ART START 2025

ART START

Young Artists to Follow in 2025

CENTRIFUGAL FORCES 

Curator: Vessela Nozharova

18 February – 16 March
Credo Bonum Gallery and Goethe-Institut Bulgaria 

Participants: Aleksandar Gabrovski, Antonia Avramova, Dragana Pavlovska, Ira Zhivkova, Katrin Kochorapova, Mia Novakova, Petra Dimitrova, Radoslav Angelov, Ralitsa Georgieva, Samuil Velev, Stefan Domuzov, Strahil Penev

For 9 years now, the exhibition “Art Start: Young Artists to Follow” has set the goal of highlighting new names in Bulgarian contemporary art. Very young artists who have just graduated and are still looking for career development opportunities. Many things have changed in these 9 years. The scene has become much more supportive, art education is much more diverse, useful and oriented towards the development of artists, even the market shows increased interest in the art of young artists.

In this rapidly changing context, the exhibition format “Art Start” is another incentive for young artists, another opportunity for artistic development. At the same time, it is a tool through which society can obtain information about the processes taking place in art – a guide for local and global trends.

Over the past few years, “Art Start” has been entrusted to the hands of young and prominent artists performing curatorial functions. They have had the responsible task of looking critically at the authors of their generation and presenting them. For some of them, this has been their first presentation to a Bulgarian audience, because they came from academies in the Netherlands, Germany, France, England or Italy. Being a product of other educational principles and returning to our country, their art enriched the Bulgarian context in an interesting way and brought a vital current into the local artistic landscape. 

In this edition, the gaze is largely turned inward, towards the dynamics of the local scene. Caught in the whirlwind of local centrifugal forces, their art performs a movement along a certain trajectory, which logically revolves here, on site. In 2025, “Art Start” points out the young artists who have studied, live and work in Bulgaria – the authors who build their artistic practice here and, despite local deficits, give us reason to believe that the future of Bulgarian art belongs to them.

“Art Start” is a project of the Credo Bonum Gallery and is implemented with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture. Partner and co-host is the Goethe-Institut Bulgaria. 

In 2025, the project will also include an international educational module: a school for artists. By attending a series of lectures and participating in practical workshops, young artists will be able to upgrade their professional skills and opportunities for future realization. Partners for the educational program are the Goethe-Institut Bulgaria and the Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Institute Sofia.