“Krasimir Krastev – RASSIM® (b. 1972) is one of the most important figures to have brought about a radical transformation in the concept of art on the Bulgarian art scene during the 1990s. RASSIM®’s best-known series is Corrections, 1996–98, in which the artist works with his own body and recreates contemporary social models—the stereotypical macho heartthrob from advertisements, the muscular bodybuilder, the drug addict in the video Drug, 1995, and the ‘other’ in Corrections 2, 2002. This concept turned him into an emblematic figure not only on the Bulgarian but also on the international scene.” Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva, RASSIM®, Oil Painting, Credo Bonum Gallery, Sofia, 2012 RASSIM® has participated in the exhibitions Body and the East, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana (1998); After the Wall, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1999); Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin (2000); and Blood & Honey: Future’s in the Balkans, The ESSL Collection, Vienna (2003), alongside Marina Abramović, Oleg Kulik, Tanja Ostojić, Anri Sala, and Raša Todosijević. In 2003, he was invited to participate in the exhibition Writing Identity: Autobiography in Art at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany. In 2004, Thames & Hudson published the book AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Barbara Steiner and Jun Yang (Steiner, Barbara and Yang, Jun. AUTOBIOGRAPHY, London, Thames & Hudson, 2004, 54–57). RASSIM® is featured in its DISAPPEARANCE chapter alongside Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, and Christian Boltanski. In 2004, curator Alfons Hug invited him to participate in the 26th SÃO PAULO BIENNIAL, São Paulo, Brazil, with Corrections 2. Beginning in 2006, in the Organic Paintings series, RASSIM® began creating images by painting with urine—the artist’s holographic code. In the Oil Painting series, begun in 2010, he paints with burnt motor oil (petroleum)—the Earth’s holographic code—in an attempt to recreate collective memory. In 2018, for his exhibition SALT at ONE Gallery, he received the Ventsislav Zankov Foundation’s Iron Order for Contemporary Art.
