Pravdoliub Ivanov - Ornaments of Pain - Toplocentrala, Sofia

Pravdoliub Ivanov
Ornaments of Pain
solo show
26 March - 21 April 2026
16 April - CUBE TALK with Pravdoliub Ivanov  
Curator: Vladiya Mihaylova
Cube Gallery - Toplocentrala, Sofia, Bulgaria

“Sometimes there are periods in an artist’s life and practice when the emotional impact of an event makes it difficult to maintain distance, and what is created in such a moment may not fully become art. Perhaps this exhibition is something like that, but my desire to bring together works-as-reactions is stronger than my aesthetic judgments and calculations of risk.”
— Pravdoliub Ivanov

"Ornaments of Pain" is an exhibition presenting drawings, objects, photography and video created by Pravdoliub Ivanov over the past several years. The main visual environment is formed by over 100 drawings, produced from the beginning of the war in Ukraine up to the present.

Known for his conceptual approach and his work with the relationships between object, form, and language, Pravdoliub Ivanov shows a different approach here. The exhibition is personal, without being emotional in a direct sense. The artist remains within the realm of empathy and humanity, without taking definitive stances or extreme statements. In his own words, he creates the works as a form of therapy for himself, while at the same time expressing the anxiety, horror, and sense of powerlessness of humans facing what is happening.

"Ornaments of Pain," however, is not simply an exhibition about the war in Ukraine. It presents humanity against the grim face of civilizational collapse that any war represents, reflecting the present moment in which we live. This is a time when news arrives instantly, truth and falsehood, facts and disinformation are mixed, and death is at once insignificant and monumental. Humans become targets, diminished, small, and dehumanized by the sights of technology, drones, and bombs, while death is simultaneously magnified by the immediacy and impact of social media.

The exhibition creates a sense of disintegration, but also of the need for connection and solidarity. It presents different scales and possible paths for orientation: on one hand, the monumentality of the contemporary war machine, sights that perceive humans from a distance as points in vast space, targets without personality or presence; on the other hand, storytelling, life paths, support, and sharing. The works resist habituation to war, showing how difficult this resistance is when reality reaches us fragmented and distanced.

*This exhibition contains images that may be disturbing to some viewers.

Acknowledgements:

Yulia Zinkevych / Olha Ukrainceva / Zhanna Kornienko / Veselina Sarieva / Georgi Georgiev / Simeon Simeonov / Phoenix 4.0.5 Foundation, Ukraine