24 April 2018

The famous Bulgarian artist Luchezar Boyadjiev joins SARIEV Contemporary

SARIEV Contemporary has the great pleasure to announce that the artist Luchezar Boyadjiev is officially joining the list of the gallery's represented artists.

The artist belongs to that first generation of artists who laid the groundwork for Bulgaria’s contemporary art scene during the mid-1980s. Luchezar Boyadjiev was trained as an art historian and theorist, he set out to create art that questions traditional symbols of power and religion as well as the social conditions in his home country with respect to global developments and the virtual world.

This accession is a natural process in the development of SARIEV Contemporary's relationship with the author and his work with its founders Vesselina and Katrin Sarievi. These are both gallery projects and projects of the founded by Sarievi Open Arts Foundation.

The collaboration started in 2013 when Luchezar Boyadjiev joined as a lecturer in the educational program "Introduction to Contemporary Art", organized by SARIEV Contemporary and the Open Arts Foundation. In the same year, he participated in the Otets Paisiy Street Festival 2013 - BEHAVIOR, where he presented his work on a derelict billboard that can be seen on the street today. His joint work with the Open Arts Foundation also includes his artistic tour on Otets Paisiy str. in the framework of the jubilee program “The Dark Side of the NIGHT” curated by Art Affairs and Documents Foundation in the festival NIGHT/Plovdiv 2014.

In 2015, Boyadjiev was one of the artists presented at the organised by SARIEV Contemporary and the Open Arts Foundation overview of Bulgarian contemporary art “FOCUS Bulgaria”, part of the international art fair viennacontemporary (September 24-27, 2015), curated by Iara Boubnova and Vessela Nozharova, where he also participated in the accompanying program of lectures and discussions. A year later, the artist was a member of the jury of the “Portfolio Day” project initiated by SARIEV Contemporary. That same year, he was again involved in the "Introduction to Contemporary Art", where he developed his own series of tours "Walk and Talk with Luchezar Boyadjiev" in Sofia - a format aimed at offering a new approach for active involvement of the audience and for connecting art and public space and putting them in a broader context . In 2016 and 2017, Boyadjiev participated with his drawings in both editions of the “Let Them Draw” group show at SARIEV Contemporary. In 2017 he took part in the Jubilee Exhibition "10 Years Open Arts: HERE EVERYWHERE", curated by VladIya Mihaylova, part of the program of the festival NIGHT/Plovdiv 2017, in which he created a special artwork inspired by the project "The Alternative Map of Plovdiv".

In the beginning of 2018 SARIEV Contemporary and the Open Arts Foundation collaborated at the retrospective exhibition "Luchezar Boyadjiev. Sic Transit Media Mundi /the present is too short and rather tight/", February 14 - March 11, 2018 at the Sofia City Art Gallery. In the context of this exhibition, a solo show of Luchezar Boyadjiev took place at SARIEV Contemporary – “Dystopian Cozy” (February 2 - March 24, 2018), which was his first solo show at the gallery.

Expect more news about the collaboration of SARIEV Contemporary with Luchezar Boyadjiev and visit his page on the gallery‘s website http://sariev-gallery.com/artists/luchezar-boyadjiev/bio.

 

Luchezar Boyadjiev (b. 1957) graduated from the National Art Academy in Sofia in 1980. One of the most famous contemporary artists from Bulgaria, his work is about personal interpretation of social processes, about the interaction between private and public, about urban visuality and the world of today split between utopia and dystopia. His media is installation, photography, drawing, objects, text, video, and performative lectures.

Selected exhibitions are: the solo shows “Dystopian Cozy”, Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv (2018); “Luchezar Boyadjiev. Sic transit media mundi /the present is too short and rather tight/”, City Art Gallery, Sofia (retro) (2018); “Places of Wisdom”, ICA-Gallery, Sofia (in partnership with Open Arts Foundation - Plovdiv, 2016); “Not a Library Artist either”, SALT, Istanbul (2013); “Artist in the Storage” from “The Other Eye” series, City Art Gallery, Sofia (2010); and the group shows in 2016-17 “Economize”, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, as well as “Symptoms of Society”, Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou) and Zhejiang Art Museum (Zhejiang Sheng), China; in 2016 “Cold Wind from the Balkans”, PERA Museum, Istanbul; “Upside Down: Hosting the Critique”, MCA, Belgrade, and “Low-budget Utopias”, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana; in 2015 “Inside Out”, City Gallery, Ljubljana; “The Grammar of Freedom”, GARAGE Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, and “Art for Change 1985-2015”, City Art Gallery, Sofia; in 2014 “Disconsent”, CCA “Ancient Bath”, Plovdiv; in 2013 “Economics in Art”, MOCAK, Krakow; in 2012 “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times”, 1st Biennial, Kiev, and “The Eye Never Sees itself”, 2nd Biennial, Yekaterinburg; and in 2011 “The Global Contemporary”, ZKM, Karlsruhe. The artist is a Founding Member of ICA-Sofia.