CREART Gallery // Photography exhibition. February 15 - March 14, 2021

The CREART Gallery presents, through a photography exhibition, a part of the universe of an exceptional show - MON CABARET NOIR, signed by Răzvan Mazilu, which introduces the audience to the world of Berlin cabaret from the 1920s, where nothing is too bizarre and everything is allowed to experiment. The burlesque show was reproduced through photography by Mihaela Tulea, Florin Bondrilă, Dragoș Toader, capturing the expressiveness of the characters in the most unique poses and attitudes. The exhibition thus presents a series of a black and white photographs that stand out through the graphics, plasticity and power of expression of the theater, easily noticeable.

Opening date:24/12/2020
Closing date:13/03/2021
Location: Gallery Eugster, Voline Vode bb (no number) Street, Belgrade (Serbia)

"We have L.A. at home"

Vuk Ćuk has been dealing with luxury from the beginning of his career. Things he wanted to have, things he liked, things that made him happy were a thing of its own; this was money (literally, painted banknotes on paper), Heron Preston socks, Kenzo hats, Kawasaki Ninja. His line of work, however, makes an arc, starting with an exploration into boyish understanding of the value and ending at the sedimentation of human activity that created its own geological era, the so-called Anthropocene.

Thinking about what luxury really is, Los Angeles is both symbolic and real (you may or may not read Lacan into these terms). For Ćuk, L.A. is still, however, imaginary, which started a series of new works made after his travel plans were canceled, a situation many of us experienced this year. Rather than lamenting over postponed vacations, Vuk Ćuk is looking at the phenomenon of displaced values.

Technological achievements, embodied by an interpretation of Tesla Cybertruck, automatically refer to matters of status. Ironically, and yet aptly, Elon Musk’s initiatives to conquer Mars open up the question of luxury once again: to create an artificial air-facilitating surrounding, available only to a single part of the population; in other words, air truly does have a price.

What makes this subject even more relevant is the stunning disproportion in the distribution of wealth, and then as well the distribution of information, rights, possibilities as such. The exhibition title refers to an Internet meme (Me: Mom, can we have L.A.? Mom: We have L.A. at home). In a way, this is a mini auto-parody of status that is wearable, that is Instagrammable, bought and sold, but somehow, rarely lived. 

The Los Angeles that Ćuk made ’at home’ speaks of many things that the original speaks of, too. The glitches found in the Hollywood sign, the deconstructed animals and scattered objects are all residue of hyper-production, but they present the discrepancies between two cities as well, for example, Los Angeles / Belgrade. In pictures and in reality, in concept and inexperience, things seem to have very different qualities. Whereas the L.A. from our imagination is still a place for dreams and prosperity, most Americans living in California dread civil war on a daily basis now. Belgrade is, unfortunately, familiar with the latter, both as a thing of imagination and of reality.

In the beginning, it was mentioned that the new coronavirus is spreading because of wild animal consumption, even though there are many theories suggesting that it was man-made, in a lab. This debate on authenticity is becoming very intense and general nowadays. Let’s bear in mind, then, that the matter of origin, in everything, starting with the food we eat through the air we breathe, the clothes we wear, the people we meet, leads to a dangerous place that insists on cleanliness. 

Here, we have two important takeaways. One is that humans really have changed the ecosystem irreversibly, which renders us all as zombie predators barely aware of our own aggressive behavior. The other is that there is no way back from the place we are in now, so we can only go forward and take time to reconsider everything with more care and mindfulness. With that being said, next time we feel anxious about technology or progress, we should consider if we’re looking at the right enemy, or if the enemy is looking at us, hiding behind Heron Preston socks, Kenzo hats, Kawasaki Ninja and other objects that travel back and forth with no problem at all, whereas lockdowns and movement restrictions are now imposed on people.

This exhibition deals with ecology, transport, and luxury, as well as the meaning of these terms during the great world pandemic and the global climate crisis. In a way, these works speak to the illogicalities of modern life, in an age when objects travel far more easily than humans and when plastic plants are produced during the decay of real ones.

For the installation, the artist used sand and materials that he mostly recycled or bought through cheap online shopping sites such as Ali Express. Part of the exhibition is three kinetic sculptures, one of which is an interpretation of the Cybertruck model of a Tesla car that should be realized in reality in 2021 or 2022. Through his artistic practice, Vuk Ćuk (1987) deals with capitalist logic, trends and technology, as well as the ways in which they shape people and nature, exploring new ways of living in modern society.

