To Be More Site-specific. An Inevitable Wall, MATCA art space, 2021

 

  

stills from Un zid de neocolit / An inevitable wall recorded performance

 

 Un zid de neocolit / An inevitable wall, installation and performance, 2021

 

To be more site-specific

Ana Avram / Roberta Curcă / Alexandra Freye / Wei Kang Beh / Sibi Bogdan Teodorescu

29.06 – 20.07. 2021

The current exhibition is the result of our previous call for proposals launched in April this year which was aiming to find works that fit the idea of space*, dimension/s, and site-specificness - proposed and produced for the purpose of this show. We invited worldwide artists to reflect on this theme without any borders, and so our shortlist gathers a selection of artists who either proposed something tailored to our space and its future-past-present, or works that reflect in more general/personal terms the theme and explore the idea of space even outside its physical boundaries.

Limits are pushed and questioned under some aspects of understanding our surroundings in the context of this show. All in all, the space, and site-specificness could be about our ways of perceiving the reality – the history we connect with, or about the fictions we develop around it. It is about conventional ways of seeing an artspace and knocking off the comfort of a room in order to prove a point on our habits. The space is negotiated and explored here through materials, language, light, or sound in works that prove that it exists even behind the objects that communicate it. Space could be reflected as a medium of giving form to things, or as a storage medium for things that aim to preserve history, and maybe, our emotional connections linked to it. Once staging a space, you can deliver an entire journey to the viewer, and here, the journey that is proposed, balances itself between void and memory, between object and meaning, between what is left and what it will be, time and awareness, degeneration and restoration - through endless interrogations.

*space as context, space as reflection, space as possibility, space as memory, space: material or virtual (?), space in relationship with content, space as a medium for projection, space as condition, space as shape, space as a manifest, space as environment, space as a thought-extension

 

Art Opening - 2021

 Art Opening on Artworlds. 

1 - 3. Astrological Signs, 2021, installation, bamboo sticks, clothes, flowers, shoe, corn, var.dim.

Art Opening is a space-time for art related meetings, a move towards embodied social closeness. You're invited to bring works (any medium), practices, ideas, processes, and most importantly, yourselves. Depending on participants' desires, the event can go more towards exhibition, performance, workshop, protest, discussion, intervention, or, more likely, a mix of them. It can also be an opening in terms of contents and aesthetics, now, when artists are indirectly top down guided towards pre-established issues, and their compliance is socially rewarded. 

with Roxana Ardeleanu, Flavia Bălan, Silvia Costin, Andreea David, Bogdan Drăgănescu, Giles Eldridge, Florin Flueraș, Adriana Gheorghe, Cătălina Gubandru, Virginia Negru, Luca Popa, Sibi - Bogdan Teodorescu Alina Tofan, Eliza Trefas, Alex Vrajitoru

FOIETAJ/ E T A J artist-run space - 2021

0. poster

1., 2. installation view

3., 4., 5. Untitled (two minutes sculpture), model István Téglás

MIHAI BALKO
SASHA BANDI
ANASTASIA CALINOVICI
IULIAN CRISTEA
MEGAN DOMINESCU
DUMITRU GURJII
SEBASTIAN IACOB
IRLO
HORAȚIU LIPOT
MODREANU MIRCEA
VLAD MOȚ
PANDELE RADU
IOANA STANCA
SIBI BOGDAN TEODORESCU
ȘTEFANIA TICU

[ Rupem pâine. Întâmpinăm cu pâine. Oferim pâine porumbeilor în orașe, sau găinilor la țară. Producem pâine când mobilitatea socială ne-a fost restricționată, pe care o punem mai apoi ca o realizare definitivă, pe FB. Mâncăm pâine. Închidem altare cu tâmplă, imaginându-ne cuminți în bancă, în pâine Trupul care ne va reîntregii. Negăm pâine. Ne place mai mult pâinea din Ardeal sau din Dobrogea, mai nou pâinea franțuzească; facem topuri ale consumului de pâine per capital la nivel continental și global. Descoperim pâine în neolitic și numele mitic cu rezonantă de atlantizi, al culturii care a produs-o – na-tu-fa-nie-ni. Ne aducem aminte de o pâine mâncată când eram mici, sau undeva pe lângă Veneto, ori aiurea. Ca me reste en travers de la gorge’ este o expresie apărută în medieval de la cei torturați cu pâine. Folosim pâinea ca simbol de marketing pentru programe de redresare economică. Doar pâine și apă în unele pușcării din statele totalitare de la mjlocul secolului. Pâine, avem în rugăciunile bazale ca singur aliment -pâine smerită. ]

