site.btaInternational Exhibition in Sofia Explores Utopia Through Contemporary Drawing

An international exhibition entitled "Alternative… in the Line of Utopia" brings together eleven artists from Austria, Italy, Poland, Georgia and Bulgaria, presenting their interpretations of utopia as a space for imagination, critical thinking and visual exploration. 

The exhibition will open at Sofia's One Gallery on April 14 and will run until May 14, the organizers said.

The exhibition features works created during an international artistic residency in Plovdiv in 2024, as well as new pieces and installations that expand the understanding of drawing beyond its traditional forms, towards the object, space and the conceptual gesture.

The project involves Peter Assmann, Elena Caterina Doria, Karolina Gacke, Isa Geiger, Violeta Ivanova, Nino Lomsadze, Max Della Mora, Leo Neuhauser, Mariana Nikolai Pacheva, Herwig Prammer, and Æno | Emanuela Serafino.

The drawing is approached not as a finished product, but as a process and experimental practice. At the centre of the exhibition is utopia, conceived not as an idealized vision of the future, but as a tool for reflecting on the present.

The organizers say the project includes references to Plato and Thomas More, as well as contemporary social and political contexts, through which the artists construct visual narratives between the possible and the unrealized.

The exhibition features drawings, objects, installations and sculptural forms which explore the relationships between memory and matter, reality and fiction. Some works approach utopia as a historical trajectory of thought, while others translate it into personal and fragmentary artistic spaces.

The project and exhibition were conceived and initiated by Severina Kehayova and curated by Furna art & culture, an association based in Linz, Austria. The project marks the beginning of a series of international artistic meetings and collaborative practices, focused on contemporary forms of collectivity and cultural exchange.