Gallery +359 Gallery in Sofia

Lozenets · Contemporary programme

Editorial Profile

Founded in 2017 by collector and art manager Vladimir Iliev, Gallery +359 occupies a 1929 water tower at the highest point of the Lozenets district, a structure designed by German engineer Franz Salbach that has been adapted into one of the more distinctive exhibition spaces for contemporary art in Sofia. Under the curatorial direction of artistic director Irina Batkova, the gallery stages roughly eight exhibitions a year, working with both Bulgarian and international artists across different generations. Its program is organized around several recurring frameworks — Formatting the Absence, Point of Intersection, Radius, and Ecosystem — which together articulate a curatorial approach attentive to research-based practice, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the specific spatial conditions of the tower itself, whose former 100-cubic-metre tank now hosts video and audio projects.

The exhibition program engages painting, installation, photography, and time-based media, often produced in dialogue with the building's vertical geometry, as in Stela Vasileva's 2024 solo project Verticality (And Other Spatial Orientations), curated by Boyana Dzhikova. A residency component invites visual artists for stays of two weeks to a month to develop site-specific works, while a publishing platform extends each project through catalogues and limited-edition art books. Beyond its exhibitions, the space has co-developed initiatives such as the Telelink Contemporary Art Awards, launched in 2019, positioning it as an active interlocutor within the broader ecosystem of galleries in Sofia and alongside the city's institutions in Sofia. Its participation in international platforms, including MIA Photo Fair in Milan, reflects an outward-facing posture that connects Bulgarian practitioners to wider European circuits.

Selected Artists

Andris Eglītis

Latvian

InstallationSculptureSite-Specific
About

Riga-based artist whose installations and sculptures combine collected natural materials, ceramics, and traditional vessels into precarious arrangements. His practice often emerges from on-site fieldwork and reflects on landscape, post-socialist geographies, and the entanglement of matter with cultural memory.

Clemens Wolf

Austrian

PaintingSculptureInstallation
About

Vienna-based artist whose work moves between painting, sculpture, and installation, frequently using found materials such as discarded parachutes set in resin or expanded metal as a tool. His practice engages decay, transformation, and the fragility of irretrievable moments.

Stela Vasileva

Bulgarian

PaintingInstallation
About

Sofia-based artist trained in mural painting at the National Academy of Arts. Her practice examines how the body inhabits and perceives architecture, expanding from painting into spatial and installation gestures that place the viewer in corporeal dialogue with built environments.

Stella Geppert

German

SculpturePerformanceDrawing
About

Berlin- and Halle-based sculptor and performance artist who treats sculpture as an inquiry into body, breath, and architecture. Her installations, drawings, and live actions investigate non-verbal communication, the body as membrane, and resonant relationships between organs, space, and surrounding species.

Moataz Nasr

Egyptian

InstallationVideo ArtSculpture
About

Cairo-based artist working across installation, video, painting, and sculpture, often drawing on Egyptian traditions, Sufi thought, and Arabic visual culture. His practice addresses identity, geopolitical tension, and social transformation across the Arab world and the African continent.

Sasho Stoitzov

Bulgarian

PaintingInstallationMixed Media
About

A central figure in Bulgaria's late-1980s conceptual turn, working across painting, installation, photography, and digital media. His practice blends photorealism, social critique, and technological inquiry, mapping shifts in visual culture between his bases in Sofia and New York.

Iskra Blagoeva

Bulgarian

PerformancePhotographyMixed Media
About

Sofia-based artist whose performances, photographs, and interventions probe gender, image-making, and the codes of contemporary visual culture. Her projects often unfold as staged situations that invite audience participation, dismantling assumptions about authorship, femininity, and the politics of representation.

Selected Exhibitions

Circulation

Solo show2025

Andris Eglītis

About

An immersive site-specific installation conceived for the century-old water tower, combining clay vessels with materials gathered across the Balkans and northern Bulgaria, reflecting on post-socialist geographies and the precarious interplay between matter and natural forces.

InstallationSite-SpecificSculpture

Raw Perspectives

Solo show2024

Todor Rabadzhiyski

About

A solo presentation investigating cycles of creation, destruction, and renewal through layered surfaces and material gestures, where each cavity and repainted area registers traces of ruin alongside acts of rescue and survival.

