The exhibition organized with the aim to be collected funds for the Bulgarian Red Cross is a cooperative initiative of the Sofia City Art Gallery and the Bulgarian Red Cross. Guided by the principles of humanism and unity the two organizations work together in the name of a noble cause. Tens of Bulgarian artists, always ready to help responded to their appeal: Svetlin Roussev, Ivan B. Ivanov, Gredi Assa, Edmond Demirdjian, Valentin Kolev, Luben Genov, Darina Tzureva, Dolores Dilova, Mariela Ivanova, Miglena Alexandrova, Mariyana Marinova, Bogdan Penev, Luben Kostov, Milko Pavlov, Kalya Zografova, Boris Kolev, Mimi Dobreva, Ivan Kunev, Andrey Daniel, Iva Vladimirova, Silva Buchvarova, Stephan Bojkov and others.

MEETING POINT Nedko Jechev. Kinetic Objects

22 December 2004 - 16 January 2005

The exhibition of Nedko Jechev includes paintings and kinetic objects: bamboozling mechanisms, connected through the laws of Physics, movement and center of gravity.
The object as an expressive means is disused or ripped out of its typical context, isolated from its own meaning. The object has become such that we have never seen it before– “afascinated” (Gianni Rodari) and placed in new ratios and proportions, with its picturesque definiteness – old door handles and saws, forks, shoes and slats, parts of mechanisms and wheels – each one of them with its own look and sound, with its musical rhythm during the propelling process. Obviously, inspiration can steal into the ears, too. Probably this is why the installations of Nedko Jechev take hold of the senses; rivet the attention with its real presence, with what they are. They do not prove anything and are not soaked in ideological pathos. They are created for fun, for beauty …… ”Pastime for lazybones” that does not involve any rigorous thinking.
Through his work, the author has reached that wisdom familiar to children in the game with useless at first sight things that actually make much more sense than we suppose. The viewer, free to choose, can obey their suggestions – the bird trying to fly, but in vain, the black sense of humor of the fish, “The wings of desire ”, which will never fly above the eye level. On the other hand, he can also show off and ‘play’ with the moving fish, wings and shoes.
The action with the accordion (together with Rhin Yamamura), named “Fish thrown out of the water”, has a direct logical and conceptual link with the installations. Here, however, the human figure is the mechanism driving the music instrument that looks as if it is breathing.

Dragomira Simeonova

SVILEN PANAYOTOV ANTARCTICA

17 December 2004 - 16 January 2005

The Antarctica exhibition presents the latest one-man project of Svilen Panayotov after his participation in the twelfth Bulgarian Antarctic expedition on the island of Livingston, Antarctica. After a three-month stay at the beginning of 2004, the photographer returned with rich impressions and numerous photographs. The project’s aim is through the photographic exhibition consisting of 51 works, video films and a text, the unique animal world and exceptional beauty of this unrefined continent and also the labour of the Bulgarian workers on the pole to be popularised.

ATANAS NEYKOV NAYO paintings design graphics sculpture

16 December 2004 - 16 January 2005

Atanas Neykov was born on 30 May 1924 in Sofia. He studied at the Italian Royal College. He graduated from the Academy of Arts in1948, with major Decorative Art with tutors Professor Kiril Tzonev and Professor Dechko Uzunov.
He worked on painting, graphic art and spatial design. He designed for Grazzi Cristali, Modena, Italy, a leading company in the design and construction of structures and furniture of crystal glass.
He took part in the joint exhibitions of the Union of Bulgarian Artists, graphic biennales in Lugano, Krakow, Sao Paolo, Biel, Vienna, Ljubljana and others. He took part in exhibitions in Rome, Moscow, London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Luxemburg, Basel, Graz, Lisbon, Vienna, Prague, Pittsburgh, Budapest and others. He had one-man shows in Berlin, Krakow, Milan, Brussels, Paris, Modena, Bologna, Capri, Parma, Brussels, Helsinki and Verona.
He designed the interior of the National Historic Museum inside the Palace of Justice in Sofia, the National Archaeological Museum in Sofia, the Shooting Gallery (with Svetlin Roussev), the Gallery of Foreign Art, the museum-houses of Dechko Uzunov and Nenko Balkanski in Kazanluk, art galleries in Dobrich and Sliven, Rakovski’s Pantheon in Kotel, the Saint Nicola church in Pleven, the glass façade of the OBB bank, the exhibition of icons of the Saints Kyril and Metodii in the San Clemente church in Rome and in Elvangen, Germany, the Bulgarian national participation in the Christopher Columbus EXPO in Italy, etc.
He died on 26 December 2003 in Sofia.