Antropologi ai culturii materiale, precum Alfred Gell, subliniază că emoțiile atât de puternice față de anumite „lucruri” (precum pâinea) nu sunt pur simbolice ori metaforice, ci sunt rezultatul unor factori sociali complecși între oameni și mediul lor. Aprovizionarea occidentală cu bunuri „gata preparate” și separarea geografică între producători și consumatori ne-au determinat să uităm semnificația „lucrurilor” care nu se află în forma finală, ci în procesul său de fabricare, sau mai important, chiar factorii procesului. Mai mult, în timp ce produsul este consumat, transferăm elemente ale identității, amintirilor și afectelor noastre către obiect, acesta devenind astfel un mediator între noi și producător.
Complexitățiile factorilor procesului sunt evidentiate de Carole Counihan in „Antropologia alimentelor și a corpului: gen, semnificație și putere”, dedicand un capitol procesului si implicatiilor sociale ale fabricării pâinii în orasul Bosa din Sardinia. Potrivit studiului ei, productia pâinii a fost o activitate socială și domestică semnificativă în această regiune, dar pe măsură ce capitalismul a acaparat zonele izolate ale Italiei și prețul grâului a crescut, acesta s-a mutat din spațiul intern al gospodăriei în marile brutării. Asta a însemnat totodată că a început să fie o activitate aparținând acum exclusiv bărbaților care dețin brutăria și asistenților lor de sex masculin. Dacă coacerea pâinii a fost o activitate co-dependentă și socială care necesita atât bărbați pentru cules și măcinat, cât și femei pentru coacere (plus vecinii pentru asistență), locuitorii din Sardinia au devenit mai independenți, individualizați și mai puțin necesari unii altora pentru fabricarea alimentelor, altfel spus mai putin coagulati in comunitate. Acum nu mai cultivă grâu; cumpără pâine de panificație care este distribuită conform principiilor pieței și o consumă din ce în ce mai individualist. Situația din Sardinia este caracteristică unei modernizării fără dezvoltare, aceasta ducând la o atomizare crescândă a relațiilor sociale.

Gândindu-ne la apariția primelor societăți agricole putem observa că ciclul de creștere și producere a ceralelor și produselor derivate, care necesită atenție pe întreg parcursul anului, transformă pe sapiens în sedentar, dependent de gospodărie și comunitate. Pâinea asemeni propriei rețete, coagulează elementele individuale. Mai mult decât un aliment de bază aceasta adăpostește valori incomensurabile, impregnate de semnificații sociale referitoare la dimensiuni materiale, religioase, morale, economice și, de asemenea, politice. În societatile post-industriale în care guvernul se poziționează istoric ca furnizor de alimente, prețul pâinii se referă și la ceea ce cred oamenii despre liderii lor politici. Pâinea subvenționată nu este doar un garant al securității alimentare, dar din punct de vedere istoric a constituit și baza contractului social implicit al statului cu cetățenii săi.

Horațiu Lipot
 

This is Not a Hard Day/ Atelier 35, Bucharest - 2019

0. poster for the show

1. installation view

2., 4. O 0, broom stick, crayfish shells, paint, brick.

3.  Kurt Cobain in a tiger patterned jump suit, print on paper. Internet sourced.

 

This Is Not a Hard Day

Mihaela Buhaev
Pandele Pandele
Gabi Stoian
Sibi Bogdan Teodorescu

 

Directed by: Horațiu Lipot

Graphic design: Alice Voinea

Born Originals, how comes it to pass we die Copies? (Edward Young)

Our benchmarks are a continuous mechanical play between static observation and active involvement. The stance of an almost thermodynamic interaction of muscles and cognition, of mass that generates more mass, is replaced today by the ambiguous remoteness at the end of the click, close to zero entropy. We are computerized subjects, generic users with specific needs and desires who make vague connections by popularizing spheres of our self-interest in the new networks, in a world where products and behaviors are determined by the integration of a new and promised experience. Take the ride! it says in the common language of the inter-connectivity networks.

