The National Gallery announces the opening of an exhibition on the Bulgarian sculptor Georgi Chapkanov, dedicated to his 80th birthday. More than 70 works are included – owned by the artist; the inventory of the National Gallery; the Museum of Humour and Satire in Gabrovo; the Sofia City Art Gallery; the art galleries in Burgas, Dobrich, Ruse, Silistra, Stara Zagora, Veliko Tarnovo, and Yambol; and privation collectors.
Through the medium of virtual reality, the artist’s most iconic project is presented in one of the halls – the monument dedicated to the city of Sofia. Situated on a 16-meter high column, the statue’s details and history are little known. The process of its creation, which continued for more than nine months in 2000, is presented with excerpts from the film by director Todor Chapkanov, shown here for the first time.
The exhibition, retrospective in character, places Chapkanov’s at first glance earthly works within the context of an unearthly, metaphysical world, one in which the celestial has its own clearly demarcated structure. This is the path that every human soul is destined to take – from limbo/purgatory to hell and heaven. This Cosmos, a spiritual world of transformation and becoming, is held by an all-powerful deity endowed with a feminine essence and form – the “heavenly wisdom” Sophia.
The project has been made possible through the financial support of the Events Program of the Sofia Municipality and with the kind cooperation of UniCredit Bulbank. Curators of the exhibition are Ivo Milev and Milko Dobrev.

Multimedia exposition dedicated to 150 years since the death of the Apostle of Freedom, Vasil Levski.
Using holographic technology on a large-scale video wall, a re-enactment of the trial of the Apostle of Freedom is displayed, and significant moments of his life are brought back to life. Veselin Plachkov portrays Vasil Levski. Actors Ivan Trenev, Lyubov Pavlova, Rumen Ivanov, Alexander Georgiev, Biser Marinov and Nikola Dodov are also participants. Nelly Dimitrova is the screenwriter; Dimitar Gochev, the director; Simeon Parashkevov and Dimitar Gochev, cinematographers; Atanas Gendov, composer; Pirina Veselinova, Evgeni Gospodinov and the Svetoglas Quartet, musical performers; sensor studio, animation and mapping; Hristo Karagyozov, audio mixing and post-production; Ivo Milev, creative producer; and Tsvetoslav Borisov, executive producer.
The National Gallery and the Vasil Levski All-Bulgarian Committee created the exposition, with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and donations by the Lachezar Tsotsorkov Foundation, Kaufland Bulgaria EOOD, Aurubis Bulgaria JSC, Vazovski Machinery Works JSC – Sopot, and patriotic Bulgarians.
Kvadrat 500, entrance at 95, Vasil Levski Blvd., Sofia
Opening hours:
Tuesday–Sunday, 10 a.m.– 6 p.m.
The screenings are 30 minutes away, starting at 10 am
Bookings for groups of up to 20 people: +359 879 834 025
FREE ADMISSION

Curator: Dr. Szabolcs Süli-Zakar
Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art
‘What art is can neither be grasped nor determined—one can only feel it.’ Joseph Tasnádi
Joseph Tasnádi’s exhibition is a review of his post-2010 oeuvre, consisting of installations, interventions, and digital experiments, along with some earlier drawings. His uniquely resonant lyrical installations, as well as the intellectual and sensitively poeticised objects, enter a dialogue with each other and start weaving an associative network of additional meanings.
A version of the exhibition took place in 2022 at the MODEM Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, Debrecen, Hungary.
Tasnádi’s creative career incorporates an array of artistic disciplines and genres, yet his writings, drawings, digital experiments, installations, and interventions form an extraordinarily coherent and organic whole. They illustrate poetic and artistic aspects of a profound experience. Tasnádi seeks his inspiration, not inside but outside, art. He finds things. Things that spontaneously connect themselves with metacontents, such as hope, memory, death, the impossibility of communication, paradox, place, time, presence, or of their lack.
At the same time, he examines the relationships between technology and art. In recent years, his work has focused on the bonds between man and machine, the relationship of technology, metaphoric perspective, and poetic thinking.
He thematises important questions with hybrid contemporary artistic methods in which (scientific) research, (artistic) elaboration/reflection and the demand for poetic synthesis are deeply inter-connected.

The ‘Atlantis’ exhibition is an adventure of the senses, an open door to the notion of reality and the past, a bold and dreamy inducement to encounter the unknown or the non-existent, even if only in one pictorial world.
Nina Ruseva created most of these paintings specifically for the occasion. The extreme, exciting emotional experience physically separates us from the reality surrounding us and conveys us to distant worlds. Peru, the Antarctic, Perperikon, or the lost lands of Atlantis—all unfold before the eyes of the viewer, refracted through the personal emotion and sensibility of the artist, through the rich imagination and curiosity towards the unknown that she materialises in her painting.
Nina Ruseva’s landscapes occupy the boundary between abstraction and reality—effulgent and temperamental, creating a sense of dynamism and, at the same time, bringing tranquillity to a desolate space dominated by natural forms. The large formats allow for a bold handling of form, colour, and large strokes thickly applied to the canvas.
The bright palette and frequent use of dark contours are distinguishing features of Nina Ruseva’s figurative language, reinforcing the feeling of the illusoriness of natural scenes.