalt, one of the hardest materials, with a predilection for figure and portrait. After 1988, he synthesised the human figure achieving an almost abstract form in various materials – marble, bronze, wood, ceramics.

Ziyatin Nuriev’s oeuvre combines antiquity and modernity. Lessons from the Egyptian plastic thinking are enlivened by the author’s personal language. Conciseness, deep thought and lurking might are his fundamental features.

Ziyatin works and lives in Istanbul but his connection with Bulgaria has never been severed, the latest proof of which are his exhibitions in Varna (2014) and Plovdiv (2015).

Ziyatin Nuriev was born in the village of Most, district of Kurdjali. He graduated in sculpture from the National Academy of Arts in Sofia in 1982. Up until 1990, he worked in Bulgaria and then moved to Istanbul where he has been teaching sculpture at the Fine Arts Faculty of the Marmara University.

Major participations and exhibitions:

International Sculpture Symposium in Orońsko, Poland (1986); Granite Sculpture Symposium – island of Avșa, Turkey (1993); First Stone Sculpture Symposium – Yalova, Turkey (1995); International Sculpture Biennial – Toyamura, Japan (1997); Project Conversation with the Soul, Raku Gallery, Kyoto (2003); International Sculpture Symposium – Fuerteventura, the Canary Islands (2004, 2005); solo exhibition at the Simoncini Gallery – Luxemburg (2005); International Marble Sculpture Symposium – Saraylar, the island of Marmara, Turkey (2005); solo exhibition at the Akmerkez Gallery, Istanbul (2006), solo exhibition at the Ișik Gallery, Turkey (2014), solo exhibition at the Resonance Gallery, Plovdiv (2015).

THE AFTERNOON OF AN IDEOLOGY

16 September 2016 - 27 November 2016

The exhibition 'The Afternoon of an Ideology' presents a slice of Sofia City Art Gallery's collection as put together through the 'non-art' eyes of Georgi Gospodinov and Georgi Lozanov. Acting as art historians of sorts, they mined the gallery's store room seeking evidence of the communist period and also investigating how artists experienced that period. The concept the two curators put forward is two-fold: first, that artists used their own language to write microhistories of the period and, second, that artists participate in a 'double game': while they are representing reality, also reality is representing itself to them, becoming a work of art by both yielding to and resisting their will.

In pursuing their goal, Mr Gospodinov and Mr Lozanov discovered that aesthetic qualities were not the leading criteria for a work to qualify for the selection. By no means should this imply of course that such are absent – after all, the selection features pieces by some of Bulgaria's most prominent artists: Lyubomir Dalchev, Ivan Kirkov, Vaska Emanuilova, Pavel Koychev, Galin Malakchiev, Atanas Yaranov, Dimitar Kazakov, Milko Bozhkov, Lyuben Zidarov, Andrey Daniel, Nedko Solakov, Vihroni Popnedelev, Stanislav Pamukchiev, Tekla Alexieva, Vanko Urumov. All these are artists who had their own positions with respect to the communist period and to how art was made then... Viewers will follow how they thought through their work and will succumb to their creative attitudes.

The search for 'art clues' about the private person of the communist period produced four thematic fields, roughly represented as dyads: transport-city, window-contemplation, household-holiday and childhood-guilt.

The exhibition is part of The Other Eye, the long-term series the gallery has undertaken to present and socialise the abundance and variety of its art assembly as seen through the eyes of non-artist intellectuals.

The accompanying catalogue, in Bulgarian and English, features essays by the curators and plates of the selected artworks.

The project is made possible with support from the Ministry of Culture, Sofia Municipality's Kultura programme and Aurubis Bulgaria AD.

'The Afternoon of an Ideology' opens at 6 pm on 16 September and will be on view through 27 November 2016.

Do you hear the ropes creaking? Milko Bozhkov, 1978	Contemplation Galin Malakchiev, .	Peak Rimen Gasharov, 1979	Czardas Andrey Danilel, 1980	Cooperative farmer Sergey Petrov, 1951
In the shadow Ivan Kirkov, 1975