MEETING POINT Kosta Tonev. The Full Image

26 November 2004 - 19 December 2004

“The full picture” project could be defined as a study of the ways through which visual perception overcomes the fragmentariness of image. This too general definition in fact refers to a series of ambiguous images created to lure the vision of an abstract plane between the fragment, active on its own and the whole picture. At the same time, they form a series of impossible and absurd situations.
“The full picture” is the name of the exhibition’s central work. This is a photographic installation consisting of nine parts, ordered as a unit, like a puzzle makes a whole picture. Every single module of this picture contains the endless triviality of a situation, easy to recognize and decode. These are three identical kinescopes in different
The concept in the photography named ‘One isolated moment’ has been constructed in a similar way. It depicts a girl in a ‘low start’ position. Contrary to all expectations, her whole pre-start impetus is directed towards a flat, white wall.
The video ‘Switch Over’ is also a part of ‘The full picture’. Its object is a building in the center of Vienna, predominantly remarkable with its untypical length of 1.5 km. – completely in the characteristic spirit of socialist megalomania. The video documents a performance in which one person runs the whole distance of Karl Marx Hof. For the time for which he reaches its opposite end, the night is changed by day.
The paradox comes from the common aim of all these optical illusions and provocations and it is the most objective re-discovery of truth. The very expression “the full picture” is like a model metaphor of “the whole truth”, which suggests exposure of the controversial reality.

Svetlana Kuyumdjieva

BORIS KOLEV LAYERS

23 November 2004 - 15 December 2004

The “Layers” exhibition presents the latest works of Boris Kolev, created especially for the area of Sofia City Art Gallery, in 2004. The artist possesses a specific method of work, combining and piling in layers a variety of materials: colored paper pulp, sawdust, charcoal, acrylic pigments and objects that were found. The impact of these creations is due to the work with colors, structure and texture of the painting surfaces. These creations are best perceived through intuition and senses.

On one hand, the exhibition’s title embodies the typical for the author technique, and on the other hand, it fits in the exhibition itself; the next ‘layer’ in his consistent creative development.

Boris Kolev was born in 1970, in Sofia. In 1989, he finished the National School of Arts in Sofia; in 1996 he graduated from the National Academy of Arts, major Painting. From 1991 to 2003, he organized numerous one-man shows in Bulgaria, Great Britain, Germany and Turkey. In addition to that, he has participated in several general art exhibitions in Bulgaria, Austria, Belgium and Turkey. Some of his paintings are owned by Sofia City Art Gallery and the National Palace of Culture, private collections in Bulgaria, Germany, the USA, Belgium, Canada, France, Great Britain, Turkey, Greece and Spain.

BOIKO MITKOV THE SILVER RIVER

21 November 2004 - 15 December 2004

After absence of long years from Bulgarian art landscape, the sculptor Boyko Mitkov came back with the exhibition the Silver river. It will show the viewers his latest not shown works created in the last year. The exhibition was carried out on the occasion of the fifty-year anniversary of the artist.
The title “the Silver river” is a poetical interpretation. The author uses this metaphor to generalize and define the process of his creative development throughout the years. The exhibition is subordinate to an overall artistic idea and is created especially for the space of Sofia City Art Gallery. Nevertheless, each work exists independently and irrespective of the rest. The exposition includes litho prints, drawings, reliefs and spatial sculptural compositions.

ART IN THE NEW US EMBASSY IN BULGARIA U.S. Embassy Unveils Artwork of New U.S. Embassy Complex

16 November 2004 - 01 December 2004

The U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria will mount a major exhibit of American and Bulgarian art at the Sofia City Gallery, November 15 - December 1. These paintings, photographs and sculptures will decorate the offices and grounds of the new U.S. Embassy complex in Sofia, which is slated for completion later this year. This new Embassy building will not only house the offices and staff of the U.S. Embassy; it will also contain major works of art by American and Bulgarian artists. The exhibit at the City Gallery will offer to the Bulgarian public the unique opportunity to view these major works before they are moved to the new U.S. Embassy building.

Among the Bulgarian artists to be featured in this collection are; Svetlin Roussev, Ivo Hadjimishiev, Emil Christov, Emil Popov, Nadezhda Lyahova, Emil Mirchev, Penka Nikova, Pavel Koichev, Elena Panayatova, Ivan Tomanov, and the team of Missirkov/Bodganov. Featured American artists include Wolf Kahn, Jim Campbell, Richard Misrach, Francesca Pastine, Greg Rose and Antonio Murado, Stuart Allen, Robert Cottingham, Ken Fandell, Caio Fonseca and Pamela Harris.

Collection Bulgarian Photographic Association and Friends Images from the blind spot

22 October 2004 - 14 November 2004

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.

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