#Comment #Fiction #Document
Video art works from the Sofia City Art Gallery collection
12 March 2019 - 14 April 2019

Olivier Bardin, Mariana Vassileva, Daniela Kostova, Cvetan Krastev,
 Kiril Kuzmanov, Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova, Ivan Moudov, Adelina Popnedeleva,     Rassim, Kalin Serapionov, Nedko Solakov, Kamen Stoyanov, Krassimir Terziev

The exhibition comprises a selection of video art works from the collection of Sofia City Art Gallery commenting on contemporary social issues which have been valid for the Bulgarian society in the recent years.  

One of the contributions of Sofia City Art Gallery to the contemporary art in our country is the possession of over fifty videos, acquired between 2008 and 2018, which makes it the richest public collection of contemporary video art in Bulgaria. The aim of the exhibition is to explore the contents of this collection, as it in itself is a reflection of the themes on which the artists have worked from the 1990s to date. Despite the large variety, the critical view on the contemporaneity, which is also the connection between the exhibited works, has proved to be dominating.

Some of them are concerned with the so-called ‘institutional critique’ – one of the main means of expression in art, defining works of art which directly comment on the art institutions. Others are oriented towards politics, economy, culture, mentality, advertising, urban environment – everything that forms the notion of “modern life”. The principle of the selection was also guided by the presence of a narrative as it can be claimed that all works tell specific stories. Typically of video art, and unlike the cinema and television, for example, these stories can reproduce in a documentary manner real-life cases or contain artistic fictions. Moreover, artists do cross the line between these two sometimes. They may deliberately simulate documentality or provoke doubt about the reliability.

The exhibition is kindly supported by Goethe-Institut.