Passage – Sasho Stoitzov

Toplocentrala / 18.02.2026 – 22.03.2026

“Passage” is an exhibition of works by Sasho Stoitzov, presenting a process of movement across eras, languages, and understandings of art, between image and text, stability and uncertainty. It enriches the narrative of contemporary art in Bulgaria by showcasing works from Vesselina Sarieva, which have rarely been publicly exhibited over time and constitute an important contribution both as collectibles and archival material. In Vladiya Mihaylova’s curatorial concept, Passage is considered not merely as a historical change of political regime but as a profound transformation in the way the world is structured and understood. The focus is on the passage between two different systems of artistic and social organization—a transition marked simultaneously by emancipation and disintegration. In this context, the works serve as testimonies to a moment of rupture and cultural trauma, in which old models lose their stability while new ones are not yet fully established. It is precisely in this tension between historical break and personal continuity that the exhibition narrative unfolds. The works, long held in the artist’s studio, now emerge as delayed but significant voices in this story. The exhibition gathers little-known works from the 1970s and 1980s—a period of specific cultural conditions in late-socialist Bulgaria—alongside notes, conceptual reflections, and drawings from the 1990s, which remained outside public attention for a long time. The variety of techniques and coloristic solutions is unified by consistent structural lines. Among them, the grid stands out as both an organization of the pictorial surface and a metaphor for framing the world. In the modernist tradition, the grid functions as a sign of the autonomy of the painting’s surface, but in Stoitzov’s work it also acquires an existential dimension—it segments space, creates internal corridors and boundaries, structures while simultaneously problematizing the image. The grid not only organizes the visible but also raises the question of the order that makes the world possible. The materials from the 1990s are presented in a separate section of the exhibition space, titled “…ask them not to draw”. This gesture functions as an interruption and marks the traumatic moment of transition between two artistic systems, which are also systems for organizing social and living space. While earlier works maintain structure as a constructive principle, here the grid is reduced to a coordinate scheme, and text and calculation take the place of the image—as an attempt to think and stabilize the world under conditions of disintegration. The works and archival materials in the exhibition are part of the Vesselina Sarieva Collection, whose support made the exhibition possible. The exhibition also includes the painting Saxophonist in the Bathroom (1973), from the MFG Foundation Collection. Thanks are extended to the Union of Bulgarian Artists for providing furniture for the exhibition.