Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art Vienna curated by Stephan Stoyanov
„FARCE - the way we live“

4.9. - 2.10.2021 Press release Arrow
Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art Vienna, Weihburggasse 26, 1010 Vienna (closed)
www.galerie-mam.com

Curator(s):

Stephan Stoyanov More Arrow
Established in 2017 by Stephan Stoyanov, Art Agency is a platform that strives to cross over boundaries and do projects that matter. Art Agency represents international artists of various generations and backgrounds, making diversity the core of its ethos. The establishment pays great attention to implementing a forward thinking manner to all its engagements and is constantly challenging and changing perceptions about what a gallery is and does. Supporting and artistically directing a municipal gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria is one of the many endeavours of the founder who also takes on the role of an art advisor, dealer and “gallerist”.Art Agency helps creative communities and broadens horizons by exposing the larger audiences to contemporary art. Before opening Art Agency, Stephan Stoyanov has successfully run Luxe Gallery from 2002 until 2014 in New York City. His artists have been featured in some of the most prestigious institutions around the world including: MoMa New York, PS1 MoMa New York, Whitney Museum of American Art New York, Mori Museum Tokyo, Kunstwerke Berlin, Bass Museum Miami, Macro Rome, Astrup Fearnley Norway, Kiasma Finland, Tate Modern London and many others.
Courtesy of Stephan Stoyanov

Artist(s):

  • Kendell Geers
  • Iv Toshain More Arrow
    Iv Toshain is an Austrian artist and female activist. She has been born in Bulgaria behind the former Iron Curtain, which divided Europe into two separate ideological and geographical areas. After spending parts of her childhood in Iraq and Libya and studying at the National Art Academy in Sofia, Bulgaria, she moved to west Europe. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Brera in Milan, Italy and graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria in the master class of Franz Graf. Iv Toshain took part in numerous group and solo exhibitions among others at: Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Lentos Museum in Linz, The Museum for Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Kuenstlerhaus Vienna, Kunsthalle Project Space, Vienna. Since 2012 she has been the co/founder of the Art-Label FXXXi̶s̶m̶ Toshain / Ceeh (Vienna-Sofia-St.Petersburg). The art collective takes a critical stance toward ideologies and is a base for institutional critique activities. www.fxxxx.me
  • Anouk Lamm Anouk More Arrow
    Anouk Lamm Anouk born in Vienna 2011 – 2012 – UdK (University of the arts Berlin) 2012 to date – Academy of fine arts Vienna, Prof. Erwin Bohatsch Exhibitions 2021 – post/pre Lesbian Jazz, solo exhibition (plus diploma show), Hotel Sacher, Marble Hall, Vienna 2020 THE VOID IS MY TEMPLE, solo exhibition, Salon Schwarzenberg 2019 Venice as lover, performance, Venice (transit patience) the terminal phase of the empire of transit-fatigue, solo presentation with Silvia Steinek Galerie at PARALLEL, Vienna 2018 Testosterone was my first loss/love, performance, Vienna 2017 – Solo exhibition I MISS THE PLACE WHERE I AM FROM, Galerie Steinek, Vienna – Group show EVERYBODY ANYBODY, Galerie Steinek, Vienna 2014 – Siehe was dich sieht Franz Graf, Belvedere 21 Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna – Group show SEDUCE ME AT SUNRISE, LEHRTER SIEBZEHN, Berlin – Grand Opening of the One Work Gallery, Vienna 2013 – Group show Principium Privatum – Projizierte Sexualitäten, mo.ë, Vienna 2012 – Performace night Finnisage BEDWAYS, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin 2011 – Group show GIF . ME . BERLIN ., .HBC, Berlin
  • Carmen Calvo More Arrow
    Carmen Calvo was born in Valencia in 1950.[1] In her youth she worked in a ceramic factory, an experience which would later be reflected in her art, which includes fragments of pottery and clay.[2] She studied advertising and entered that city's School of Arts and Crafts from 1965 to 1970. She attended the School of Fine Arts of Valencia from 1969 to 1972. She held her first individual exhibition in Valencia in 1976, and her second in Madrid in 1977.[2] From 1983 to 1985 she lived in the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid. In 1985 she received a scholarship from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and moved to Paris,[3] where she remained until 1992. Since then she has lived and worked in Valencia.[1] Artistic career An admirer and follower of artists such as Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Filippo De Pisis, Carlo Carrà, Jean Arp, Joan Miró, and Jannis Kounellis,[4] Calvo incorporated terracotta into her plastic compositions very early on so that this element would become an icon of her work. In addition to painting, Calvo is known for carrying out interventions, in some cases on a permanent basis, in public buildings.