Photography has the power not only to document the world but also to transform the way we perceive it.
Collect Gallery presents works by Nina Kovacheva and Valentin Stefanoff, two artists who invite us to reconsider the familiar through carefully constructed photographic worlds.
Together, the two series explore photography as a way of shifting perception, encouraging us to look beyond appearances and rediscover the extraordinary in the everyday life.
In Smiles Giving, Tears Crying (2007), Nina Kovacheva constructs a series of unsettling photographic tableaux through the displacement and juxtaposition of familiar objects, figures, and symbols. Stuffed animals, dolls, toys, religious imagery, and fragments of the natural world are removed from their habitual contexts and brought into unexpected relations.
The photographs move between the playful and the disturbing. A stuffed witch appears against an idealised landscape, its artificiality exposed by the artist’s own hand holding it in place. Plastic figurines are enlarged until their materiality becomes almost grotesque, while a composition of high heels and muscular male figures turns a familiar image of femininity into a scene of reversed power. Elsewhere, a nativity scene is reduced to a fragile arrangement of plastic toys—some broken, some fallen—shifting attention from the religious narrative to the constructed nature of its representation.
Through these arrangements, Kovacheva examines how meaning is shaped by cultural symbols, social conventions, and habitual ways of seeing. Innocence, violence, gender, religion, nature, and desire become unstable categories, their meanings altered through new and often unsettling relationships. Rather than offering fixed interpretations, the photographs leave the viewer to negotiate between recognition and unease.
As Kovacheva explains, “By decontextualising everyday objects, symbols, or situations, I aim to provoke a kind of anxiety in the observer, to get them out of their usual state.” The resulting disruption becomes a way of interrupting habitual perception and opening space for a different way of looking.
The photographic series “Plastic Romanticism” by Valentin Stefanoff takes us into the hidden world of inanimate matter. By subverting traditional scales, the artist enables us to peep beyond the large form and focus our attention on specific, isolated details that he has chosen.
Through these precise, large-scale visual fragments, everyday textures lose their functional meaning and transform into poetic abstractions. Stefanoff challenges our visual habits, prompting us to slow down and find an unexpected, romantic beauty in the micro-structures of the silent world around us.
Installation view
Artworks
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Nina Kovacheva
Smiles Giving, Tears Crying Series | 2008
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 5 + 1 AP
100 x 140 cm
Valentin Stefanoff
Plastic Romanticism #1 | 2018
Photos printed on photo paper and
mounted on aluminium
100 x 150 cm
Edition 8 + 1 AP
Valentin Stefanoff
Plastic Romanticism #2 | 2018
Photos printed on photo paper and
mounted on aluminium
100 x 150 cm
Edition 8 + 1 AP
Valentin Stefanoff
Plastic Romanticism #3 | 2018
Photos printed on photo paper and
mounted on aluminium
100 x 150 cm
Edition 8 + 1 AP
Valentin Stefanoff
Plastic Romanticism #4 | 2018
Photos printed on photo paper and
mounted on aluminium
100 x 150 cm
Edition 8 + 1 AP
Valentin Stefanoff
Plastic Romanticism #5 | 2018
Photos printed on photo paper and
mounted on aluminium
100 x 150 cm
Edition 8 + 1 AP
Valentin Stefanoff
Plastic Romanticism #6 | 2018
Photos printed on photo paper and mounted on aluminium
Edition 8 + 1 AP
100 x 150 cm
Valentin Stefanoff
Plastic Romanticism #7 | 2018
Photos printed on photo paper and
mounted on aluminium
100 x 150 cm
Edition 8 + 1 AP
Valentin Stefanoff
Plastic Romanticism #8 | 2018
Photos printed on photo paper and
mounted on aluminium
100 x 150 cm
Edition 8 + 1 AP
About the artists
NINA Kovacheva is a French-Bulgarian artist. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, she lives and works in Paris, France.
She is an interdisciplinary artist. Her works cover the fields of photography, drawing, painting, objects, video and video installations. NINA focuses on comparing and contrasting different cultural models, looking for the points where they overlap and the hybrid forms this gives rise to.
Among the other prizes, NINA Kovacheva has been the annual UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts 2002.
