THE RHODOPE FABLE
#environment, fauna, tradition / Umwelt, Fauna, Tradition
PAULA FLORES & ZACHARI LOGAN
Curated by Denise Parizek
LITTLE BIRD PLACE Sofia & INTERNATIONAL ART RESIDENCY in Lehsten, Bulgaria
Opening 6th of June 2025
Duration 8th of June – 7th of July, 2025
In Cooperation with Little Bird Place Gallery, ACF Sofia, Saskatoon Board, Canadian Board
The Rhodope Fable project includes a 7-day residency in Lehsten, funded by Little Bird Place, where we will explore together the flora and landscape of the surrounding Rhotope Mountains and research old traditions, costumes and nature/environment/history in the small towns. The artists Paula Flores and Zachari Logan are looking for special local fabrics, traditional materials or handicraft tools, plants that they process in their project or make reference to.
Based on the available materials, the artists will produce artworks that will be presented at the Little Birds Place Gallery in Sofia on 6th of June 2025. I will combine the individual works into an overall installation. The presentation results in a walk-in work of art.
I am documenting the history of its creation and the connection to Lehsten and the surrounding area, researching plants and people in the area and publishing a kind of diary from the Rhotope Mountains. Similar to a catalogue, it will contain a text about both artists, as well as descriptions and photos of the creative process that is invisible behind the artwork.
Denise Parizek
Paula Flores was born and raised in the hectic border city of Tijuana, Mexico. She has a bachelors in visual art from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California and a Masters in Art & Science from die Angewandte (University of Applied Art Vienna).
Using rocks,branches, plants, bacteria and fungi as storytellers of the history of the world and guides for interspecies relationships. I explore diverse understandings of who we are as humans out and inside of what is considered the natural world by applying multispecies mediator roles and inverting it in as many ways possible. Pushing myself to leave the concepts and comfort of what it is to be either human or nature.
She is based in Vienna, presenting her art works, performances and lectures internationally.
Selected Collections
Permanent collection Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego, U.S.A Archive collection Art Omi
Canadian artist Zachari Logan works mainly with large-scale drawing, ceramics and installation practices, evolving a visual language that explores the intersections between identity, memory and place. Employing a strategy of visual quotation, mined from place and experience, Logan re-wilds his body as a queer embodiment of nature. This narrative shift engages ideas of beauty, mortality, empirical explorations of landscape, and overlapping art-historic motifs that all underline a fundamental interconnection of the human as nature. As an extension of his studio practice, Logan has attended many residencies; including Vienna’s Museums Quartier MQ21 Program, the International Studio & Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, Wave Hill Botanical Gardens Winter Workspace Program in the Bronx and Little Bird Artist Residency in rural Bulgaria. Logan was artist in residence at the Tom Thomson Shack at the McMichael Gallery in 2017, a commission of the Ontario Government to commemorate the centenary of Tom Thomson’s death. In 2021 Logan was the Koerner Artist in Residence at Queens University. Logan has worked collaboratively with several celebrated artists, including Ross Bleckner and Sophie Calle and his work has been featured in many publications worldwide, including BBC Culture, The Boston Globe, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Border Crossings, Huffington Post, Canadian Art and Hyperallergic to name a few.
Logan has exhibited widely throughout North America, Europe and Asia and is found in private and public collections worldwide, including; National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Remai Modern, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Peabody Essex Museum, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (NMOCA), 21cMuseums Hotel Collection and Thetis Foundation, among others. Logan’s recent institutional projects include Shadow Of The Sun: Ross Bleckner & Zachari Logan, (2021) at Wave Hill Botanical Gardens in the Bronx, Wildflower (2021) a solo exhibition at the Canadian High Commission in London UK, Ghost Meadows, at Remai Modern in Saskatoon, Canada (2021-22), Remembrance, at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem Massachusetts (2022-23), The Flourishing Edge at Toronto’s Gardiner Museum, a commission for the Joan Courtios Galleries (2023-24) and most recently, The Body Draws Itself, at Memorial Univeristy’s Grenfel Art Gallery in Cornerbrook, Nfld. (2024)