[5] In the 1980s she received several scholarships, and won distinctions such as the LaSalle Seiko First Prize for Painting and the Alfons Roig Award from the Provincial Diputation of Valencia [es].[6] In 1980 she was one of nine artists chosen to participate in the exhibition New images from Spain at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.[7] In 1982 she also exhibited at the first edition of ARCO [es], the contemporary art fair of Madrid, with the Fernando Vijande Gallery. In 1990 the Institut Valencià d'Art Modern presented a retrospective on her work since 1973.[8] In 1995, Calvo created the Lápida-Mural, the result of a competition organized by the Regional Ministry of Public Works of the Valencian Community, for Alboraya-Palmaret Station [es] on metro Line 3, a project by Carlos Meri and Lourdes García Sogo [es].[5] In the late 1990s she began to introduce photographic images into her compositions[2] and created scenes based on installations, which synthesized, as Francisco Brines referred to it, her "saved and saving view" on contemporary reality.[9] She represented Spain with a gallery of mirrors at the Venice Biennale in 1997, together with the Catalan poet Joan Brossa.[10] In 2003 the Museo Reina Sofía dedicated an exhibition about her work. From 2 December 2016 to 29 January 2017, her exhibition Carmen Calvo. Todo procede de la sinrazón (1969–2016) was held at Sala Alcalá 31 in Madrid.[11] In 2013 she received the National Award for Plastic Arts from Spain's Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports,[3] and in 2014 she was named an academic of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia.[12] She participated in the Official Section of the 2018 PHotoEspaña Festival with the exhibition Quietud y vertigo.[13] Feminist themes have been prominent in Calvo's work,[2] and in March 2019, she and fellow artist Carla Fuentes received the Carmen Alborch Award from the Socialist Party of the Valencian Country for their contributions to culture and feminism.[14] Awards LaSalle Seiko First Prize for Painting, Barcelona, 1985 Alfons Roig Award from the Provincial Diputation of Valencia [es], 1989 Medal of the Faculty of Fine Arts of San Carlos de Valencia, 2009[15] National Award of the Spanish Association of Art Critics (AECA) and ARCO [es] to the most emblematic work by a living Spanish artist, 2012[16] Catalan Association of Art Critics [ca] (ACCA) Award, 2013[17] National Award for Plastic Arts, 2013 Carmen Alborch Award, Socialist Party of the Valencian Country, 2019
  • Heather Bennet More Arrow
    American artist Heather Bennett maintains a multimedia practice which consists of photography, video, drawing, text, sculpture, installation, as well as, collaborations with musicians and writers. Her work traces the female subject and its historic irrelevance, focusing specifically, on representation in contemporary culture. Bennett attempts to reveal an embodied subjecthood held within her protagonists. Pushing expectations of media, she disrupts and reveals assumptions, hoping to realign and reframe the relegated, feminine tinged space, to even recreate this space anew. Bennett has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally. In the States, in addition to mounting six solo exhibitions in New York City between 2003-2015, her work has been featured in varied exhibitions such as Exposed- Revealing Sources in Contemporary Art at the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE curated by Heather Campbell Coyle; Double X: Women Representing Women at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL; Photo Femmes at the Caren Golden Gallery in New York and The Lives We Live at Super Duchess in New York. Abroad, Bennett’s solo exhibition, The Uncovered Works of Hannah Berman was hosted by the Eva Hober Gallery in Paris, France and as well, Bennett is represented at Gallieri S.E. in Norway where her work has been exhibited alongside that of Marina Abromovic and Yoko Ono. Bennett has exhibited at Graffit Gallery, Varna, Bulgaria and participated in FIAC Contemporary Art Fair, Paris, France; LOOP Contemporary Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain; and ROMA Contemporary Arts Fair, Rome Italy, among others. She is the recipient of The Somerville Art Prize, New York (2002); William Graff Travel Abroad Scholarship, Hunter College, MFA (2000), and a Regional Arts Commission Artist Support Grant (2017) in support of her recent exhibition, Midnight Special at Monaco Gallery in St. Louis (2020). Her work has been the subject of reviews in varied publications, such as Artnet, Art Review Magazine, Art Press, Art Papers, The New York Times, and Time Out New York. Her 2014 solo exhibition, Four Stories, at Stephan Stoyanov Gallery in New York was reviewed by R.C. Baker for The Village Voice, and her 2017 solo exhibition, Photos of Gifts, at Bruno David Gallery was reviewed by Eileen G’Sell in Hyperallergic. Her work is owned as part of varied private collections and institutional holdings. A monograph of Bennett’s work was published in conjunction with Stephan Stoyanov Gallery in New York in 2010 called, Sidetrack: (Snapshots, Outtakes and Polaroids 2001-2008), covering