frosch&portmann is pleased to present Movables, Miryana Todorova’s first solo exhibition in New York. The artist was born in Sofia, Bulgaria and, after studies in London, Rome and Barcelona, is now based in New York. Todorova recently compeleted her MFA in Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts and will be joining the 2012 residency session at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Miryana Todorova has created her own wildly inventive and visually dazzling forms of mobile architecture titled “movables.” The exhibition includes a series of interactive objects, videos of her performances, and paintings. Todorova expands the boundaries of personal space and explores themes of reconstruction, migration, flexibility, collapse of the everyday, and the overlapping of public and private spheres.

Movables can be endlessly transformed and are based on the principles of expansion and contraction. In Manhattan, where space is at a premium, the artist explores moments and scenarios that deal with negotiations of territories. Walking down a crowded city street, how much is one allowed to carry? How large can your suitcase or umbrella be in shared public spaces? Miryana Todorova creates “expanded objects for shared living” that question the body’s articulation in space and the formation of spontaneous communities that happen as a result of a shared public moment.

Todorova invites visitors to interact with the movables on view at the gallery. The expanded objects involve everyday items such as shopping carts, umbrellas, and backpacks as well as motorcycle covers and nylons that the artist has altered to form the “new multifunctional and reshapable space.” Think of the movables as a cover for your body or as an extension of your body. You are now the object’s conductor and you can run it as a vehicle. How can the movables act as an impetus to reach out to other people around you? Let people operate you by pulling and stretching the movables. Or do you have the impulse to cover yourself with the object, blocking out interaction with the outside world to create a more private space?

Todorova’s Movable paintings, rendered in vivid saturated fluorescent colors, explore the phenomenology of being inside or a part of her objects. The paintings are visceral fragments of a larger space, portraying a moment when something is in flux. Integral to the paintings are the spaces surrounding them beyond the confines of their visual representation; they question how to navigate the frame, the edges of the mark, the contours, and how much you can add and subtract to construct a new space.

At the opening on Wednesday evening, June 6, Miryana Todorova will extend her movables project to the street. The moving occupation will begin at 5PM at frosch&portmann at 53 Stanton Street. Guests are invited to participate in the project. Bring a suitcase, shopping cart, laundry cart, or any other handy vehicle you have in your house. At 5:30 PM the artist and the nomadic group around her will move together throughout the Lower East Side. Guests who arrive at the gallery later than 5:30 PM can be informed of their trajectory around the neighborhood and join them in progress if they desire so. They will move together, staying close to each other, supporting their luggage and constructing temporary structures to surround them. The carts and vehicles supported and pushed forward by the group will be the foundation of their moving space of interdependency, transforming the singular gesture into the public as a much more radical utopian proposition. The performance will be filmed to become a part of the Movables exhibition at the gallery, along with previous public interventions and performances done by the artist. At approximately 6:30 PM the artist with the group of people helping her will return to the gallery and continue operating the movables objects and structures for the duration of the opening reception.

June 6-July 22, 2012 Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, noon – 6pm

53 Stanton Street New York, NY 10002 www.froschportmann.com 646.820.9068