RASSIM® (Krassimir Krastev, born 1972) is among the most prominent heralds of a radical change in the concept of art in the Bulgarian art scene during the 1990s. His most well-known series, Corrections, features the artist using his own body to reproduce current social stereotypes — the typical attractive macho man seen in ads, the muscular bodybuilder, the junkie, the “other.” This concept has turned him into an emblem not only of the Bulgarian but also of the international art scene.

 

RASSIM® has participated in major exhibitions such as Body and the East (Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, 1998), After the Wall (Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 1999; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2000), Blood & Honey / Future’s in the Balkans (ESSL Collection, Vienna, 2003), the 26th São Paulo Biennale (2004), Gender Check (ZACHETA, Warsaw; MUMOK, Vienna, 2010), and Transitland (Transmediale, Berlin, 2009).

 

In 1997, his exhibition Another Angle was awarded “Exhibition of the Year” by Ata-Ray Gallery, Sofia. He is also one of the founders of the XXL Gallery in Sofia.