Base and Superstructure

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Sarieva/Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition Base and Superstructure by Krasimir Terziev, on view from March 12 to April 26, 2025, at the gallery’s space at DOT Sofia.

The exhibition features a series of new works from 2026 created specifically for the project, alongside the artist’s early work Angels and Chimneys (1994), outlining a distinctive programmatic line within his practice. Perspective and light emerge as key formal and conceptual devices through which the works reflect both the artist’s long-standing inquiries and contemporary socio-political transformations in Bulgaria and globally.

According to Martin Jay (Jay, M., 1988), linear perspective originates in the late medieval fascination with the metaphysical implications of light - lux as divine light and lumen as perceptible light. In the Middle Ages, divine lux was visualized through gold, while lumen became structured through linear perspective as a complex three-dimensional grid fixed at a single viewing point, organizing and controlling objects in space. These categories form the geometric and philosophical foundation of the exhibition.

The linear perspective of the symbolic center of the city and the nation - the yellow cobblestones of Sofia - possesses a distinct character. The series Central (2026), executed in gold leaf and acrylic on plywood, explores this character through various constructions: One Point Perspective, Two Points Perspective, No Point Perspective, and Ground for Sky Perspective. The cobblestones are not merely inert material—they carry the weight of gold (worth its weight in gold). There is no room for aerial perspective in this symbolic space; it is pure geometry and significant mater.

Gold symbolizes the transcendent. It is dimmed by dark chandeliers Lights Off (2026), distorted into aging food products The Golden Apple (2026) or entirely absent in found objects of unidentified origin Treasure (2026) collected from the beach. In Bent Mesh (2026), gold is replaced by reflective silvery mirror surfaces.

The exhibition naturally incorporates the iconic work Angels and Chimneys (1994, gold leaf, graphite and tempera on wood), first presented in the exhibition Everyday Life at the National Gallery for Foreign Art in the year of its creation.

Terziev also references an earlier series in which he rearranges buildings from Sofia’s city center into a new symbolic order through photomontage. In King/Party Kong/House, Superstructure, and Base and Superstructure, he visualizes the Marxist concepts of “base” and “superstructure”. The base encompasses the economic foundation of society - means of production - while the superstructure consists of political, cultural, and ideological formations. The compositions stack buildings - the former Communist Party Headquarters, the Synagogue, the Cathedral, the Mosque, socialist housing blocks - one atop another, evoking the Empire State Building or the Tower of Babel.

With this exhibition, Terziev continues his exploration of the urban center initiated in the large-scale installation Between the Past Which Is About to Happen and the Future Which Has Already Been (2024–2025), installed at the site of the former mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov in Sofia, Bulgaria.
 

Krasimir Terziev is a leading Bulgarian contemporary artist with an international career, working with video, photography and text and analyzing contemporary cultural and social complexities. Base and Superstructure is his second solo exhibition with Sarieva/Gallery after Images Staring at Images (2018) in Sariev, Plovdiv.

During the exhibition, there will be accompanying events: an art tour with the artist on March 28 (Saturday) and a finissage on April 26 (Sunday) 2026.

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Krassimir Terziev (b. 1969, Dobrich) is an 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). 
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, among others. Terziev’s work was shown internationally at museums, festivals and galleries, among others: Structura Gallery, Sofia; Manifesta 14, Prishtina; The National Gallery, Sofia; Ludwig Museum Budapest; Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv; M HKA, Antwerp; Osage Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Kunsthalle Budapest; Generali Foundation, Vienna; Akademie der Kunste, Berlin; TATE Modern, London; Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Argos Centre for Art & Media, Brussels; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; 3rd Mardin Biennial, Turkey; Cineteca of Madrid; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; SALT, Istanbul; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Renaissance Society, Chicago, The Kitchen, New York, Kunsthalle Vienna. 
Member of ICA-Sofia and ICA Bulgaria.

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For more information:
Sarieva/Gallery: +359888520375, office@sarieva.org, www.sarieva.org / FB: sarieva.gallery / IG: sarieva.gallery / YT: sarievgallery