From mid-August, Art Gallery Kazanlak presents a small-scale intervention featuring works by the Austrian sculptor Gabriela von Habsburg. The exhibition initiative is being staged without a formal opening and will be available to residents and guests of Kazanlak over the coming months, within the space of the permanent exhibition Choices. The presence of these works in the gallery forms an organic part of the institutional programme The Searchers. It represents a long-term project in development, through which fragments of private collections—formed through the efforts of various collectors—are revealed to the public. The programme sets out to introduce audiences to valuable artefacts, without which the Bulgarian and European history of art would be incomplete, and to raise key questions about the phenomenon of the “private collection” and its essential role in the existence of contemporary art and our cultural life as a whole.
The works included in the present intervention form part of the corporate collection of Elprom Troyan — a company with an 85-year history, established as the largest manufacturer of electric motors in the Balkans, and owned by the Mondeshki family. The leading conceptual thread running through this encounter between artist and collector is metal. It functions simultaneously as a plastic medium of expression, as an industrial product, and as a philosophy of form and its permanence.
Gabriela von Habsburg is among the internationally recognised contemporary artists working in the field of monumental and small-scale metal sculpture. Her artistic language is characterised by geometric rigour, clarity of line and precise analysis of space. Using stainless steel and precious metals, the artist constructs three-dimensional structures that capture light, refract it, and enter into direct dialogue with the surrounding architectural or natural environment.
As part of the presentation, the public will have the opportunity to become closely acquainted with the artist’s work through the representative monograph Gabriela von Habsburg: 2016–1996 (Hirmer Verlag), on display within the exhibition space. The volume traces two decades of her creative path and the development of her explorations in the field of abstract sculpture.
The inclusion of these sculptural pieces and structures within the space of the permanent exhibition Choices gives us the opportunity to reflect on the need for continuing dialogue between historically established works of art and contemporary explorations in the field of three-dimensional form.
The Searchers programme was launched in 2023 with the exhibition Building, which presented nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian art from the collection of Georgi and Vanya Zabchevi. In the years that followed, the focus turned to fragments from the collections of Iliyan Donchev, as well as those of Liliya Getova, Daniela Dimitrova and Anton Gudov, featuring authentic Bulgarian folk costumes. The present presentation continues this institutional line, broadening the scope of the discussion around the role of collecting and the place of sculpture within the contemporary cultural landscape.