eight years of work with essays by feminist art historian and critic Jenni Sorkin and former Boston MFA curator and current custodian of the Holtzer Family Foundation, William Stover. Catalogs published by Bruno David Gallery include, Four Stories, 2015, with an essay by fiction writer, Jen Logan Meyer and, Photos of Gifts, 2018, with an essay by poet and cultural critic, Eileen G’sell. Bennett self-published a work in the form of text entitled, Crush, in 2015 and as well, a 2016 book documenting a project from 2001 called, The Hey Baby Book (From April to August in Chronological Order) which is currently carried by Printed Matter, Inc. in New York City. Bennett gained a BA and BFA at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and an MFA at Hunter College in New York. She spent 14 years living and working in New York before beginning her current position as a senior lecturer at Washington University in St. Louis, MO where she joined the faculty as the Louis D. Beaumont Visiting Artist Fellow in 2013.
  • Tim Parchikov More Arrow
    Tim Parchikov Russian, b. 1983 Drawing on his background as a filmmaker, photographer and video artist Tim Parchikov captures solitary figures, as well as urban and rural landscapes, in luminous color, light, and deep shadow. Each of his series forms a narrative, often with a human subject at the center; Parchikov displays his work in combination with music and video in site-specific installations, in order to create an immersive experience akin to cinema. Deeply influenced by the use of chiaroscuro in both film noir and classical Italian painting, his images have a frozen cinematic quality, perhaps best illustrated in his most famous series “Venice” (2007). A conceptual artist at heart, Parchikov omnivorously scours contemporary culture for subject matter, working with people subjects and semi-abstracted objects and spaces interchangeably.
  • Jan Fabre More Arrow
    Jan Fabre (b. 1958, Antwerp) is regarded both in Belgium and abroad as one of the most innovative and versatile personalities in the contemporary international art scene. Over the past 40 years, he has made his mark as a visual artist, theatre artist and author. He describes himself as a consilience artist, someone who is constantly searching for bridges between different disciplines. Thanks to this undertaking, he gives fresh interpretations to the world of visual art, theatre and literature. Jan Fabre changed the idiom of theatre by bringing real action and real time onto the stage. Following his historic eight-hour production ‘This is theatre like it was to be expected and foreseen’ (1982) and the four-hour ‘The Power of Theatrical Madness’ (1984), he explored new territory with ‘Mount Olympus. To glorify the cult of tragedy, a 24-hour performance’ (2015); a monumental marathon piece with which he rewrote international theatre history. In his visual oeuvre, Jan Fabre has developed a unique and coherent world; a highly personal visual language with recurring symbols and motifs. Whilst studying in Antwerp at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Municipal Institute for Decorative Arts and Crafts, he developed a profound love of beauty and its spiritual power. Curious by nature and influenced by the manuscripts of the entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915), Jan Fabre became fascinated by the world of insects at a young age. The interaction between human and animal, and between animal and human, is an important component of metamorphosis, and is thus a constant in Fabre’s body of thought. Research into the meaning of the body is essential in the oeuvre of Jan Fabre: the body is the entrance to every emotion, thought and higher contemplation. Fabre uses interventions on his own body to explore its fluid boundaries. This is an endless quest for the self, the shell which serves as the entrance to deeper contents. The artist’s enduring fascination with the body is also strongly apparent in the personal actions and performances, from 1976 to today. Jan Fabre has been invited to integrate artworks into various public locations in Belgium and abroad, including: ‘The Man Who Measures the Clouds’ (1998), which can be seen at various sites in Europa and Asia. In Brussels, you experience ‘The Gaze Within (The Hour Blue)’ (2011-2013) in the stairwell of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts and ‘Heaven of Delight’ (2002) at the Royal Palace. You can find ‘Totem’ (2004), an installation depicting a jewel beetle on the Ladeuzeplein in Leuven which became a symbol of the city. In Antwerp, the artist’s hometown, you encounter ‘The Man who Bears the Cross’ (2015) in the Cathedral of Our Lady. In the same city Fabre created three altarpieces in the footsteps of Rubens, Jordaens and Van Dyck in St. Augustine’s Church/AMUZ. Like ‘Heaven of Delight’, these altarpieces are made with the wing cases of jewel beetles. His latest addition to his public installations are four red coral sculptures in the chapel of Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples (2019), in dialogue with a masterpiece of Caravaggio. As well as being a visual artist and a theatre artist, Jan Fabre is also the author of a large oeuvre of theatre texts that are regarded as reference works by theatre directors, academics and performers alike. Over the years, Jan Fabre has created his own language of ‘physiological’ acting, summed up in his guidelines for a performer in the 21st century. Jan Fabre Teaching Group also passes on his theatre texts and specific language as an instrument to new generations of artists all over the world. The imagination and physical awareness are gradually sharpened and the performer is challenged to build a bridge to a state of physical transformation.
