You Never Think That Scars Are Forever

You Never Think That Scars Are Forever / Никога не си мислиш, че белезите са доживот

pencil on 300lb Fabriano Artistico paper

Image size: 52,5 x 70 cm
Paper size: 56 x 77 cm

Anton Terziev, 2024

From No Time For Losers series of paintings, photogpraphy, drawings and object (2019-)

Title credit: Svetoslav Todorov - writer, editor, correspondent
Collaborating since 2019

Photo: © the artist
Courtesy the author

foto material used: Marlon Chito Vera after loss to Sean O’Malley at UFC 299

Terziev’s hyper-realistic graphite renders every hair, wrinkle and gleam with sculptural precision, while selective erasures coax luminous highlights from the tear-filled eye and parted lips. By isolating an extreme close-up of UFC contender Chito Vera, the work collapses the arena’s roar into a single moment of suspended vulnerability. His upward gaze and the tear tracing a scarred cheek evoke penitential devotion and the aftermath of violence, transforming the cage into a secular altar.

Through echoes of The Passion of Christ and the title’s reminder that wounds endure, the drawing indicts our “society of the spectacle”—we cheer brutality yet shun its lasting toll. You Never Think That Scars Are Forever fuses devotional iconography with contemporary sport, compelling us to confront the human cost of aggression and our complicity in its exaltation.