“Objects and Traces – Aspects of Reality”. Exhibition with the Participation of Researchers from the Institute of Art Studies

On 27 August 2025, the second joint exhibition “Dvoitsa 2” by Ventsislav Dimov and Orlin Spasov was opened at the “Dechko Uzunov” House-Museum, a branch of the Kazanlak Art Gallery. Under the curatorship of Prof. Milena Georgieva, PhD (Institute of Art Studies – BAS), the authors present “Objects and traces – aspects of reality” – a creative study of the boundaries between science, art, and the game of imagination. The curator of the exhibition, Prof. Milena Georgieva, PhD, and Plamen Petrov, PhD, Director of the Kazanlak Art Gallery, delivered speeches at the opening. Among the guests were the art historian Prof. Chavdar Popov, artists, journalists, and actors.
Who are the authors who invited viewers to engage in the dialogue about the visible and the hidden in our contemporary reality? What do they show to the audience?
Ventsislav Dimov is a professor at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication (Head of the Department of Radio and Television), and at the Institute of Art Studies, BAS, where he heads the Research Group "Ethnomusicology". Doctor of Science with habilitation in Ethnomusicology and in Public Communications and Information Sciences. He painted and attended art schools during his primary and secondary education. He defines his works as a ‘plastic narrative of thing-seeking’: things from the world and life, discovered and learned in solitude, with the act and result of their recreation and sharing taking them beyond the material and the external. He prefers the self-determination of “experiments” rather than “creativity”.
Orlin Spasov is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication at Sofia University and executive director of the Media Democracy Foundation. He is a doctor of sociology. He is a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is the author of numerous publications dedicated to media research and contemporary culture. Spasov’s interest in photography began as early as high school, where he attended photography clubs. His further activities with photography are not always consistent, but the passion remains, complemented by the wider academic interest in visual culture. Spasov has taught at the College of Photography at the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication and is the author of research related to the history and evolution of photography in Bulgarian print media.
In the creative dialogue between them, called “Dvoitsa 2”, Dimov and Spasov remain primarily researchers from their respective scientific fields, who take a joint step into visual art to offer another perspective on their experiences. The unifying factor is the search for “traces” (by Dimov) and “objects” (by Spasov). The very process of discovering traces left by things and people and rethinking them in a new, artistic context is central to both authors. In this exhibition, Dimov and Spasov continue to reflect together on the nature of reality and the possibilities under certain circumstances for it to be deeper than what is visible on the surface.
The exhibition will run until 12 October 2025.