Ashira Morris

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  picks April 26, 2022

  Maria Minkova

  In the exhibition “Interweavings,” Maria Minkova uses algorithmically generated news items to translate global events into a series of woven mixed-media works. The space of the gallery represents a full week, with a single large-format weaving standing in for each of the seven days. Within the black frames, bright-colored yarn intertwines with disparate materials: film tape, metal chains, even human hair. To produce the series, Minkova first “fed” herself a number of headlines based on a script coded in Python. Then the artist took these real-world events, transmitted through digital media

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  picks June 14, 2021

  “Intimacy and Spectacle in the Age of Social Media”

  Named for the capital city of Sofia, Bulgaria’s first sports car was designed by engineer Velizar Andreev in the 1980s. One of its rare prototypes now reappears in the heart of the city as The Sofia Car, 2021, Lazar Lyutakov’s contribution to Sofia Art Project’s inaugural installation, “Intimacy and Spectacle in the Age of Social Media.” The underpass where it currently resides connects Sofia’s Largo—the city’s prime political hub—to the Serdica metro station. The pedestrian walkway doubles as a preserved Roman-era archaeological site, ruins having been uncovered during the subway’s construction.

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  picks May 28, 2021

  “The Possible Institution”

  For Swimming Pool’s group show “The Possible Institution,” Maria Nalbantova’s installation, Institutional Leisure, 2021, transforms the gallery’s titular blue-tiled rooftop pool into a conversation pit, with Astroturf carpeting the pool bottom and the tops of a set of benches. When viewed from above, the sunken seating area resembles an array of Tetris blocks. The space thus recalls the modular constraints of conventional cubicle culture, but also teases an opportunity to escape those bounds.

  Within the exhibition, these two concepts—the limits of current institutions and the possibility of