About the artist:

Vuk Ćuk studied painting at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In his artistic career, he has exhibited in over 30 group exhibitions in galleries and museums in Serbia, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Denmark, Germany, Russia, China and America. He presented himself independently in Belgrade, Vienna, Copenhagen and Augustenburg (Denmark). He has participated in the most prestigious art fairs in Europe (ArtVienna, ArtMoscow, ArtCopenhagen, and the art book Endless Editions: Face to Face - Blind date, in which he participated together with 10 other foreign artists is in the collection of the library of the MoMA Museum in New York. In his work, he deals with research related to the human relationship to the modern way of life, with an emphasis on the impact of the development of digital media, technology and communications. It is expressed through the media of painting, sculpture, and digital art (VR, animation).

The Art Museum of Timișoara, Romania recently presented a contemporary art exhibition of painting and sculpture called "Resurrected Matter", highlighting the work of three artists – Tadeusz Kantor, Jaap Wagemaker and Shinkichi Tajiri, curated by Maria Rus Bojan, an international curator specialized in Eastern European contemporary art.

The exhibition proposes an unusual assosiation of works which emphasize a series of postwar expressions, overcoming the fundamental change and a renewal of artistic renaissance through liberation from the old conventions. "Resurrected Matter" explores the prominent tendencies that shaped the postwar artistic climate in Europe through the works of these thee artists joined in this project, artists of different backgrounds and creative expressions. (...) Wagemaker made collages from metal, wood, textile that recall bandaged wounds; Tajiri expresses the war experience into ritual aggressive sculptures; as for Kantor, the informel painting was connected to the idea of matter as a general existential and theatrical background, as a theater of life", points out the curator Maria Rus Bojan. 

Page from the exhibition catalogue: 1. T. Kantor - Peinture (oil, enamel and mixed-media collage on canvas) 2. S. Tajiri - White Night Watcher (aluminium sculpture) 3. J. Wagemaker - Rouge elabore (mixed media on canvas)

European premiere of the exhibition  Love is Love: The Joy of Wedding for All by Jean-Paul Gauthier at the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade as part of the exhibition  Love is Love: The Joy of Wedding for All, the world premiere of eight wedding dresses by the famous designer 

Jean-Paul Gauthier's exhibition  Love is Love: The Joy of Wedding for All,  with a total of 38 high fashion wedding dresses created between 1990 and 2020, is the finale of  Jean-Paul Gauthier's Fashion World: From Sidewalk to Catwalk in 12 Cities the world has attracted more than two million visitors, breaking records for attending fashion shows. 

Curator Thierry - Maxim Lorio, last year's winner of the Vanguard Award for contribution to art and culture, the exhibition The  Fashion World by Jean-Paul Gauthier opened in 2011 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal and then exhibited at the Dallas Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, the MAPFRE Foundation in Madrid, the Kunsthalle in Rotterdam, the Swedish Center for Architecture and Design in Stockholm, Brooklyn museum, at the Barbican Center in London, at the Victoria National Gallery in Melbourne, at the Grand Palais in Paris, at the Kunsthalle in Munich and at Seoul at Dongdaemun Design Plaza. 

A special exclusivity of the Belgrade exhibition is the world premiere of as many as eight Gauthier wedding dresses that were not part of the exhibition before. With unbridled imagination, the designer gave a new look to the classic white dress, cruelly re-examining gender, ethnic and religious conventions. This exhibition reflects Gauthier’s commitment to the fight for human rights and promotes cultural diversity. 

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts designed the exhibition in collaboration with the Makkinik & Bay studio. The puppets were provided by Jolicoeur International, and Denis Marlo and Stefani Jasmin from the Montreal avant-garde theater company UBU are responsible for their animation.

"I am extremely glad that a part of this contemporary art world, which is not available to the wider domestic public, is coming to Serbia. I am proud of the MSUB team, which, even in this crisis and complicated conditions, and when we need art the most, enabled us to present the work of this artist to Serbia.", said Gauthier.

It is clear that Gauthier is more than a modern world-famous fashion designer - he is an artist! Gauthier is not simply a brand, but the idea of ​​equality, the idea of ​​support, the idea of ​​diversity and tolerance, and if anyone needs to promote tolerance in society, it is artists. "Art is all-encompassing, free, it allows emotions, personal expression, provocation and critical thinking ", points out Viktor Kiš, acting director of MSUB.

