Everybody Loves a Quiet Child
Everybody Loves a Quiet Child / Всички обичат тихите деца - pencil & pale gold on 300lb Fabriano Artistico paper. Size: 24 x 36 cm, Anton Terziev, 2020 Photo: © the artist. Courtesy the author
Title credit: Svetoslav Todorov - journalist, editor and writer
from No Time For Losers ongoin series of drawings, objects, paintings and photogprahy (2019-)
Last shown at Success and Succession solo exhibition ot Balabanov's house, Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 2020
Цикълът рисунки No Time For Losers е подготвителна част към бъдеща едноименна изложба. В нея определящ ще бъде интересът ми към популярните представи за успех и съвременните стратегии за неговото постигане, както и колко дава и колко взима този процес.
В случая използвам добре познатият, задължително улавян от спортните фотографи момент на триумф. Стоп-кадър, в който разглеждам ролевите взаимоотношения в оста награда-награден –награждаващ. Интересува ме още какво и кой конструира съдържанието на това понятие, като символ и метафора и какъв е неговият срок на годност.
In the series No Time for Losers I examine just that – what it takes from you, what and whom you pay, who constructs the content of success as a symbol and metaphor, what is its shelf life? I do it through the well-known moment of triumph, mandatory for sport photographers. A freeze-frame, in which I comment on the role interrelations between the award, the awardee and the award presenter.
I hit the brakes on the rat race for quick, immediate, instagrammable success. This concept is like a tomb. A remarkable pantheon, which you furnish meticulously with awards, trophies in your CV and what not, to the last day of your life.
Whoever wants to be a „relevant participant in the processes“ knows that things like vulnerability, exposedness and sensitivity smell of failure, they don’t make you competitive on the market. Like in sports, whose direct aesthetics I borrow for my series.
From an early age, you have to run in the right lane or track. Lest you compete on top level but outside of the field, or even worse – out of the range of the cameras reporting the game from the pitch.
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Anton Terziev’s Everybody Loves a Quiet Child (pencil and pale gold on paper, 2019–ongoing) is part of his No Time for Losers series, a project spanning drawings, objects, paintings, and photography. Depicting children celebrating newly won medals, the work captures a moment of apparent innocence, while an underlying unease invites reflection on broader social pressures.
Executed in pencil with pale gold accents, the restrained palette underscores the tension between youthful exuberance and the precarious nature of success. Terziev’s linear realism grounds the scene, while the subtle shimmer of gold hints at the fragility beneath triumph’s surface.
The composition—children standing side by side, caught mid-cry or exclamation—recalls Renaissance and Baroque group portraiture, where collective gestures narrate shared experience. Though the scene suggests pure celebration, the medals also foreshadow the burdens of expectation, marking the early imprint of societal values on innocence.
Terziev’s use of gold, evoking medieval iconography, subverts its traditional associations with sanctity, complicating rather than glorifying the moment. Within the broader No Time for Losers series, the drawing critiques a culture fixated on success and quick to marginalize failure.
In Everybody Loves a Quiet Child, Terziev masterfully captures the paradox of achievement: a fleeting triumph shadowed by the weight of future demands, even at the earliest stages of life.