New World Order
16.06.2020 - 27.06.2020
#Exhibition-In-The-Exhibition
Krassimir Terziev created these two projects: a series of drawings titled New World Order and a short experimental film called […] suspended in April 2020 in the conditions of extraordinary situation and social distancing. They are a direct expression of the author’s emotions in an atmosphere of solitude, uncertainty and trepidation.
As always, seriousness is mixed with humour and irony in the works of Terziev. The title refers to the conspiracy theories of world domination, but the minimalism of the objects ironically suggests that maybe there’s not so much left to dominate over. What remains are just pieces of reality, and reality itself has lost its integrity long time ago. The separation of animate and inanimate objects, the formation of „lonely islands“, where stones, trees and animals float in a protected environment but unrelated to the surrounding world, draws the image of a humanity falling to pieces. Man is entirely missing from the picture – maybe he’s already extinct, or maybe he watches over from the hatch of a secret shelter. He only appears in the diptych as a stylized graphic figure from a user’s manual showing how messed up the rules, how inadequate the external help and how futile the efforts for „assembling“ the world in the old way are.
The short experimental film uses the formula of the classic suspense movie to materialise the sensation of trauma. The dramatic music, the focusing on a close-up visual perimeter, the use of a handheld camera, which causes the depressing „shakiness“ of the shots – all this triggers both physical and emotional reactions. While inevitably related to the current endemic situation, the video actually gives a much more universal warning, far beyond the specifics of the moment. The film is also somewhat ironic – behind the chilling tension on the surface, in fact it shows just an empty apartment (the artist’s studio), while the suspense caused by the sound is based on samples from the ready-to-use library, an element of the video editing software. It’s a readymade suspense that everyone can create according to one’s taste.
Krassimir Terziev: „All of the works are generally evoked by the paradoxes of dealing with the invisible and unknown threat. Not only here, but across the world as well, the approach has been to seek the introduction of certain order (the state of exception), which to alleviate the panic, like they did with the ridiculous term „social distancing“, an attempt to cope with an unknown and unchartered danger. This order, part of which is the social distancing, creates a modernist grid under the model of the rationalization of reality by modernity. However, at times this grid cracked under the pressure of the unknown and the effect of the inoperative public spheres, which we’ve inherited from the neoliberal turn. The series of drawings based on the product assembly manuals of a large chain store visualize indirectly the logic of measures that followed one after the other and promised a solution / salvation / relief upon an accurate compliance with the contained instructions, but instead of that, they were introduced, canceled and reintroduced in a partial and often illogical way, thus creating chaos, confusion and ultimately intensifying the panic. The result of „do this, then do that“ led to the assembly of unstable and illogical formations instead of a complete structure.
The other drawings visualize the expansion of the social distancing method from the world of people to an all-embracing, universal principle applied to animals, plants, minerals, etc. If the Big Bang had led to the progressive drawing apart of the galaxies in the universe, then the isolation method is a cross section of this separation.“
The New World Order project has yet another focus, which has been addressed to some degree in the latest months, namely the survival of artists in times of crises, as well as in general. Krassimir Terziev’s projects can be viewed from that perspective too, which adds different aspects to the interpretation: where is the meeting point of the private and the collective and is it possible for the contemporary artist to find his or her estimable place in the social machine.
Krassimir Terziev (born 1969) holds a PhD degree in Cultural Anthropology from the Sofia University (2012), where he presently teaches, and Master’s degree from the National Academy of Art, Sofia (1997), where he had lectured from 2008 to 2016. Some of the major international exhibition with his participation include: Grammar of Freedom / Five Lessons: Works from the Arteast 2000+ Collection, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2015); Art for change 1985-2015, Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia (2015); 3rd Mardin Biennial, Turkey (2014); The Projection Project, Kunsthalle, Budapest (2007), Museum of Contemporary Art (MuHKA), Antwerpen (2006), Kino wie noch nie, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin (2007), Generali Foundation, Vienna (2006), New Video New Europe. A Survey of Eastern European Video, The Kitchen, New York (2006), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2005), Renaissance Society, Chicago (2004), TATE Modern, London (2004). Among his latest solo exhibitions are: Forget the Future, Versus Art Project, Istanbul (2019); Between the past which is about to happen and the future which has already been, Sofia National Gallery (2015), Cosmopolis, Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia (2013); Background Action, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (2008). He’s been distinguished with the Award for Contemporary Bulgarian Art Unlimited (2011) and the Award for New Bulgarian Art Gaudenz B. Ruff (2007). The works of Terziev are part of the public collections of Centre Pompidou/MNAM, Arteast 2000+ Collection, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, Sofia City Art Gallery, Kunstsammlung Hypovereinsbank and many others. Krassimir Terziev has also written the academic monographRecomposition. Author, Media and Artwork in the Age of Digital Reproduction (2012).
With the support of Sofia Municipality. Initiative “Solidarity in Culture”