Her works are featured in collections including:
Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria / Esterhazy Foundation, Schloss Esterházy, Eisenstadt, Austria / KULTUM Collection, Graz, Austria / Dom Museum, Collection Otto Mauer Contemporary, Vienna, Austria / Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne, France / Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK / The French National Library, Paris, France / European Investment Bank, Luxembourg / ParkView Museum, Singapore / Goethe-Institut, Munich, Germany / IZIKO National Museum of Art, South Africa / The National Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria / The City Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria / Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan / Bulgarian National Film Archive, Sofia / and many private collections.
Some of the exhibitions of NINA Kovacheva include:
The Printed Images from Stone, Museum of Printmaking in Harbin, China, 2024 / London Original Print Fair, London, UK, 2024 / Liens au choix, L’Institut Français à Sofia, Bulgaria, 2024 / ArtSolite, Fondation Martine & Christian Morin, France, 2023 / Off and ON and on and on, Structura Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2022 (solo) / Paradise is Temporarily Closed, GOD, KULTUM Museum, Graz, Austria, 2020 (solo, catalogue) / Intriguing Uncertainties, ParkView Museum, Beijing, China, 2019 (catalogue) / Family Matters, Dom Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2019 (catalogue) / VULGATA. 77 zeitgenössische Zugriffe auf die Bibel, Dommuseum Mainz, Germany, 2019 / Intriguing Uncertainties, ParkView Museum, Singapore, 2018 (catalogue) / The Temptations of ninavale, Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2018 (solo, catalogue) / Aging Pride, Belvedere Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2017 (catalogue) / Distinction, Guo Zhong Art Museum, Beijing, China, 2017 (catalogue) / The Temptations of ninavale, National Gallery of Macedonia, Skopje, Macedonia, 2017 (solo, catalogue) / Gold and Niles, Galerie Heike Curtze, Vienna, Austria, 2016 (solo) / The Repetition of the Good, The Repetition of the Bad, Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, 2016 / Intrigantes Incertitudes, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne, France, 2016 (catalogue) / The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, MAMC, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Saint-Étienne, France, 2015 (solo, catalogue) / The Naked Man, Lentos KunstMuseum, Linz, Austria, 2012 (catalogue) / Why Duchamp? From Object to Museum and Back, Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2012 / The Crying Game, Galerie Heike Curtze, Vienna, Austria, 2012 (solo, catalogue) / Drawing in the Age of Fragility, Cabinet de Dessin, Solaris – Fondatione delle Arti, Parma, Italy, 2011 / Close Encounter, Jeju Museum of Art, South Korea, 2010 / Central Europe Re-visited Nr. 3, Esterhazy Foundation, Austria, 2010 (catalogue) / Surplus Enjoyment, Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan, 2010 (solo) / Au-delà de ce qui est visible, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania, 2008 (solo) / Micro-narratives, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Saint-Étienne, France, 2008 (catalogue) / European Attitude, Zendai Museum for Modern Art, Shanghai, China, 2008 / Portraits, Wet Contact, Face, ZONE: Chelsea Center for the Arts, New York, NY, USA, 2007 / Micro-narratives, October Salon, MOMCA, Belgrade, 2007 (catalogue) / ASIA – EUROPE Mediations, National Museum, Poznan, Poland, 2007 (catalogue) / Art Project, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, France, 2007 / Phases of Accumulation and Extraction in a Limited Space, MAMC Strasbourg, France, 2006 / Phases of Accumulation and Extraction in a Limited Space, National Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2005 (solo), and many other.
Valentin Stefanoff is born 1959 in Sofia. He lives and works in Paris, France. In 1985 Valentin Stefanoff graduated from The National Art Academy, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Valentin Stefanoff’s works have been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums, including:
Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne, France; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg, France; National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest, Romania; Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art, Sofia, Bulgaria; National Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria; Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria; Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan; Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China; Zona Center for Art, New York, USA; Nuit Blanche, Paris, France; National Museum, Poznań, Poland; Jeju Museum of Art, Jeju, South Korea; National Gallery of Macedonia, Skopje, North Macedonia; MOMus – Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts, Thessaloniki, Greece; Esterházy Contemporary Foundation, Austria; Kunsthalle Hannover, Germany; KULTUM Museum, Graz, Austria; Structura Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Serbia.
In 2002, for the video installation In the Out, created in collaboration with Nina Kovacheva, Valentin Stefanoff received UNESCO’s Annual Award for the Promotion of the Arts.
Harmony and logic, aesthetics and mathematics are all united in the works of Valentin Stefanoff. His works are thought out and realized with sophisticated precision and respect for detail. It’s as if these are investigating the border between the creative and the other human talents while hinting at their mutual nostalgia.