TRACING TRACES - Group Painting Exhibition at The Bomb Factory Holborn

Artists: Preslav Kostov, László von Dohnányi, Filip Lav

The Bomb Factory Art Foundation is pleased to present Tracing Traces, an exhibition bringing together works by resident artists Preslav Kostov, László von Dohnányi and Filip Lav, on view at our Holborn Gallery from 3rd – 26th of October.

In an era where images are endlessly produced, reproduced, and consumed at speed, Tracing Traces considers how drawing and painting might be reimagined within a culture shaped by repetition. Rather than treating drawing as merely preparatory, each artist approaches it as a space where marks accumulate, shift, and remain deliberately unresolved — resisting closure and inviting ongoing engagement.

From early image-transfer techniques to the Camera Obscura, artists have long sought ways to fix an image. In Tracing Traces, such histories are unsettled: mechanical logics are slowed down, hidden materials are surfaced, and the act of reproduction itself becomes a subject.

Preslav Kostov explores memory through accumulative Xerox transfers, where source, image and manipulation are mediated by an agile responsiveness to surface. By disrupting the aesthetics of faithful reproduction, Kostov opens a space between machine precision and human presence, creating compositions that oscillate between repetition and rupture. In doing so, his work questions the stability of image and narrative in a post-AI society.

László von Dohnányi translates the mechanical logic of printing into the act of drawing itself. Using rulers and marker pens, he mimics the printer’s back-and-forth rhythm, staging an analogue performance of digital reproduction. His works probe how the aesthetics of the machine can be embodied, slowed down and reimagined through the hand.

Filip Lav subverts the material conventions of the street poster, working with blueback paper (the industrial backing usually hidden from view). By drawing directly onto its surface, he inverts figure and ground: the utilitarian blue becomes a luminous foreground, against which fragile, ethereal lines collide with stark, grid-like structures. His works channel the textures of public space, reframing the visual residue of the street as an arena for quiet, meditative mark-making.

Their practices reveal how traces of memory, rhythm or urban life can accumulate, shift and resist closure, redefining what it means to make and see an image today. They probe what it means to “trace” in an age of endless reproduction. In an era shaped by AI, digital saturation and urban visual noise, Tracing Traces insists on drawing as an urgent act of resistance: slow, unstable and alive.

PRIVATE VIEW: Thurs 2nd Oct, 6-8pm

LOCATION: 99 Kingsway, WC2B 6QX

DATES: 3rd - 26th October

TIMES: Thurs - Sat, 12-6pm