The artist collective Balovin and Beccato will be in Sofia at Æther on the evening of 15 Oct.making your portrait in exchange for anything useful.

Sergey Balovin was born in Russia. He started studying fine arts while still very young. In 2009 he presented his first solo exhibition in China and decided to move there because of his great commercial success. He soon realised his focus was more on consumer’s demand than his own artistic vision. Taking a radical decision, he destroyed one of his entire oil landscape exhibition with a bulldozer.

To escape from the conventional application of monetary value to art, he launched an art project that saw him drawing portraits in exchange for any useful things: In Kind Exchange. The project met with great success worldwide and in 2013 the artist begun to travel without a wallet. He offered portraits done to people in exchange for food, accommodation and travel tickets.

In 484 days he circled the world, visiting 36 Countries, painting 5899 portraits and receiving 6002 gifs in exchange. In 2015 Sergey Balovin met Claudia Beccato, Italian gastronome. She became his art-partner and soon they got married in Montenegro without spending a penny.

In 2017 they got a house in Italian Alps in exchange for care and maintenance. It was abandoned, they renovated it and turned into an art residency. They decided to go further and live in this house continuing to practice a bartering life. Here they welcome anyone to live with them in exchange for paintings, music or housework help.

So come to meet the artists at Æther from 5pm to 10pm and do not forget to bring something useful: such as food, sauna tickets, ride to the airport, museum and theatre tickets, clothes and shoes.