"seeing things" is an art project of the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, "George Enescu" National University of Arts in Iași, organized as part of MoBU - International Art Fair of Bucharest 2025, the largest art fair in Central and Eastern Europe. 

The contemporary art event took place at the Romexpo Central Pavilion in Bucharest, from May 28 to June 1, 2025, and brought together over 200 artists from 9 countries, major art galleries, independent artists, who explore diverse artistic mediums from painting to sculpture, installations, performance, video art and design. 

The exhibition project, curated by Lavinia German, included a selection of works by students and graduates of visual arts from Iași and proposed an incursion into the way young artists look at, interpret and reconfigure the world. 

Through its media diversity (painting, graphics, sculpture, photography and ceramics), the exhibition explored the boundaries of perception and representation, highlighting the plurality of contemporary visual discourses. Seeing Things thus becomes an invitation to rethink the gaze as a creative and critical gesture.

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"seeing things"

an exhibition of students of the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, National University of Arts "George Enescu" in Iași within MoBU - International Art Fair of Bucharest 2025

Participating artists: Leo Bîrcu, Ioana Cojocea, Carla David, Codrina Dragomir, Dumitru Flocea, Carina Frunză, Mariana Hultoană, Alexandru Ilievici, Erika Ioan, Florentina Neghină, Raluca Niculaie, Roxana Pîrvu, Andreea Pușcașu, Alin Gabriel Rudei, Georgiana Șușnea, George Țapu, Oana Vieru, Anamaria Volintiru

Curator: Lavinia German

Coordinator: Cătălin Soreanu

Mediators: Sarah Muscalu, Lucian Brumă.

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The exhibition is part of a series of artistic, editorial and discursive events carried out within the project of the "George Enescu" National University of Arts in Iași entitled "Art-Hub UNAGE 165 - centers of artistic practice for students" (CNFIS-FDI-2025-F-0003)
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MoBU - International Art Fair of Bucharest 2025

Fenochio, who has lived and worked in La Boca for over three decades, paints from within the communities she depicts. Her subjects (neighbors, friends, and fellow artists) are never anonymous. Their presence is rendered with a painterly tenderness that resists voyeurism. As Longoni notes, Fenochio’s portraits begin with the eyes, which "shine and crash against the viewer," initiating a dialogue that unfolds across the canvas without preparatory sketches.

The exhibition’s centerpiece is a series of monumental canvases previously displayed on the Nicolás Avellaneda transporter bridge, connecting La Boca and Isla Maciel. Originally intended for a brief outdoor showing, the works remained in place for nearly two years, exposed to the elements and passersby's gaze. This act underscores Fenochio’s commitment to art as a public, participatory gesture, an extension of her long-standing engagement with political art collectives like Etcétera and collaborations with León Ferrari.

The paintings themselves are dense with atmosphere: dogs prowl alongside sleeping figures; bodies huddle beneath makeshift shelters; light flickers from unseen sources. Fenochio’s palette is dark yet vibrant, capturing the eerie beauty of nocturnal Buenos Aires. Her compositions, often constructed from memory and imagination, eschew linear perspective in favor of emotional truth. These are not documentary images but "fictions of the real," as Cristina Civale aptly describes them.

Also on view is "Naipas," a feminist card deck conceived during a hospital vigil in 2016 and printed for the first time for this exhibition. The deck extends Fenochio’s practice into the realm of participatory object-making, inviting viewers to engage with her work beyond the canvas.

"Ahora" situates Fenochio within a lineage of socially engaged Argentine painters, from Antonio Berni to Marcia Schvartz, while asserting her singular voice. Her work is a testament to the power of painting to bear witness, to dignify, and to disturb. In a world increasingly desensitized to suffering, Fenochio insists on seeing and on making us see.

Artist:

Curated by Viviane Stappmanns, Nina Steinmüller, and Susanne Graner, the exhibition avoids falling into a strict chronology or closed categories. Instead, it unfolds a fluid narrative, traversed by the crossover between industrial, graphic, textile, and experimental design. From the pioneering pieces of the Bauhaus, where figures such as Marianne Brandt challenged the margins of what was permitted, to the audacious contemporaneity of Latin American designers, the tour becomes a constellation of gestures, materials, struggles, and forms.

What is remarkable is that many of these works do not need to speak explicitly of gender to be political: the mere fact of occupying a historically masculinized space is already a statement. And yet, many do so with humor, anger, or subtlety through objects, textiles, furniture, or graphics that reformulate the link between body, domesticity, public space, and production. Criticism of traditional roles is not a subtext but a constitutive part of many of the proposals.
One of the curatorial successes is the diversity of visual and cultural languages represented. The show is not limited to established European or North American figures; it includes voices from the global south, designers who operate from adverse or peripheral contexts, whose works dialogue with local, ecological, or community issues. In that sense, "¡Aquí estamos!" is a historical vindication and an intervention in the present: it makes visible what the canon still refuses to include.

The montage is accompanied by sobriety, letting the pieces breathe without imposing themselves. The visit provokes, excites, and makes us uncomfortable at times. It forces us to rethink design not as a “neutral” discipline but as a field crossed by social, economic, and symbolic tensions.

In short, "¡Aquí estamos!" is an exhibition that is discomforted with elegance, celebrates without solemnity, and reconstructs with precision a hitherto ignored genealogy. And above all, it is a call: it is not enough to look, we must rewrite the history of design, this time with all the names.

“I have a special relationship with sculpture as a medium. Earlier studies in Geology allowed me to have an intimate knowledge of primary materials, to anticipate their reactions to the various interventions in the process of carving. This approach shapes the very genesis of my subject matter: the stone talks to me through the language of textures and structures, directing me to the idea that would be finalised in the sculpture. Through this subtle dialog I seek a quiet harmony that satisfies both the eye and the soul.” (Mihai Caranica)

After emigrating to the United States in 1984, Caranica continued to create and exhibit his works, returning to Romania in 2014 to reintegrate the national artistic scene. During his long career, Caranica has developed a unique relationship with sculpture as a medium, drawing on his experiences in Geology to create works of a visually and emotionally impact.

"Mihai Caranica loves the stones. He feels the diversity of their structures and thrives in the variety of their colours and follows their behaviours under light. Formally, the shapes he generates are responding to the heavy impression of Brâncuși. But they are less important in themselves, being instead, more than anything, the testimony of a life spend in explorations of the powerful mysteries of nature.