RASSIM - Old Works
RASSIM® - Krasimir Krastev's Old Works Exhibition, presents 8 works created over the last four years. They represent a visual interpretation of famous artworks made by the body code of the artist - exhausted motor oil on canvas and paper.
The exhibition explores the complex interplay between integrity and perfection according to Thomas Bernhard, "prove to be unbearable for us". The artist is looking for answers through the future tones of paintings, which are philosophically reflecting on the statement, that we can continue our lives when we realize that perfection does not exist here and in this reality.
“Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes.
And he sets his mind to unknown arts.”
Ovid, Metamorphoses
In this exhibition RASSIM® is led by philosophical concepts and themes, such as minimalist approach to paintings and post modern sensitivity to the new. He is once again contradictory with his imaginational brilliance and at the same time with the notions of another planet, another world and dimension. Where there is perfection!
In this exhibition, RASSIM® achieves something that we would be tempted to call art of the spirit.
Installation video
Krassimir Krastev - RASSIM® (born 1972) is one of the most important figures who have radically changed the notion of art of the Bulgarian art scene in the 90s of the 20th century. RASSIM® is most famous for his series "Corrections", 1996-98 in which the artist works on his own body and recreates current social models - the typical macho beauty from the ads, the muscular bodybuilder, the drug addict - the video "Drugs", 1995, "the other", "Corrections 2", year 2002. This concept makes him an emblem not only in Bulgaria, but also on the international stage.
"Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva, RASSIM®, Oil Painting, Credo Bonum Gallery, Sofia, 2012
RASSIM® has participated in a number of exhibitions: Body and the East, Museum for modern art, Ljubljana (1998), After the Wall, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1999), Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin (2000), Blood & Honey, Future's in the Balkans, The ESSL Collection, Vienna (2003), along with Marina Abramovich, Oleg Kulik, Tanya Ostojch, Henri Sala, Rasha Todosjevic.
In 2003 he was invited to the exhibition Writing Identity. Autobiography in Art., Gallerie für Zeitgenossische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany, and in 2004 the Times and Hudson publishes the book AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Barbara Steiner and Jun Jung, (Steiner, Barbara and Yang, Jun. AUTOBIOGRAPHY, London, Thames & amp; Hudson, 2004, 54-57). In it RASSIM® is featured in the DISAPPEARANCE chapter along with Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman and Christian Boltanski.
In 2004 he was invited by curator Alfons Hug to participate in the 26. BIENALE SAO PAULO, Sau Paulo, Brazil with his Corrections 2.
Since 2006, in the series "Organic Paintings" RASSIM® is creating images, painted with urine, which he labels, as the holographic code of the artist, and in the series "Oil painting".
Since 2010 he has painted with exhausted motor oil - the holographic code of the Earth, which is an attempt to recreate common memory.
In 2018 for his SALT exhibition at the ONE Monev Gallery he received the Iron Medal for contemporary art from the Ventsislav Zankov Foundation.