Sophia Grancharova is presents an installation of fragmented urban landscape images. Their function has been altered drastically, so the viewer’s attention and way of looking at them is changed accordingly. The choice of fragments focuses on the human body as featured on billboards, it is curious how they have been magnified and deformed multiple times, as well as how they interact with urban architecture and people around them. The artist’s observations, as reflected in the images, bring to mind the figure of the 19th century flâneur strolling around the city with no specific purpose or destination in mind, carefully observing the crowd and urban architecture. Sophia Grancharova derives inspiration from her own walks around the city giving a visual voice to her commentary on what today’s flâneur around a Bulgarian city is like.

Since the basic sense of sight implies certain distancing from the object being viewed, the flâneur can never allow himself to get close to the images or people being observed. To counterbalance the physical distancing, the artist has created a series of sculptural objects teasingly inviting the viewer to climb up their soft and warm surfaces.

The in-out, gallery-city, body-architecture dynamic takes the exhibition out of the exhibition hall to the corner of Todor Alexandrov Blvd. and Tsar Boris III St. where the work Big Choice is presented on a couple of billboards.

The concepts of scale, distancing and proximity are detected as characteristic threads throughout the exhibition, suggesting that the modern flâneur could break the reflexive habit of distancing himself from the object of curiosity, especially if the object (animate or not) glances back. The passive attitude of the observer is being challenged. The brief eye contact offers endless potential which is intimidating because if you dare take a closer look, or allow yourself to come closer, things may turn out to be different from what they seemed like. Things may fall to pieces and the illusion may be lost. Does this not actually create potential for endless opportunities?

Sophia Grancharova was born in 1994 in Sofia. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts programme at the School of Media Arts (ESAM, École Supérieure d’Arts et Médias) in Caen, France (2016). She has been earning her master’s degree in the same subject at the Luca School of Arts, Brussels (2020). She participated in the educational programme Close encounters – Visual Dialogues/ School4artists of the Institute for Contemporary Art, Sofia (2017), the experimental curatorial school of Swimming Pool, Sofia (2018), as well as the Arts and Politics workshop of Goethe-Institut, Sofia (2020-2021). She was nominated for the BAZA award for contemporary art (2018). She was also awarded a scholarship by the Cultural Perspectives Foundation within the Per Aspera Ad Astra (Through Hardships to the Stars) National Scholarship, visual arts category (2020), under the mentorship of Pravdolyub Ivanov.
She has participated in a number of group exhibitions including: Sofia Artbook Fair (2017); Close Encounters, School4artists, ICA, Sofia, (2017); Art Start – Young Artists to Watch 2018 at the Credo Bonum Gallery; Exhibition of BAZA Award Nominees, Sofia City Art Gallery (2018); Alter Me & Alter You at Goethe-Institut, Sofia (2018); Open Art Files: Notes and Footnotes, Kapana Gallery (2019).
In 2018, she initiated her first curatorial project entitled Space for Sparkling Water in a hotel room at the Diter Hotel in Sofia together with artist Jordan Derrien. She had her first solo exhibition, Poor Connections, at the 2.0 Gallery, Sofia (2018), followed by Endless Cocktail at the Vaska Emanuilova Gallery, Sofia (2019). In 2021, she is presenting her third solo exhibition, If You Look Closely, Things May Fall to Pieces, at the Sofia City Art Gallery.

Mentor: Pravdoliub Ivanov