  • Aidan Salakhova More Arrow
    Aidan Salakhova (Azerbaijani: Aydan Tair qızı Salahova, born March 25, 1964) is an Azeri and Russian artist, gallerist and public person. In 1992 she founded the Aidan Gallery in Moscow. Salakhova's works can be found in many private and state collections including the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, Francois Pinault Foundation, Teutloff Museum and the Boghossian Foundation; in private collections of I. Khalilov, P-K. Broshe, T. Novikov, V. Nekrasov, V. Bondarenko and others. At the 2011 Venice Biennale, Salakhova's name hit the headlines when her work was politically censored. Aidan Salahova was born in 1964 in Moscow[1] in the family of Azeri and Russian artist Tahir Salahov,[citation needed] who is the Vice-president of the Russian Academy of Arts, and a laureate of state awards in Russia and Azerbaijan. In 1987 she graduated from the Moscow State Surikov Institute of Fine Arts (Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture) as an external student. Since 2000, Aidan Salakhova is professor at the institute. Since 2007, she is an Academician of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts. In the late 1980s Salakhova became one of the most significant art figures of the new generation in post-Soviet countries[citation needed] In 2002 Aidan was awarded a silver medal by the Russian Academy of Fine Arts.[citation needed] In 2005-2007 she was a member of the Public Chamber. Having worked for over twenty years as both an artist and a gallerist she has been one of the strongest influences on the development of contemporary art in post-Soviet Russia. Salakhova has exhibited her work at major international art fairs and biennales, including twice at the Venice Biennale (1991 and 2011) and at the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007).
  • Trine Lise Nedreaas More Arrow
    Trine Lise Nedreaas - artist's statement I work in a variety of mediums but I am perhaps best known for my film and video installation works. My ideas and questions are always at the centre of my practice and the appropriate medium follows, be it moving images, photography, sculpture or drawing. My point of departure as a filmmaker is loosely based in portraiture and documentary. The nature of people’s life, work, talents and ideas and those individuals whose actions or demeanor can in some way reflect on the human condition serve as my inspiration. My films lie somewhere between the realms of portrait, performance and documentary. These areas are subtly woven together in strictly directed, symbolically charged films of individuals engaging in their own specialist act. Through simple materials and playful human performances, my work attempts at bringing the mind-blowing endlessness of time and space down to an earthly scale. I am interested in people's drive to carry on and get out of bed every morning. I admire the enthusiasts, the people who try again and again, often banging their head against the wall; the different ways in which people find purpose, be it through sausage eating, weight lifting, singing or acting as corpses, or through mapping the universe. I sympathise with stuttering, stumbling and singing out of tune and I am fascinated by the weird and the beautiful, the vast and strange variety of human endeavours. By focusing on the specific and the intimate, I try to illuminate the large and the universal. I see myself as an active director rather than a documentary-maker in my approach, making people perform their speciality, sometimes live in front of an audience, in particular settings and ways, exploring the relationship between live performance and documentary. I make films that portray individuals, often alone, sometimes determined and driven, but always trying.’ Nedreaas lives and works in Bergen, Norway. Her work has been shown at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Miami, through Times Square Arts on the billboards in Times Square, at Personal Structures as part of the Venice Biennial, in the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), PS1 Moma (NY), Kunstwerke (Berlin), Palazzo delle Arti (Napoli), Everson Museum (NY), Kunstverein Schwerin, New Center for Contemporary Art (Louisville), MACRO, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea (Rome), Art Pavilion in Zagreb, Albright Knox Gallery (Buffalo, NY), Astrup Fearnley (Oslo). She is represented in public and private collections worldwide.