By organizing an exhibition that presents high fashion as top contemporary art, the Belgrade Museum of Contemporary Art found itself in the company of world museums, such as the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre in Paris, the MoMa Museum of Contemporary Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

The exhibition  Love is Love: The Joy of Wedding for All will be exhibited for four months, from November 28th to March 2021, on the fifth level of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, while on other levels of the Museum it is still possible to see the exhibition  Reflections of Our Time: Acquisitions of the Museum of Contemporary Art 1993-2019, but in the reduced edition.

A rare exhibition on the museum stage of Romania, but extremely brave through the conceptual and methodological approach of the relationship between art and education, opened its doors in December at the Art Museum in Cluj-Napoca, where it will remain available to the public to visit until on January 17, 2021. “Acroşaje participative” / „Participatory attachments” is the result of an ambitious process of construction and collaborative creation, put on the page at the initiative of art historian Alexandra Sârbu, museographer at the prestigious museum institution in Cluj, in partnership with the Department of Photo-Video-Computer Processing The images from the University of Art and Design (UAD), through which the simes of the imposing baroque secular building in the heart of the historic center of the city, they have become the scene of an overflowing creative energy - video art and animation, sound, light and creative writing - which opens new and surprising perspectives on some reference works from the patrimony of the "National Gallery", the permanent exhibition of the museum.



Splendid pictorial works that are inscribed as iconic landmarks in the artistic biography of some of the greatest masters of modern Romanian art, Nicolae Grigorescu, Ştefan Luchian, Nicolae Tonitza or Camil Ressu, have changed, under the rule of stimulating dialogues, valuable exchange of ideas and creativity exercises, in the most fruitful sources of inspiration, feeding an unexpected, fresh and captivating key to reading, in the conception and directorial vision of some very talented young artists, Cristian Coptil, Diana Iftime, Alexandru-Andrei Petrea and Diana Ţepeş , who are currently studying photography, video art and digital image processing at the Arts and Design University of Cluj.

The art students had the opportunity to exercise, at the same time, a double position, namely that of authors and actors, directors and protagonists of a true interdisciplinary conversation with some of the most remarkable works of art in the museum's collection, "in a formula that harmoniously combined the process of artistic creation with that of collaborative museography and public curating, the museum has emerged, consciously and voluntarily, as a facilitator of an open experience, appealing to and offering space for expression to other voices, which I am literally investing enthusiastically, both intellectually, culturally and emotionally, in a collective effort to build interpretive scenarios that bear the unmistakable mark of uninhibited gaze ", added Alexandra Sârbu, art historian and museographer. 

Berta Maria Moldoveanu graduated the MA in Theories and Practices in Visual Arts and the MA in Painting at the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, "George Enescu" National University of the Arts in Iași, Romania, between 2014-2020. In the last years, she contributed with artworks for exhibitions like "Niveluri de realitate"/ „Levels of reality” (Galeria apARTe, Iași, 2015, 2016, 2017) and "Vise în Balcani" (Galeria Artut, Bucharest, 2015). Also, she presented a series of personal art projects at the Palace of Culture Iași (2007), "B. P. Hasdeu" Museum (Câmpina, 2008) și "N. Grigorescu" Museum (Câmpina, 2008), "Vasile Pîrvan" Museum (Bârlad, 2008), "Friedrich Schiller" Cultural Center / "J. L. Calderon" Cultural Center (Bucharest, 2011), Palatul Parlamentului (Bucharest, 2013). 

The first  - Contemporary Art Fair Belgrade, will be held from 24th to 27th December 2020 in the gallery N.EON , in Crnogorska Street No. 10. The organizers of the fair are - Gallery Art for All, Gallery N.EON and the artist Ivan Kocic.

 The goal is for CAF to become an event of significance, which will be held every year. CAF provides an excellent opportunity not only to see art, but also to talk to authors and learn about art in many ways. The contribution is multiple for the art scene and for the city of Belgrade, which aspires to be the center of regional cultural events. At the moment, art fairs are part of the global art tourism market that contributes not only to galleries and artists, but also to hotels, restaurants, local economies globally.

The first session of the tele-workshop recently took place on Microsoft Teams platform, and it was addressed to students in the program of studies in Photography and Video Art at the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design of "George Enescu" National University of the Arts in Iasi, Romania. In addition to this tele-workshop on "Political Bodies", the artist Tobias Zielony had on display a series of works on the online platform Visiting Artists of the Aparte Gallery website (aparte.arteiasi.ro). The event was mediated by the curator Cătălin Gheorghe (“George Enescu” National University of the Arts, Iași, and Vector Studio). 

Photo - Hannes Wiedemann in Berlin Art Link, https://www.berlinartlink.com/2018/04/04/tobias-zielony/