Aleksey Alexiev was born in 1962 and is known as the wood carver who revives withered trees in Sofia's gardens and parks.
He created his first miniature wooden figure at the age of 4, with his grandfather's pocket knife. He learned on his own over time, with the persistence and dedication of a man who has found his calling.
After 4 unsuccessful attempts to be admitted to the Art Academy in Sofia, Alexey graduated as a chemical engineer. Until 1994, he worked at the Institute of Applied Mineralogy at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. When the institute was shut down, Alexey was among the hundreds of scientists left on the streets. After that, he found his path towards art again - as from 1994 to date, he has created more than 15 works in situ in Sofia from dried trees, which he transforms into sculptures of intertwined faces, images of people and animals, insects, birds, mystical creatures, breathing new life into them.
Today, the self-taught craftsman is entirely devoted to miniature and decorative wood carving, making sculptures and miniatures.
Bore Ivanov was born in Stara Zagora in 1968, but spent most of his years in Kazanlak. In the mid-1990s, he emigrated for three years to South Africa, after which he returned back to Kazanlak. He published a book about life in South Africa and made an exhibition dedicated to the country, which was a great success not only in the “City of Roses,” but also throughout Bulgaria. At the beginning of the new millennium, Bore went to Paris, where he works until this day.
The French-Bulgarian artist admits that he is obsessed with Paris. His paintings represent a particular kind of hallucination of the cosmopolitan city. Reflections and the implication of forms, mark his style, which tries to blur the line between abstraction and realism.
“To be honest, I dreamed of being a sailor, not an artist; kind of a professional traveler. - admits Bore Ivanov with a smile. – But, in 2001, my longing for freedom and beauty led me to the most beautiful city in the world. For me, Paris is the kind of place that offers the right combination of inspiration, pain, suffering, freedom, culture, and success that drives me crazy. I try to turn everyday life into a picture. I design my paintings, paying unprecedented homage to the people, sparks and reflections in the City of Light.”
Borislava Marcheva was born in 1991 in Burgas, where she graduated from the English High School.
She left to continue her education in England, but her studies were interrupted because of a diagnosed mental disorder.
Drawing is part of her treatment and a constant vocation to this day.
She works in her home, which is her only gallery. Her pantings are seen only by her closest people and family. Borislava says she sees them as separated pieces of herself that change her in new ways in the outside world. She calls them "mirrors of my subconscious, in which I manage to read my own thoughts that I cannot otherwise utter."
In the mornings, she often draws visions from her dreams. Sometimes, the storylines are the fruits of whimsical worlds that she dreams up together with her fiancé Adam. Other times, the drawing "goes off on its own" from an impulse, an uncontrollable emotion that turns into symbols and images.
She creates peculiar worlds where animals come to life in her paintings, together with fairy-tale characters and non-existent creatures that tell fantastic stories.
Denis Popov is the only blind sculptor in Bulgaria. He was born in 1997 in Sofia and only managed to graduate from NBU, majoring in "Ceramics and Porcelain”, a few months ago. This undoubtedly takes him out of the category of an art brut artist, but his involvement in the exhibition is a gesture to his extraordinary history and his unusual work as a creator.
A few years before NBU, he fought for his right to study at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, but was refused, due to an existing regulation that does not allow the admission of blind people.
"Sculptures are made with the heart - says Denis. - Just because I'm blind doesn't mean I can't see! Since I have never seen the world with my own eyes, I don’t miss it. Ever since I was little, I loved to read fantasy and science fiction books, I watched a lot of animations, but my favorite thing was to take plasticine and make the characters from the books or movies as I imagined them to be and create my own story. I dreamed of making sculptures. The biggest success in my life is that I fought for my right to study what I want, no matter what.”
Ivo Dimchev is a Bulgarian artist, born in 1976 in Sofia, who lives mostly outside the country.
In 1997, he was admitted to an acting major in the class of Professor Krikor Azarian, but left the theater and cinema academy the very next year. His works are an extreme and colorful mixture of performance, dance, theater, music, and photography. He is the author of more than 30 performances and has been awarded numerous international awards for dance and theater in Europe, North and South America, and Asia.
Ivo Dimchev started painting spontaneously, inspired by 3 large cardboard boxes thrown in front of a fruit and vegetable stand in Brussels. He collected them from the street and an hour later his first 3 paintings were born on the floor of his room.
He paints and sculpts impulsively, defines it as "a sexual act with the canvas, the object or the paint”, and does not use brushes - he paints with his bare hands and acrylic paints. He does not keep all of his works and some of them he destroys or transforms into new ones.
Martin Rangelov was born in 1992 in Sofia. Sculpture has been his passion ever since he was a kid, but he never went to art school and never took lessons - he is a self-taught talent. He graduated from a professional high school in veterinary medicine. He works as a chef in a restaurant in Sofia, but in his free time he sculpts in his home, with wax and polymer clay, without preliminary sketches, for he cannot draw. He makes masks and small sculptures, with a manic precision in every detail, making them look like characters out of a fantasy movie.
Rosen Karamfilov was born in 1992 in Sofia. Cerebral palsy at birth confines him to a wheelchair, but he likes to joke that the wheelchair is confined to him.
Mainly devoted to literature, Rosen has written novels and poetry. He also does music and calls himself a "singing poet".
In 2020, he started painting on impulse. He says that sometimes in this he finds a spiritual connection with his father, Kolyo Karamfilov, a famous Bulgarian artist who died suddenly in 2014.
He paints some of his works in direct stream of consciousness and experiments with his paintings in live performances. Often changing the shape, color, scale, and the already created images.
Constantly searching. Never stopping. Always discovering.
Ruscho Tikhov is a self-taught artist with an extraordinary creative path. He was born in 1947 in Sofia and died in 2017, a few months after his first and only solo exhibition.
He studied at the French High School in Sofia and at the University of Clermont-Ferrand. He worked as a literary editor, translator of the BNR broadcasts abroad, novels, plays and other fiction from French.
In the late 1960s, he settled in Paris. Peculiar, independent, bohemian, extrovert, constantly changing the direction of his personal and professional destiny. Far from any vanity and pretension to be perceived as an artist, although surrounded by such throughout his life.
He makes his collages and assemblages in a joking manner, like a child's game, and only those closest to him see what his passion to transform gives birth to. He collects small figurines, toys, discarded objects and combines them into colorful, whimsical mazes that go from past stories to the formation of new ones. It moves on the edge of kitsch and provocation, experimenting with images and symbols, counterpoints, religious motifs, nudity, eroticism.