  • Brian Dailey More Arrow
    Perhaps no word better characterizes Brian Dailey (b. 1951) than polytropos, the first adjective Homer applies to Odysseus in The Odyssey. Translated from the Greek as “well traveled,” “much wandering,” and, in a more metaphorical sense, as “the man of many twists and turns,” polytropos suitably describes Dailey’s life journey and its many peregrinations. As a student at Otis Art Institute (MFA, 1975) and in his ensuing art career in Los Angeles, Dailey participated in the pioneering creative experimentation defining the prolific artistic milieu in California in this era. His early career launched him on a path that—before bringing him full circle back to his roots as an artist—took him through a twenty-year interlude working on arms control and international security. These unusual experiences, which he approached with the same curiosity that has driven his current work, provide a fertile source of inspiration in his idiosyncratic and individualistic creative practice. Based in the Washington DC metropolitan area and Carmel, California, Dailey is an artist whose work in a range of media, including photography, film, installations, and painting, draws on his multifaceted life experiences. His conceptual and performance based art expands the parameters of the mediums in which he works, defying easy categorization. Engaging with the social, political, and cultural issues of our times, his work is informed by his unusual background and unconventional evolution as an artist.
  • Ivan Moudov More Arrow
    Ivan Moudov was born in 1975 in Sofia, where he lives and works. He graduated the National Academy of Art in Sofia. Among his most recent solo exhibitions are: Untitled, Gregor Podnar, Ljubljana, 2013, Air Drawing Contest, MUMOK, Vienna, 2013, Stones, Casa Cavazzini- Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Udine, Udine, 2013 Performing Time, Prometeogallery, Milan, The Glory Hole, Alberta Pane Gallery, Paris, 2012; %, W139, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2011; Wine for Openings/ Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, Switzerland, 2010; Ivan Moudov, Binz 39, Zurich, Switzerland, 2010; Trick or Treat, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany, 2008; The 1st at Moderna: and the Ivan Moudov, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2008. He participated in the 52nd Venice Biennial, Italy, 2007, the 1st Moscow Biennial, Russia, 2005, and also in Manifesta 4, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2002. Among his recent group exhibitions are: Doppio Gioco – Double Game. The Ambiguity of the Photographic Image, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice, Italy, 2012; Rearview Mirror: New Art from Central & Eastern Europe, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 2012; Site Inspection - The Museum on the Museum, Ludwig Museum - Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, 2011; Beziehungsarbeit - Kunst und Institution, Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna, 2011. He had been artist in residence: AIR grants from the BINZ 39, Zurich, Switzerland, 2009; KulturKontakt, Vienna, 2008; Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany, 2008; and the Recollets, Paris, 2006 among others.
  • Tato Akhalkakatsishvili More Arrow
    Tato Akhalkatsishvili (born 1979) is a Tbilisi based multimedia artist. In 1996-2003 he was enrolled at the Tbilisi State Aademy of Arts, Faculty of Fine Art. Along with the fine art drawings he also works on the production of installations, objects, collages and videos. The main intellectual focus of Akhalkatsishvili’s work lies on the crossroads of history and personal memories. Childhood memories about a long disappeared country and historical collisions (conflicts) remain for the artist subject of permanent reflection and discussions. Since 2000 Akhalkatsishvili actively participates in important international group exhibitions and art fairs such as: Start Art Fair (Saatchi Gallery, London, 2015), Cosmoscow (2016, 2018), Vienna Contemporary (2017), Art Geneva (2018), Art Dubai (2018). He was one of eleven international artists in Dubai back in 2018.