 

The self as an element can be located exclusively in the time-space coordinates, Internet containing little to none this property. The Web 2.0 areal it resemble us more like the lobby of a hotel, a mall, or an airport space - crossing places in which we do not live, but we try to signify them with the best of ones self. 

In a strange internalization of marketing mechanisms, the narcissism of each one tries to take control, this dualism making any original approach seem futile. This is also reflected on the creative areas, the alibi of the artist's autonomy, which represented the main impetus of the formation of modernism during the historical avant-garde, works today for the benefit of the capital market. Any work of art produced today that does not fit in a system of mutual appreciation and benefit, is automatically ostracized and eliminated from the public consciousness.

 

The mirror of our new anxieties, which are based on the idea that the internet imbeciles us (alienates us, transforms our sexual behaviors into deviants ones etc.) it resembles Plato's own concern, firmly convinced that the spread of literacy through writing among the population will destroy the oral tradition and the ability to create new and authentic memories. And yet, here we are, facing the same concerns in an infinitely accelerated context.In Alex Kitnick own observation, as the world submits more and more to the abstractions of capital, the inter-connectivity of digital networks, and the promises of the experience economy, the body responds by lying down.

 

This is Not a Hard Day,
Just a day,
Another.

 

Horațiu Lipot

 

Soon This Body Will Be Still/ MATCA artspace, Cluj-Napoca - 2019

@tigrenpapier

model Horia
 

Opening: 22 Feb // 19.00 - 22.00

22.02 - 15.03

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Lorena Cocioni / Tincuța Marin / Smaranda Ursuleanu / Roxana Ajder / Ioana Iacob / Agnieszka Grodzińska / Sibi Bogdan Teodorescu

SOON THIS BODY WILL BE STILL

[looking]
The image of the body, the body in an image. A critical attitude may be born along with framing. Framing is a decision, an action taken to fuel the idea of display. The author can decide if the framed content is representing an object or a subject. Serving the gaze, screen surrogates could tease your fulfillment, the ego of your libido accessing beauty after a five minute tutorial. You are alienated with the presented subject. Are you emphatic, or are you attracted in this loop which may reproduce conditions of human perceptions through a passive action? 

 

[body talks and history]
Narration through the keyhole may not be necessary when you have everything displayed. Visual pleasure is a thing, but the important thing here is that across history, people preserve images. Images on the walls of caves, images in museums, images in porn magazines and all around the internet. The body talks about a specific moment in time, about stereotypes, about social standards. It resumes many possibilities of language, and sometimes not through body language, but by its look.

 

[body-who?]
Are we living in a post-mythology era, or mythology is living through us? Symbols and apparitions. A hairwave, a shell. The wind that blows around you. All is set up. Zephyr could be a synonym for the electric fan that blows beneath skirts or dresses nowadays in photography or television. Mythology and its remake. Some characters are pre-fabricated, conditioned by their heroic or, non-heroic appearance. The one who is inhabiting the image is consumed by the image and doesn`t give us any clue about who he really is. The eyes of the beholder are confronting speculations.

 

[intimidation]
Some powerful images interact directly with shame. Ugliness, for instance, can interact with our fear of being ugly and generates intense reactions. As you discover you are naked you might develop a need of being covered, or to hide. We all know `two of them` who are represented behind leaves. Being a witness to others nakedness could generate you an illusion of access. You can adore, you can judge, you can consume. You may think that the vulnerability of others is displayed here for you, and make an instrument out of it. The nakedness of others might generate an empowering satisfaction for the beholder, while the beholder might be fooled.

Alexandra Mocan

 

 

The Short Life of A Long-lasting Picture

 

This performance deals with perception issue, -s, distance and space inside museums. The context they provide always tends to alter the way we see art pieces. Thus, every museum visit forge new dynamics every time, emotionally and conceptual-wise.