Time Stops When It Goes To The Bone
Time Stops When It Goes To The Bone/ Времето спира, когато опре до кокaла
oil on mounted canvas, Anton Terziev, 2023
Size: 49 x 55, 3 cm
Part of No Time For Losers series of drawings, object, photography and paintings (2019-)
Courtesy the artist
Photo the artist
Title credit: Svetoslav Todorov - writer, editor, correspondent
Collaborating since 2019
Anton Terziev’s Time Stops When It Goes to the Bone (oil on canvas) is a crisply ironic riff on the Memento Mori tradition. At its center, a single, thickly impastoed femur—rendered in warm ochres, fleshy pinks and glints of ochre—bears a gleaming luxury watch like a shackle. Set against a deep, draped backdrop, the composition’s stark contrast both elevates and deflates the timepiece: its polished steel and leather strap are rendered with as much tactile precision as the bone itself, yet here they feel absurdly superfluous.
Through this visual pun, Terziev skewers our money-driven preoccupations: the promise of status, longevity or control dissolves once “time” reaches the bone. The work’s biting wit lies in its plainspoken honesty—no hidden symbols beyond the watch and the bone—yet it resonates as a universal indictment of consumerist vanity. By recasting luxury as a morbid cufflink, Terziev reminds us that, in the end, all our wealth is merely skin (and time) deep.