Sarieva: Autumn Edition 2026
Newsletter: Autumn Edition
Summer edition of the newsletter is out now.
View it in your browser here, including images and more info.
GALLERY NEWS
Five Years of SarievA
We began as Sariev Gallery in 2004, connected to the legacy of the poet Veselin Sariev (1951–2003) and his spirit of freedom, boundlessness, and breaking with the status quo.
By 2021, we had accumulated extensive international and local experience through a multifaceted programme. Our intuition told us that a new time was coming, and that the values shaping the next stage would no longer be those of vertical growth and expansion. We were faced with the question of how to continue. We followed an intuitive path towards finding new directions and had to make several, more or less difficult, decisions.
As a starting point, we added an “A” to the name of the gallery. In Bulgarian, this letter changes the family name from its masculine to its feminine form – Sariev becomes Sarieva. At first glance, a small change, it actually marked the path towards a new principle of working for us - openness and horizontality.
We ended successful public projects and initiatives that had shaped our identity for many years. We chose to work without public funding. We focused our energy on personal relationships - with a smaller group of people. We partially stepped away from the visibility we had already achieved, making space for something we did not yet know how to name.
Sarieva became an attempt to show what a gallery could be - not only as a space, but as a network, a form of mediation, trust, and creation. A more horizontal and collaborative model, in which the gallery is not simply a place for presenting art, but a situation in which artists, collectors, institutions, audiences, and spaces are genuinely connected. The gallery as a nourishing environment for the joy of the artwork, of encounter, discovery, finding, and understanding the world and oneself.
We are grateful that, despite the difficulties, over these five years we have deepened our relationships and expanded our presence into new cities, contexts, and spaces, without losing our connection to the place from which we originate.
We thank, from the bottom of our hearts, everyone who is with us and believes in us.
Below, you can read the news about our autumn season. We look forward to being together with you at these events and initiatives. See you soon!
Vesselina and Katrin Sarieva
UPCOMING SHOW
Stefan Nikolaev
The Price of Love
solo exhibition
15 October – 15 November 2026
Curator: Vesselina Sarieva
Opening: 15 October 2026, Thursday, 18:00–20:00
October 2026 (date to be announced)
Monograph Presentation - Stefan Nikolaev: Monographie de référence / Reference Monograph
15 November 2026, Sunday, 13:00–17:00
Exhibition Finissage – in the presence of the artist
Sarieva/Gallery @ DOT Sofia
Visiting hours during shows: Wednesday – Saturday: 1:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. / Sunday: 1 p.m. – 4 p.m.
-
Dimitar Genchev
solo exhibition
27 November – 27 December 2026
Opening: 27 November , 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Sarieva/Gallery, Plovdiv
40 Otets Paisiy St., 4000 Plovdiv, Bulgaria
-
Art Tour of AYART Collection with Nedko Solakov
led by Vesselina Sarieva
AYA Estate, Melnik, Bulgaria
07 November 2026
The tour will focus on Nedko Solakov’s site-specific AYAdoodles (2025), an AYA Art Commission created for the barrel hall of the winery.
One of Bulgaria’s most internationally recognised contemporary artists, Solakov has created more than a hundred “doodles” — tiny figures and stories inhabiting countless spots throughout the hall. Filled with humour, inventiveness and warmth, they expand the viewer’s imagination and transform the space into a fairytale world. Some stories reveal themselves instantly, while others await the patient eye.
Registration & further information: AYA Estate Vineyards
-
BULGARIA CONTEMPORARY 2026
Presented and organized by Sarieva/Gallery in partnership with DOT Sofia & AYA Estate Relais & Châteaux
26–30 October 2026 | Sofia & Melnik, Bulgaria
Art · Architecture · Nature · Gastronomy · Wine
[Learn more]
ARTISTS NEWS
Dimitar Genchev
Layers
solo show
07 October – 08 November 2026
Curator: Vladiya Mihaylova
Cube Gallery - Toplocentrala, Sofia
-
Luchezar Boyadjiev (curator), Pravdoliub Ivanov
Native Resolution / Innate ИНАТ
BUNA Forum for Contemporary Art 4.0, Varna, Bulgaria
02 October - 31 October 2026
Curators: Luchezar Boyadjiev and Boyana Dzhikova
-
Krassimir Terziev
Late Night Talks with My Modern Ancestors
solo show
17 October - 21 November 2026
curator: Firat Arapoglu
Collect gallery, Istanbul
-
Nedko Solakov
Danube Dialogues: Rituals & Rhythms
03 September - 18 September 2026
group show
curators: Ksenija Marinković, Charles Moore
Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia
-
Valio Tchenkov and Vincent Mitzev
Aufbau Umbau Abbau Aufbau
08 October - 29 November 2026
Open Art Munich, Maximiliansforum
-
Nedko Solakov
Group "The City"
Art Forum Art as a Form of Resistance
group exhibition
27 August - 22 September 2026
Curator: Philip Zidarov
Varna City Art Gallery , Bulgaria
RECOMMENDED
AYA Estate Vineyards, Bulgaria
presents Galila’s Collection Belgium
BETTER WITH TIME
group show
Pilar Albarracín, Elodie Antoine, Mónica Bengoa, Deborah Bowmann, Jacques Carelman, Cécile Davidovici & David Ctiborsky, Nathalia Edenmont, Rune Guneriussen, Jae Ko, Troy Makaza, Jaydan Moore, Hyacinthe Ouattara, Irving Penn, Ghizlane Sahli, Chiharu Shiota, Daniel Spoerri, Bob Verschueren, Gabriel Wiese, Tatiana Wolska, Noriko Yamaguchi.