  • Sverre Bjartnaes More Arrow
    Sverre Bjertnæs (1976) was educated at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, for then to further develop his studies at AKI Academy of Fine Art in Enschede in Holland. During the most recent years, he has been rising as a star in Norway’s contemporary art scene, with a strong artistic identity. He made his mark as a young figurative painter and drawer after attending the Norwegian “Nerderum School” as a teenager. Bjertnæs’ paintings frequently display portraits, where a playful tone meets images of complex relationships. These perspectives have in the latest years formed a unique language. Each work is a new discovery equipped with its own codes and instruments, an exciting artistic style that both stays true to classical figuration, as well as experimenting with conceptualism. His works, Bjertnæs states, are focused on the community between the works and the viewer as an aesthetic experience. This transition between styles has had a groundbreaking effect on Bjertnæs’ oeuvre, where the focus is the exploration in itself, both arts own possibilities and of himself. His first solo exhibition was at the Norwegian gallery Anarchist Fraction ran by Bjarne Melgaard in 2000, a natural starting point as the two artists has developed close affiliation, both personally and creatively. In 2011 Bjertnæs was a part of the exhibition “After Shelley Duvall '72 (Frogs on the High Line)”, curated by Melgaard in Gallery Maccarone in New York. The exhibition got great reviews from the media, among them Roberta Smith ranged the exhibition as among the 10 best that year. They first worked together artistically at The Armory Show in New York that same year, which also got picked up by the same newspaper. In 2013 Bjertnæs opened the exhibition “If you really loved me you would be able to admit that you're ashamed of me”, arranged and curated by Melgaard at White Columns in New York. In 2017 Bjertnæs was again featured in the New York Times with the article “What to See at New York’s Art Fairs This Week”. Now Bjertnæs works with painting, drawing, film, and wooden – and bronze sculptures. His variation in media has resulted in a maximalist type of curation, each exhibition is like entering another world, enhancing the aesthetic experience in focus. In January 2014, Bjertnæs showed in a much-celebrated solo exhibition at the Oslo based museum Stenersen Museet, followed by his first solo exhibition at Galleri Brandstrup “Nå. Ingenting. To” in 2015 and “Det kollektive mennesket/ Minner om oss” in 2016. In 2018 Melgaard and Bjertnæs have cooperated on two new exhibitions, shown at Galleri Brandstrup and Rod Bianco.
  • Krassimir Terziev More Arrow
    Krassimir Terziev is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans a diversity of media, including video/film, photography, painting/drawing, and text, questioning the boundaries between reality and fiction, while exploring the manifold transitions and tensions between a globalized world, dominated by overwhelming multiplicity of symbolic imagery, and its material groundings in technological, physical and human ‘hardware’. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Sofia University (2012), where is lecturing since, and an MA degree in Painting from the National Academy of Arts, Sofia (1997), where he lectured from 2009 to 2016. His work is part of the collections of Centre Pompidou/MNAM, Paris; Arteast 2000+ Collection, Moderna Galerija Ljubljana; Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia; Art Collection Telekom, Bonn; Kunstsammlung HypoVereinsbank, Munich; Gaudenz B. Ruf Collection, Zurich/Vienna; Art Project Depot, Sofia; Dana and Georgi Voynov Collection, Sofia/Bucharest; among others. Born 1969 in Dobrich, Bulgaria. Lives and works in Sofia. Member of the Institute of Contemporary Art - Sofia

Exhibition text

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Farce - The Way we live In this world, where the virus-issue defines our life, we are about to forget the origin of our existence. Blinded by the blinking of neon and caught in the trap of political rejections, where is now the universe of the human soul? In this pandemic chaos, through all that we have to accept, the project called “Farce - The Way we live” will provoke the audience with a variety of visions. The Bulgarian curator Stefan Stoyanov has united 15 positions, mirroring the political fake we live in. The project includes a multitude of artworks, as well as the media of film, installation and photography. The main message of the exhibition will be represented by the newest work of the artist Iv Toshain, who is born in Bulgaria and based in Vienna. “Art has to be rearmed”, says Toshain, and will impress the visitors with her neon installation, called “Gorgona”. Inspired by the classic Sculpture of Bernini, she combines glass, chains and lights in a very original and effective way. Her work is showing the vision of a woman with a brave heart, living in the prison of a world, defined by selfishness, vanity and fear, a world that strongly needs the metamorphose of consciousness.

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