At 18:00 on July 11, 2024 Emil Mirazchiev will present the monography-album and the website of RuB Art Group in Dobrich Art Gallery. The voluminous book collects a significant number of archival, documental and visual materials, as well as a research text, archival publications of art critics and theorists, who have had a leading contribution in understanding and interpretation of the group activities, such as Zhivka Valyavicharska – main researcher of the group, Dimitar Grozdanov, Diana Popova. Established in Plovdiv in the beginning of the turbulent 1989, the RuB Group leaves a deep mark in the art history as one of the most powerful manifestations of the Bulgarian conceptual art of the 1990s. The RuB Group exhibitions, actions and performances gathered the whole artistic society and turned Plovdiv into a peculiar conceptual and political arts’ capital.

Members of the group are Plovdiv artists Albena Mihaylova, Rumen Zhekov, Dimitar Kelbechev, Dimitar Mitovski, Emil Mirazchiev, Ivaylo Grigorov, Igor Budnikov, Kolyo Karamfilov, Nadya Genova, Pavel Albert, Monika Romenska and Veneta Marinova.

Despite its contribution and influence on the contemporary visual arts scene, the RuB phenomenon remains marginalized in the established narratives of the contemporary Bulgarian art. The RuB Group has a significant presence in Bulgarian artistic life in turning historical points and has influenced many young artists in terms of aesthetics and ideas. The group performances both indoors or in open public space change the audience’s attitude and the perception that has got used to the conventional exhibitions and galleries.

Notes and documents from 1989 and the beginning of 1990 show that the RuB Group was not created as an aesthetic platform, but as a political position of a group of young artists from Plovdiv who wanted to distinguish themselves from the official SPA (Society of Plovdiv Artists), and to change society. The presentation of the book will be accompanied by a chamber exhibition of the group’s works.