Krassimir Terziev (b. 1969, Dobrich, lives and works in Sofia) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans a diversity of media, including video/film, photography, painting/drawing, and text, questioning the boundaries between reality and fiction, while exploring the manifold transitions and tensions between a globalised world, dominated by symbolic imagery, and its material groundings in technological, physical and human ‘hardware’.
Terziev holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology (Sofia University 2012), and an MA in Painting (National Academy of Arts Sofia 1997). He is member of the Institute of Contemporary Art - Sofia since 2007.
Terziev’s work was shown internationally at museums, festivals and galleries, among others: “Don't Dream Dreams”, Moderna galerija, MG+, Ljubljana (2023); Manifesta 14, Prishtina (2022); “Keeping the Balance”, Ludwig Museum Budapest (2020); “Grammar of Freedom / Five Lessons” Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2015); “South by Southeast”, Osage Art Foundation, Hong Kong (2015); 3rd Mardin Biennial, Turkey (2014); Rencontres Internationales festival, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011); “Extras & Actors”, Argos Centre for Art & Media, Brussels (2010); Transmediale, Berlin (2009); “CINE Y CASI CINE”, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2007); “The Projection Project” Kunsthalle Budapest (2007), Museum of Contemporary Art (MuHKA), Antwerp (2006);“Kino wie noch nie” Akademie der Kunste, Berlin (2007), Generali Foundation, Vienna (2006); “Visions Du Reel”, Nyon Documentary Film Festival, Nyon (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); 9TH. Cairo Biennial (2003).
In 2015 Krassimir Terziev had a solo show “Between the Past That is About to Happen and the Future That has Already Been” at the National Gallery in Sofia, and in 2008 he had a slow “Background Action” at Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart. In 2024-25 his public social sculpture “Between the Past That is About to Happen and the Future That has Already Been” was present at the site of the former mausoleum in Sofia.
His work is part of the public collections of Centre Pompidou/MNAM, Paris; Arteast 2000+ Collection, Moderna Galerija Ljubljana; Art Collection Telekom, Bonn; Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia; Kunstsammlung Hypovereinsbank, Munich.
In 2011 he received the Award for Contemporary Bulgarian Art Unlimited (special award), and in 2007 - Gaudenz Ruf Award for New Bulgarian Art (established artists).
Terziev was fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies - Sofia (2018), Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (2006-07); KulturKontakt, Vienna (2002); Artslink, New York (1998).
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"When the Berlin Wall fell, I was twenty and in compulsory military service. That event — and the turbulent processes of reshaping reality under post-socialist, neoliberal conditions — framed a practice that has unfolded ever since, marked by bifurcation, by parallel montage, by staying close to the ground while simultaneously reaching toward the unspeakable. My approach combines the documentary with the experimental — following the demands of material and process, while holding them in tension with the conceptual and the political. Often, banal stories and everyday objects become the site of a slightly bitter humour, condensing reflections on history, political struggles, and ecological grief." __ Krassimir Terziev
"In his oeuvre Krassimir Terziev has been criticising the real immediate environment and the possibilities to analyse it. His gaze as an artist glides over the unevenness of contemporary life but also pushes away to unknown worlds in search of alternatives. He uses all the means of expression to penetrate deeper into the visible spectrum of things - painting, drawing, video, photography, installation, sculpture.
For Terziev, a different perspective transforms ordinary, everyday objects into surprising figures when the optics change. The sharpness of vision and thought includes the aesthetic, the social, and the political.
The artist often handles real images but in the end neither place nor time matters. It is about deeper layers of matter or the interweaving of the real with the fantastical. This leads Terziev on a journey to find “the language of things”. He pores beyond the known and habitual, attempting to evoke the light emitted by the objects themselves." __ Maria Vassileva