I'll Never Become You/ Quiet Riots IV Painting

I'll Never Become You/ Quiet Riots IV - oil on canvas, 140 x 195 cm, 2020 In ‘Quiet Riots’ Anton Terziev reduces the distance between the portrait and the self-portrait, the present and the past. Throughout this exhibition, his son is painted in different situations, mostly moments from his formative years. But nothing here is presented literally. In “Quiet Riots” Terziev also reflects upon his own childhood experiences. His works traces the changing attitude towards the themes of freedom, carelessness, responsibility, guilt. The timelessness is the common thread between the works in this selection. Maybe to show that childhood is not actually that different between the generations? After all, back then the adult life always appears as something big, distant and scary, but nonetheless beatable, at least in the realm of fantasy. Just a shot with the wood catapult and there you go, the beast is dead. While establishing himself in contemporary art, Anton Terziev also became one of the first movie bloggers in Bulgaria. In this train of thoughts, it’s easy to imagine to works in a cinematic way, as part of a bigger narrative - like, why the dog in ‘Quiet Riots III” breaks the “fourth wall”? Does the boy knows what the swastika on his palm means? At what age you are “too old to die young”? The story of the exhibition continues in our imagination. The next frames are our own interpretation of the questions raised by Terziev. The key to understanding the works is buried in our own unsolved childhood issues. If you can’t find it, you’re suppressing something. Svetoslav Todorov