PREHOD for Sale

Quite naturally this year we decided to dedicate our Christmas show of artists’ editions – works with a specifically souvenir-like substance, to the 25 years since 1989, the period of transition (prehod) in Bulgaria. These years were diverse and complex, painful and successful, years of optimism and disappointment; they are definitive for many of us. Our attitude to the issues in this show has been through a lot of deliberations… It is possibly defined by attitudes of irony and sarcasm. These are typical for the art of the PREHOD; maybe they are a sign of confusion, of the change in value systems, frustration and even desperation. However, for all those years since Bulgarian contemporary art is on the world scene self-irony and sarcasm are some of its main tools. The endless and traumatic period of transition (prehod) turned out not to be too popular for our art, however. We hope that through this show of attractive and amusing “objects” created by artists, we will not only challenge the theme of transition but will also manage to turn our back on it at least metaphorically while keeping only souvenirs for ourselves. We do acknowledge that an objective evaluation of the years of one’s life is not possible. However, we tried to deal with those years with a sense of humor. That is why we titled our show “Prehod for Sale”. The title uses one of the most popular newspaper formulas from these past years – we announce that all is for sale and we use a typically local word which is spelled in Chatitca (writing in Bulgarian with Latin characters) or Methoditca (from the name of Method, St Cyril’s brother, one of the inventors of the Cyrillic script) as some would prefer to have it. For us this is a sign of the times. The limited edition of the works by the artists makes it possible to produce additional samples should there be strong interest from the audience.