Curatorial concept and texts: Galila Barzilai
Initiated and realized by: Vesselina Sarieva
03 October 2026 – 28 February 2027
Opening: 3 October 2026, 4:00–8:00 PM
AYA Estate Vineyards, Bulgaria
Art Tour with Galila Barzilai: 04 October 2026
Venue: AYA Estate Vineyards
Organizer: AYART Collection by MFG
-
The Choir of the Women's Market
Audio-visual composition
Misirkov / Bogdanov
16.09.2026 – 10.11.2026
DOT Sofia Art Collection
-
OT (IN REVERSE) FROM SIMEON MARKOV
(The first publication of this text appeared in Bulgarian in issue no. 29 of Literaturen Vestnik, Literary Newspaper. The present expanded English version develops further the play, already implicit in the Bulgarian, between the title of the exhibition “OT” as a combination of two Glagolitic letters and “от”, a preposition in Bulgarian meaning “from”, a word that establishes relations of origin and departure in both time and space. In English, this wordplay is necessarily transformed: OT is turned into TO, which is itself a preposition, marking movement or direction towards a place or point in time. OT becomes TO; from becomes to. And so on…)
On the last and exceedingly rainy day of April this year, the sculptor Petar Nakov’s debut solo exhibition “OT” opened at Sarieva Gallery in Plovdiv. The site-specific project, curated by Ivaylo Avramov as part of a larger programme of collaboration between him and the gallery, entitled “Breakthrough in the White Cube”, activates the memory of the space in a peculiar way.
-
Marta Djourina at National Autumn Exhibitions Plovdiv 2026
Mirrors of the City
Group show
curator: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Genadi Gatev
Tuesday, 1 September – Wednesday, 30 September
Plovdiv Old Town
-
Sasho Stoitzov’s profile has been updated on Open Art Files.
Over 200 of the artist’s works from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s have been uploaded to the platform as part of a monographic archive.
From my experience in art most memorable are those moments in which I have done something completely new for me. The leading strand is responding in a specific way to what is happening in and around me and finding the most adequate way of approaching and expressing it which often leads me to a completely new form of art. This is evident from the diversity of the media in my work. I use painting, drawing, sculptures, installations, photography, performance, computer.The topics are either from social experience, related to people I know or related to art. The constant change is keeping me away from the boredom caused by formality.
- Sasho Stoitzov / Artist Statement
www.openartfiles.bg
-
Pravdoliub Ivanov
PAUSE — Discussion Forum by Nula32
03 October 2026
Plovdiv Drama Theatre
RECENT MEDIA
Site-specific grammar
by Sergei Georgiev
Portal Kultura / review in Bulgarian
[Read here]
From audience to collectors: how is the art market built? | Vesselina Sarieva
Videocast / in Bulgarian
-
Nedko Solakov Appears as a Character in Dave Eggers' New Novel Contrapposto (2026) / in English
-
Where To Look For Bulgarian Conceptualism?
Archives And The Problem Of Belatedness
by Rada Georgieva
Open Art Files / in English and Bulgarian
-
The visual stories of Pravdoliub Ivanov
Interview with the artist
Kultura Magazine / in Bulgarian
-
Petar Nakov at Sarieva, Plovdiv
Artviewer / in English
[Read here]
-
F.I.G. 6: When does an image cease to depict reality and begin to create it?
An interview with Amelie M. Klein about the exhibition Fabricated Realities: Graphics at the Edge of Belief, which presents artworks by Vesselin Sariev and Pravdoliuv Ivanov
Bulgarian National Radio / in Bulgarian
-
Beyond prevailing paradigms
An interview with Katerina Gregos, Artistic and General Director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
Artan Hajrullahu and Nedko Solakov are taking part in the group exhibition South by Southeast
-
BUNA against the conservative shift
A text about BUNA Forum for Contemporary Art and curatorial team - Luchezar Boyadjiev and Boyana Dzhikova
VIJ Magazine / in Bulgarian
-
The avant-garde artists from “The City” are reviving their early history in Varna
The exhibition includes works by its founders: Andrei Daniel, Gredi Assa, Vihoroni Popnedelev and Nedko Solakov.
Sega / in Bulgarian
