Programata

The world-famous graffiti artists Ella & Pitr change their home address with Plovdiv in the period between July 1st and 5th on the occasion of the Festival of Students Francophones Let's create together. At the invitation of the French Institute and in partnership with the Plovdiv 2019 foundation, they will create an image over an area of 5000m² together with the students, which will later be shot by a drone and shown to us all.

The quick facts are that he was born in Czechoslovakia in 1938 and from a young age he always liked looking at the world through a lens. Today he is one of the members of the Magnum Photos collective with his works on the border between art and photojournalism. His albums keep stories from all over the world, and he has been in Bulgaria at least three times before coming again now with his Exiles exhibition. The 75 shots in this series - a narrative about the nomad souls just like Koudelka himself - have never left the Pompidou Center in full before, and we are looking at them on the walls of the Sofia City Art Gallery in the presence of the author.

The Plovdiv gallery Sariev Contemporary and the Markovstudio in Sofia put a plus between their names for the Sariev+Markov Sculpture Projects, which this autumn will give a brave result - a new contemporary piece of art installed somewhere in Sofia. One glance over our shoulders to the reactions around the Bronze house project last year is enough to convince us that this project is something not only meaningful but also blatantly needed.

That's how long the Czech month of the comic book will be between Shipka 6 Gallery and 100 Rakovski St with exhibitions, events for kids and meeting with animators and painters. It starts on the 6th of March, all the events are free for entry.

Artist Kalin Serapionov makes video, pierces walls to pass a neon sign in the gallery corridor, makes a self portrait in a wig and invents love stories at an exhibition. Now he enters the City gallery with a cake tray to put the icing on a video project that began 20 years ago - with two other videos around artists eating first soup, then main course. Now the time for dessert has finally come and you are also invited - the shooting of the performance The Dessert (with the Cherry On the Cake) will be on Feb 14 between 11:00 and 18:00 in the City Gallery, Sofia.

A lecture about the Neue Sachlichkeit art trend, part of the current exhibition at the Sofia City Art Gallery - on January 31st at 18:00.

The Bulgarian pavilion at the biennale will greet us with How We Live - an installation with curator Vera Mlechevska and artists Radka Bukova and Lazar Lyutakov. If you're curious about all the other projects in the competition, they will be shown in Sredets gallery on January 23rd between 11:00-13:00; 14:00-16:00.

We are so excited to join in celebrating the Opening of the Plovdiv 2019 - European Capital of Culture with the most attractive highlight in its programme - The We Are All Colors' Show.

It is true that in 2018 we were at a gallery almost as often as in a cinema. The art embraced us and asked us to step on it, we met it at new addresses and queued for it. After such a good year, we are only wondering why true art criticism is not growing here, while finger-pointing is rising? But let's start from the good end: all the big art projects outside, the solo exhibitions by young artists, the galleries that didn’t slow down even for a day.

Today, in the National Gallery, we go beyond the doors marked Employees Only - because in our hand we've got a ticket for The magic of restavration which means an intimate, 50-minute long meeting with paintings by Alexander Petrov - Lavandulata and their main conservator, Peter Katerinov.

Roger Ballen is coming to Sofia and Plovdiv for a retrospective exhibition featuring more than 200 of his freeky photos - including the ones he made in collaboration with Die Antwoord. We expect him and his photos in early November - when we'll get to talk with him more.

Designer and architect Elia Nedkov, jeweler Nilkolay Sardamov and poet and culturologist Anna Alexandra join talents in a new project called Sfera (Bul. - sphere).

How an ex-cargo container manages to fit art projects from all over the world and present them here, in Bulgaria? if you don't know the answer to that, than you haven't been around Otets Paisii Str. in Plovdiv since the 2016.