The exhibition is among the events featured in the Second Paper Art Biennial, held within the framework of the Sofia Paper Art Festival 2013. The biennial’s current edition, comprised of 19 exhibitions in various Sofia venues, has broad international representation.

The selection of artworks, exhibited under the “Messages of Light” motto, high-lights the specifics of paper art from the vantage point of various traditions and cultures around the world. With its fragile structure, which is a combination of primeness and exquisiteness, delicacy and playfulness, elegance and grotesqueness, mundaneness and magic, paper is a material affording artists countless opportunities for creative reconsideration of the world. Many of the artworks were developed as nature forms, others feature elements of script, folklore traditions, poetic confessions. This involved the use of various manual paper-casting technologies, as well as of recycled and scrap paper. The imagination and artistic freedom paper is approached with by artists transform the mundane everyday material into a delicate spiritual message.

The exhibition features 27 artworks by 13 artists: Harald Metzler – Austria, Eva Toker – Argentina, Gail Stiffe and Jassica Wong – Australia, Irene Rammensee and Helene Tschacher – Germany, Sun Young Kang – Korea, Veroniquies Sapin – France, Yoshio Hasegawa – Japan, Ferry Staverman – the Netherlands, Magda Sobon – Poland, Aidee Bernard – France and Kathrin Dardel – Switzerland.

Most of the artists participating in the exhibition are members of the International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists (IAPMA). Many of them came to our country specifically for the festival and the presentations included in its programme. Helene Tschacher was a long-time president of the association, while annual paper art congresses help promote successfully new trends in this kind of art.

Two presentations will be delivered at the Sofia City Art Gallery-hosted exhibition: one devoted to recycled paper and its products, introducing new trends in the cre-ation of various constructions, and a lecture entitled “Paper in China” to be deliv-ered by Liu Ian Gracely, curator of international sculpture events.