PaintingSculptureMixed Media

Verticality (And Other Spatial Orientations)

Solo show2024

Stela Vasileva

About

Curated by Boyana Dzhikova, this solo exhibition considers the way the body experiences architecture, expanding from painting into spatial work conceived in dialogue with the vertical geometry of the gallery's water tower setting.

PaintingInstallationSite-Specific

Water Tower

Solo show2024

Youlian Tabakov

About

A site-specific installation by the Bulgarian artist whose practice spans scenography, illustration, and film, conceived as a direct response to the architecture and history of the preserved hydraulic structure housing the gallery.

InstallationSite-SpecificMixed Media

TOWER BREATH BODY MEMBRANE

Solo show2022

Stella Geppert

About

The artist's first solo at the gallery, mapping the body's main organs onto the tower's vertical floors through performance, mirror sculpture, an organ-based sound composition by Ruth Wiesenfeld, and a series of drawings.

PerformanceInstallationDrawing

Until the Last Drop

Solo show2023

Antoni Rayzhekov

About

A sound installation by composer-artist Antoni Rayzhekov staged inside the tower, taking water as both medium and subject and reflecting on its irreplaceable role in sustaining life, ecology, and shared cultural memory.

Sound ArtInstallationSite-Specific

Cars, Beasts and Landscapes

Group show2018

Iskra Blagoeva, Mihail Novakov

About

A two-person exhibition pairing large-format photographs with a new performance by Iskra Blagoeva, reworking and exchanging earlier projects to interrogate authorship, gender, image-making, and the politics of representation.

PhotographyPerformanceMixed Media

We Are Part of a Collection

Solo show2017

Boryana Ventsislavova

About

The gallery's inaugural exhibition, curated by Vera Mlechevska in partnership with the Austrian Embassy and Doma Art Foundation, presented a poetic, fragmented narrative on Bulgaria's late-socialist youth underground and the threshold of democratic transition.

Video ArtInstallation

Gallery Overview

Gallery +359
City
Sofia
Area
Lozenets
Address
g.k. Lozenets, ul. "Galichitsa" 13-а, 1164 Sofia, Bulgaria
Type
Gallery
Back to galleries in Sofia Visit website

Explore Sofia

A local guide to Sofia, with links to its galleries, institutions, and wider Bulgaria art context.

Bulgaria Guide Overview Galleries Institutions

This gallery profile is part of the 1 Cubic Meter global contemporary art mapping project, which documents galleries, institutions, foundations, and independent art spaces through curated city-specific research.

Last updated:

About 1 Cubic Meter 1 Cubic Meter

1 Cubic Meter is a curated global map of contemporary art venues and exhibitions. It connects galleries, museums, foundations, independent art spaces, and artist-run initiatives across major art cities worldwide.

The platform organizes contemporary art geographically while maintaining a global perspective. Cities are presented as interconnected nodes within an international art ecosystem, enabling institutions and exhibitions to be situated within a broader structural context.

The result is a continuously maintained global map dedicated exclusively to contemporary art.

Explore by city

AmsterdamAthensBarcelonaBelgradeBerlinBogotáBrusselsBucharestBuenos AiresCape TownDakarDubaiHong KongIstanbulJakartaLagosLimaLisbonLondonLos AngelesMadridMexico CityMilanMontevideoNairobiNew YorkParisSantiagoSão PauloSeoulShanghaiSofiaTaipeiTbilisiTel AvivTokyoTorontoViennaZagrebZurich

Explore by Country

ArgentinaAustriaBelgiumBrazilCanadaChileChinaFranceGermanyGreeceIsraelItalyJapanMexicoNetherlandsPortugalSouth KoreaSpainSwitzerlandTurkeyUAEUnited KingdomUSA

Contact us © 2026
Submit your gallery or exhibition

Be part of the global contemporary art map

If you want your contemporary art venue or exhibition to be formally included in the 1 Cubic Meter global map, you can submit it here. Submissions are reviewed and, once approved, become part of a curated, continuously maintained cartography of contemporary art.
How does inclusion work ? ▼
What do we mean by contemporary art ? ▼
What can I add ? ▼
Price
US$25
Currency
Once approved, your event remains visible on the map from the moment of publication until the end date indicated in the submission.
Add a current or upcoming exhibition or event: include artist, title, period, opening hours, coordinates (address search or manual pin) and a link.
Set Coordinates
Use address search Place pin manually
Selected Address: -
Lat: - | Lng: -
*file size max 3MB
*It will not be displayed publicly