Art Pickings from Exhibitions, Articles, Books, and the Web
Zsolt Asztalos came up with an intriguing proposition last fall at Victoria Art Center in Bucharest. He displayed a table with books severed in two, writing in his statement, “Each historical memory is waiting to be conceived by the future, so that a reality is formed.” He titled this work My Story—My Version/Library (2015–2016). Enjoy.
Here’s a work I saw at Senso Gallery in Bucharest last fall.
I’ve seen warm marble in Bernini’s Rape of Persephone (where Pluto’s hand sinks into her flesh), pregnant marble in Brancusi’s Beginning of the World (where an ovoid rests on a polished steel plate: the material world and its metaphysical alter in bud), marble draped in lavish folds in Michelangelo’s Pietà, diaphanous in Giovanni Strazza’s Veiled Virgin . . . but I’ve never seen marble quite so soft and elastic as that of Cristian Pentelescu’s in The Gate, or if I did, I don’t remember—
I saw one of Marcel Guguianu’s Muse sculptures at Artmark in Bucharest last fall and was quite taken with it, so much so that I returned to the exhibition hall (the new space they have for showcasing contemporary art) to take a whole slew of photos of her in addition to the few I took the first time. Enjoy.
Marcel Guguianu
Muse
Bronze
18 x 8 x 6 cm (7.1 x 3.1 x 2.4 in)
Pre-sale estimate: €600–€800
As part of the White Night of the Galleries (September 30), the alternative gallery space at Dr. Iacob Felix no. 72A hosted an installation called Road, about the road of life.
The piece that intrigued me the most, despite its simple concept, showed a family photo and a number of medicine package inserts, blisters of pills, and prescriptions pinned to an old light brown overcoat. The garment hung from the ceiling and a side wall, and underneath it was a pile of medicine packets, pill bottles, and blister packs. The label read Bătrânețea (Old Age), by Rene Răileanu.
The piece, with the medicine signifiers replacing the body of the person, made me think how in our old age we’re shaped by suffering and how the fact that we’re still standing under that coat is due to the many medicines we take, medicines which help numb that suffering but which, in many ways, take over our identity as we become more and more concerned with our health, talk often about our ailments, and are perceived through the lens of our illnesses by others. And then there’s the family portrait at the top—what most of us hold most dear in our waning years.
Rene Răileanu is mostly a figurative painter. If you want to see some more of his work, here’s his website.
Walking about Amzei Square yesterday evening, I stopped at Amzei Market Makers to see their current exhibition (curated by Beti Vervega and Mădălina Mirea). One of the artists included in the show was Vlad Basarab (b. 1977, Bucharest), a graduate of the Ceramics section of the University of Alaska Anchorage, as well as of two MFA programs in the US, currently a PhD student in visual arts at the National University of the Arts in Bucharest.
Vlad Basarab is mostly known for the clay books in his Archaeology of Memory series. You can see a photo on ArtOut, accompanying Mădălina Panduru’s interview with the artist, and a video on YouTube, showing in 4 minutes and 31 seconds the way one of these books dissolves under the week-long attritive action of water. In the interview, Vlad Basarab explains that he has left the pages blank in order to allude to oblivion and absence, and to stimulate the viewer to imagine what might have been in those books. Along the same lines, the disintegration of the book suggests the loss of collective memory. For more info in English on Vlad Basarab, see this page from the online art portal Modernism.
I didn’t get to see his books yesterday, but the works he did contribute to the show were rather strong, too. They were called Oameni Pământ nr. 1 (Earth People No. 1) and Oameni Pământ nr. 2 (Earth People No. 2), and they played with his favorite media, the elementary materials of earth, water, and fire. I thought they were quite inspired. Here they are.
I found this sculpture in the Old Town last night, as part of Bucharest’s tenth edition of the White Night of the Art Galleries, which included a ten-year retrospective at ARCUB. Titled simply Madonna, it’s a work from 2014 by Michele Bressan (b. 1980, Trieste, Italy), who has been residing in Bucharest since 1993.
I’m showing it because this Virgin Mary covered in wax drips made me think of her as carrying our prayers as a light burden . . .
Here are some more shots of her from today.
I visited the new exhibition at Victoria Art Center yesterday, and, while I liked all the pieces, I was quite impressed with one of them in particular, Cătălin Burcea’s The First and The Last Step (Primul și ultimul pas, in Romanian).
The work consists of four segments of charred wood laid upon a narrow bed of sand. First things first: why four pieces and a single log? The parts may be a reference, perhaps, to the four nucleotide bases of a DNA strand, or, alternatively, to the idea of steps—considered separately from the first and the last step mentioned in the title. Moving on, it’s easy to see why these pieces of wood, passed through fire, a step before returning to the earth as ashes, is the last step (and you can see in the detail below how chips of it are already coming loose and taking that road). But how is it the first step? Maybe the fire that consumes us is a spiritual moment that allows us to be born. Maybe we’re already charred wood when we’re born (the old idea of birth as the first step towards death). I feel it’s this second idea, tied to birth, that gives this piece its oomph. The idea that with every breath we take we die a little—just as a light breeze will eat at this charred log.
Here’s a detail.
On my way to 418 Contemporary Art Gallery three weeks ago I came across a nice mural on General Eremia Grigorescu St. nearby. Enjoy!
If I had a little girl, I’d buy her dolls that are also graphic art, the kind Alexandru Ariciu makes. I love it when artists working in ceramics are also accomplished graphic artists, for they make something which is aesthetically and haptically pleasing, quirky and fun, and inviting to reverie, all at once.
Here’s Alexandru Ariciu at Elite Art Gallery in Bucharest.
The Art Dive 