Romanian catalog for Webpage - Flipbook - Page 18
proverbs connected to this sense such as, “He who has an
ear, let him hear,” from Revelation 2:17, and “The walls have
ears,” which was a popular saying amongst the Allies in
World War II.
Radu Comşa has translated his interest in modernist
architecture, concrete poetry, and atonal music into a
series of bas reliefs that he describes as “diagrammatic
transcriptions.” At first glance, the works may appear
manufactured, but each one is handmade using a process
akin to batik painting. The logic behind Comşa’s work is
his attempt to transcribe a process that journeys “from
one material to another, from one shape to another, from
one conceptual frame to another.” Comşa regards the
art object as an intellectual replica of his own thought
processes. We can find references to Le Corbusier’s
modernist design, to Leon Batista Alberti’s color-mixing
principles, to the golden rectangle, and — above all — to
the artist’s search for “the perfect concrete grey.”
Alexandra Croitoru,
Untitled (Prime
Minister) (detail),
2004, illustrated
page 58
Alexandra Croitoru’s practice is based in photography,
while also encompassing installation, video, performance,
written texts, and publications. The artist explores the
intersection of personal, group, and national identities in
her work. Much of the focus of her practice is aimed at
exploring and challenging the sociological, geopolitical,
and gender power structures inherent in Romania today.
One of her most renowned works, Untitled (Prime Minister)
(2004), is in the Collection of the Arthur Taubman Trust.
It depicts the artist with her hands clasped over the
shoulder of former Prime Minister Adrian Năstase, who
later fell from grace and was imprisoned following his
conviction on a double criminal indictment for taking
bribes. The controversial work is part of a series titled
Powerplay where Croitoru created self-portraits with
powerful Romanian men. All of the men are looking away
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from the camera, whereas Croitoru is confronting the gaze
of the viewer. Mihnea Mircan wrote about the series in
2004, stating that the double portraits “produce an active
object of power and an activity that is not confrontation,
but a transversal effort of contamination, showing also a
strangely monumental quality.”
Mihai lepure-Górski’s practice encompasses installation,
photography, and video art that is rooted in a postconceptual tradition. The artist makes works based upon
the nature of perceiving and understanding reality through
nuanced engagement with the world around us. He uses
text to enable the viewer to read meaning into his work,
such as the title accompanying his photograph I Can’t
Wait, I Just Can’t Wait (n.d.).
From the very beginning of his career, Gili Mocanu has
poked fun and sought to shock. In 2000, he titled his
Masters exhibition at the National University of Arts,
Bucharest, Gili is Dead. Thankfully still living, the painter,
poet, and musician is still a disrupter and now a promoter
of radical art. He refuses to be described as a figurative
artist, but also refutes non-figurative solutions in his work.
His practice reveals pared down, often essentialized forms.
Works such as I Grec (2005) have a witty double meaning
— in this case the Greek “I” is also the question, “Why?”
Like Croitoru, Ciprian Mureşan is no stranger to
controversy. One of the great draftsmen among
contemporary Romanian artists, he is surely also one of
the most humorous, playful, and incisive, sharing much in
common with fellow artist Dan Perjovschi. With a practice
that works across sculpture, installation, and video as
well as drawing, Mureşan has an iconoclastic approach
to both the State and the Church that is tempered with
gentle good humor. Over the past twenty years, Mureşan
has been involved in various artist-led publications
such as Version magazine, which he started with Mircea
Cantor, Gabriela Vanga, and the artist group IDEA arts +
society. Comedic timing and irony run through Mureşan’s
practice like a leitmotif enacted by the Marx brothers. For
all the humor, though, there is also serious questioning
of the power that certain political organizations and
religious institutions still hold, a concern at the rise of
nationalism and racism, and an exposure of the fallout
for those who were most vulnerable when communism
