I Don't Jump On Command, I Command The Jump
Quiet Riots 6: I Don't Jump On Command, I Command The Jump / Няма да скачам по команда, но мога да ви се качвам на главата
Schmincke oils on canvas. Size: 140 x 195 cm, Anton Terziev, 2023
part of Disturbances/Lost World group exhibition 29/04 - 28/05, UBA - Shipka 6, Sofia
Photo: Elena Spasova
Courtesy of the artist
Title credit: Svetoslav Todorov - writer, editor, correspondent
Collaborating since 2019
QR1, QR2, QR3, QR4, QR5
Quiet Riots sketches
fotomaterial used: Berkut (special police force) unit, involved in тхе Ukrainian revolution; Kiev's riot, 2014
Terziev’s large-scale canvas arrests a young figure vaulting over a riot-geared officer—an act that hovers between protest and playground daring. The jumper’s vivid green shirt snaps against the deep blacks of helmets and shields, while a smoky, indistinct backdrop collapses the scene’s tension into a single, diagonal thrust.
This “freeze-frame” marries photojournalistic immediacy with painterly vigor: visible brushstrokes lend raw energy to muscles straining in mid-air and the officer’s inert posture. Yet by evoking a child’s leap as both game and gesture of defiance, Terziev underscores how rebellion to the status quo is woven into our earliest social instincts.
Beyond its critique of “spectacle” culture—our appetite for violence and moral erosion—the painting suggests that the impulse to challenge authority is learned long before adulthood. Drawing on traditions from Delacroix’s dynamic diagonals to Goya’s moral witness, “I Don’t Jump On Command…” becomes a timeless emblem of resistance, reminding us that the roots of dissent lie in play as much as in politics.
installation view: Disturbances/Lost World group exhibition 29/04 - 28/05, UBA - Shipka 6, Sofia. Photo: Violeta Apostolova-Leti
With Svetoslav Todorov - the author of the titles of almost every work in the series Quiet Riots and No Time For Losers series (2019-)
Photo the author 28.05.2025
Disturbances/Lost World group exhibition catalogue ISBN 978-619-92677-6-9