site.btaVassil Simitchiev Presents Pieta Video Installation at Academy Gallery

Vassil Simitchiev will present his latest video installation, titled "Pieta", at the Academy Gallery of the National Academy of Art. It will open on September 1, and can be viewed until September 3, said the hosts of the event. 

"The internationally renowned Bulgarian sculptor has been working on the piece for the past few years and is now ready to show it to the public in the most appropriate space for its realization," the team said. In their words, Pieta is a kind of self-reflection on the present, both globally and personally. Without focusing on specific events or direct associations, Simitchiev recreated a sense of impending apocalypse. The installation can also be seen as a commentary on the collapse of current civilizational values.

"By contrasting the iconic image of Michelangelo Buonarroti's Pietà with the flames of a raging bonfire, Vassil Simitchiev creates a powerful and captivating visual scene that can be summed up in the words of the author: "Art is always something else," said the National Academy of Art. 

Vassil Simitchiev was born on June 25, 1938, in Sofia. In 1962, he graduated in Monumental Sculpture from the Academy of Art in Sofia in the studio of Prof. Lyubomir Dalchev. In Bulgaria, he worked in the field of decorative and monumental sculpture. Since 1975, he has lived and worked in Sweden. He works in the field of performance and video installation. He gained fame with his conceptual projects, some of which were realized on a monumental scale. "The Glass Pier" (1985) and "The Bridge" (1996) firmly established him as a strong creative personality on a European scale.

The artist is the recipient of the 1982 Culture Award of the city of Malmö, Sweden. In 2022, he received an honorary doctorate from the National Academy of Art in Sofia. In the same year, he held a large-scale retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery.