The exhibition “ARCHIVE. Aparte Gallery 2005 - 2020” (open between October - November), presented in Aparte Gallery, UNAGE Iași, reveals to the public a selection of events and exhibitional projects of contemporary art realized within the Aparte Gallery of the “George Enescu” National University of the Arts (UNAGE) from Iași, starting from 2005. „The exhibitions were made both by UNAGE Iași students, as part of the educational process of learning and applying knowledge and practicing skills specific to exhibition thinking and practice, as well as teachers or guest artists, reflecting the plurality of experiments specific to contemporary art practices”, sais the curatorial team. The coordinators of the project are the curators Lavinia German, Cătălin Gheorghe, Daniel Sofron, Cătălin Soreanu and Mihai Vereștiuc. 

The Balearic artist Gabriel Llinàs at the end of his residency in Belgrade Air, within the framework of the Home session Exchange program, will hold an exhibition entitled “Shades of White”.



Shades of White presents artistic research on the multilayered historical evolution of Belgrade, focusing on its architectural heritage as a device to understand its inhabitants’ behaviors, traditions and relations with urban space. The framework of the research goes from the Roman occupation of Singidunum at the IV century to nowadays, paying attention to crutial episodes underlying Belgrade, the city under which more battles have been waged, as affirmed by The British Encyclopedia of Cities. To deepen into this background, the project departs from an speculative exploration of the slavic name Beograd (The White City), which dates back to the IX century, in spite that no clear evidence of its origin has been found.


The uncertain reason of the name becomes an excuse to explore its identity in a wider and more experimental way, understanding the city as a melting-pot. In this sense, the project holds a tension between white, conceived as a peaceful and stable colour, and the city’s endless history of conflicts and enigmas.

The exhibition organized by CEAR (Center for Aesthetic Research and Artistic Creation) and the National University of Arts "George Enescu" Iasi / Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, within the events marking 160 years of Iasi artistic education, with financial support from the City Hall Iași, was presented in the Victoria Gallery space. “The Crossroads exhibition, which brings together works by UNAGE Iași alumni who have chosen to settle in other cities in Romania or abroad, has opened and can be visited at the Victoria Hall of UAPR in Iasi until November 10. Thank you to all the artists who agreed to participate in this exhibition ", said Cristian Nae, curator of the project. 

The exhibition Freedom of Breath corresponds to the current global situation, even in the most banal sense, the current regulation of rules and prohibitions, the privilege of free breathing, dominant confusion and distrust in what is shown, presented, determine the truth and the right to it. The replacement of concepts and their meanings, the manipulation and transposition of the physical into the social distance, supports the constant diversion of attention to alienation and exclusion from society, as a current problem, its vulnerability.

One figure of a woman, dressed, in an environment in which it is not natural, accepts the weight of her burden through her clothes, without physical stripping, without politicizing the feminist, she is the heroine of her story. Water is a metaphor for constant personal activism, life, and art. Water is also a metaphor of different sensibilities and its weapon and shield in its own struggle. The enemy may be loneliness, but it is an illusion, because of its ambivalent character, it is difficult, but often necessary for self-knowledge, self-upgrading. In the present, there is often a latent or explicit subversion of the cult of loneliness-self-sufficiency, through self-help, strengthening of self-confidence, positive thoughts and ultimate optimism, exclusive categories that make loneliness itself bearable or absurd.

Yet universal religiosity, art or philosophy is born, lives, and survives outside the institutions. The vitality of water and women in symbiosis repeatedly explain the different characters of the female principle, her sexual and gender role, her religious or philosophical mysticism, she as an inexhaustible theme of artistic inspiration, her right not to delay the right to freedom through all appearances and appearances, and for the aesthetic dimension to always be poetry that becomes an activist act of the individual. 
                               

About the artist:

Ivana Živić (Sarajevo, 1979) is a painter who lives and works in Belgrade.


She graduated in painting in 2004 at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Department of Painting, where she received her master's degree two years later. Since 2006, she has been a permanent member of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS), and since then she has been present at 22 solo and over 50 group exhibitions in the country and abroad. She is the winner of the drawing award of the Salon of Fine Arts of France ( Salon des Beaux Arts 2019), the award from the drawing fund Vladimir Veličković (2016), the first award of the Rotary Club (2014), the award for production of work from the Dimitrija Bašičević Mangelos Foundation (2012), and Diplomas for drawing from the Second Biennial of Drawing in Pancevo (2009). She has exhibited at Nord Art (2017 and 2016), as well as at The Other Art Fair in partnership with Saatchi Onlinegallery in London (2019). She has participated in art residencies: Month of Serbian Art at the Arthab Center in Abu Dhabi, UAE (2018), GLOART Center in Lanaken, Belgium (2015) and Cite Internationale des Arts Paris in France (2009). Her works can be found in the Wiener Städtische collection of contemporary Serbian art as well as in numerous private collections around the world.

The Exhibition Waves and Whirpools was opened in the Municipal Gallery of Porto on the 12th of September and will last until the 15th of November. Curator Martha Kirszenbaum presents the works of Luís Lázaro Matos. The exposition includes seven diptych paintings and four tondos.

As visitors can learn from the exhibition description, all the pictures were inspired by seven songs released by the artist: The Waves of Lisbon, Sea Turtle, Laika Surfing Cosmic Waves, Red Sea, Whirlpools, Bermuda Triangle, and Tsunami. The paintings have the same names as the titles of the songs.



The aesthetic of all the exhibited pictures is similar. In all of them, the artist uses bright colours, big brush strokes, and black contour. All pictures refer to the sea and life in the ocean, and viewers can see in them elaborated references to ocean/sea mythology.

On each picture, the viewer can notice a persona that can be interpreted as the artist himself. All the creatures that appear in the paintings seem to create music: singing, playing keyboards, striking the guitar. On some of them, the musician is presented as a human, on the others as water animals, such as a turtle or a stingray.

The representation that ties the series together is a rope that passes through different elements of images, visually tangling them together. It's not a sailing rope as one could expect from the marine topic of the paintings, but rather an electric cable. The cord can be interpreted as an inseparable connection of these paintings with music, and a musician’s life. The audio jack not only connects all pictures (and instruments presented on them) but is also a visual reminder about the musical inspiration for this series.


On one of the diptychs, aliens appear. They sit on a palm tree singing or saying something into the microphone. That representation may not seem to suit the others. However, it's connected with the author's fascination with conspiracy theories. The artist doesn't hide his interest in the secrets of the Bermuda Triangle. The curator, in a very interesting way, composed the exhibition in the mezzanine of the gallery, which has a triangle shape, creating a space where visitors can be caught by the waves of the art.



The series can be interpreted as an allegorical self-portrait of the painter. However, the life dictated by the ocean, inseparable from the sea can be familiar to many Portuguese people. In this country, for ages life and culture were connected with life on the sea. For sailors, fishermen, and nowadays even surfers, the water can be a determinant of the rhythm of life.

Another important part of the exhibition are four tondos that are situated on the gallery walls. They are much smaller than the big paintings, so it's easy to miss them. All of them present the moon and at first sight they seem to be identical, but they have a few differences. The tondos represent the four different phases of the moon: first quarter, full moon, last quarter, and the new moon. When it comes to the ocean, moon phases are very important. They're responsible for creating tides. 

The Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca, together with the University of Art and Design, institutional collaborator in organizing this event, presented in the Bánffy Palace between September-October, the collective exhibition under the suggestive generic "Gone With the Wind". The exhibition brings to the public's attention an illustrative selection of dissertation projects taken at the graduation exam at the end of the academic year 2019-2020 by master students of the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, specialization "Painting", made under the guidance of the coordinating teachers Ioan Sbârciu and Olimpia-Georgeta Bera. The exhibition includes works by Oana-Cătălina Asavei, Tiziana Bianca Cellino, Mădălin Ciucă, Tudor Costin, Farkas Andreea, Patricia-Denisa Isip, Maria-Theodora Ispas, Kalabér Timea, Andrei Nuţu, Cosmin-Marin Sandu, Paula-Maria Sgândăr, Szekely Sevan, Simona-Daniela Tudose and Diana-Amelia Varga. 

Remembering summer festivals, when people made a mass of close contact, colliding in a musical ritual caused by heavy metal sounds. This series of photos was taken at the Austrian festival Nova Rock 2015. Chaotic exchange of energies, unpredictable body movements and a friendly audience which, although it may not look like that, is very open to everyone, even to the girl with the camera.

"Šutke" (shootke) is a type of "game" people who go to concerts and stand in the front rows play. It is something like wrestling, running, and slamming into each other following the beat and melody of the music. It can give you bruises, yes, it is a rough game, but it is fun!

This series of photographs also celebrate those who already practice this dance ritual what they certainly miss during the pandemic. The result is documentary photographs without the time and conditions for a perfect shot, which creates a conflict in the author to achieve this.

The theme of the audience at the concert, recording energy, emotions and movement is a project of the author that is already ongoing and can get another face of its own in a future exhibition.

Recently I viewed BIOS, an interactive and intriguing art exhibition centered on the concept of the Anthropocene phenomenon. Presented in an art space in Brașov, the Multicultural Center of the Transilvania University, the exhibition gathers art installations created by ten young romanian artists, curated by RIZI and scrutinizes invisible or ignored human processes that lead to debates about Anthropocene and the new geological era. Through artistic installations, the artists distill major concepts of the anthropocene phenomenon and inquire it’s particular aesthetics.

BIOS exhibition. Photos by Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN

“Substantial evidence on human impact hints on the fact that humans are now a force as powerful as nature itself. Ice ages and major extinction events are in the nature of nature. Considering the Earth’s entire existence as a timescale, humans are in it at 0,0057% of the whole existence of life on the blue planet. In this short time, humanity has accumulated power over nature thanks to technological and scientific advances. Through direct and indirect butterfly-effect actions, humanity has exploited this power to it’s benefit, leading to significant interspecies inequalities. The power of awareness, technology and immediate action can be steered in exciting but also dangerous directions”, points out the curator. “Can we use our technological power to harmonize with the analogue nature?”, “what could be the journey of the individual to the collective projection of the future?”, “what about a symbiotic interspecies relationship?” – these are the main questions raised by the artistic project presented the participating artists. 

 Forms in a Space was inaugurated in the National Museum in Poznań on the 12th of July and lasted until the 13th of September. The curators, Anna Borowiec and Mateusz Bieczyński focused on the outdoor sculptures of Poznań from the 1960s and 1970s. The show was organized by the National Museum in Poznań and the Rarytas Art Foundation.

The exhibition presented real size sculptures, bozettos, and the project sketches of those sculptures. Some projects were realized in the public space. However, some exist only as projects that were never realised. At the exhibition, visitors can see works by 16 artists from Poznań.

The display is varied with archival pictures of sculptures taken by Jerzy Nowakowski and current photographs by Magdalena Andrynowska, that show the present state of the sculptures located in the Cytadela park and Rataje district.

At the show, visitors can see sketches and pictures of Anna Krzymańska's sculpture, The Peacock. This piece won a competition to be displayed in a park in 1961, and its reproduction is currently located in Karol Marcinkowski's Park.

The other important artworks shown at this exhibition are sculptures that were presented at the exposition in front of the Hotel Mercury in the years 1967-1974. The first sculpture that was created for the outdoor display was "Couple under an umbrella", designed and executed by Józef Kopczyński. Currently, people can see this piece in Poznań's Botanical Garden.

Also worth mentioning is a piece named "Seagulls" created by Jerzy Sobociński. It is a significant sculpture as it was the first artwork to be located in the Cytadela Park, an outdoor memorial and sculpture park.

In the late 60s, Poznań city started a big project in the "modern district" named Rataje. It is an iconic example of the socrealistic architecture that was supposed to be "nationalist in form and socialist in the matter". Big block building arose in the city, creating a communal, yet brutal space of living. In the 70’s, the form was ready, so there came a time to fill this neighbourhood with socialist matter. Because of that, the authorities announced two competitions, Rataje ‘73 and Rataje ‘74. Not many sculptures from this time survived, as some people disliked them so much that they destroyed them. Most of the sculptures made of metal were stolen to sell the material they were made of. The survivors are witnesses of the socialist time in Poland and show a difficult and complex relation between Poles, and the socrealistic time.

 

This exhibition gives an overview of the art from a particular period and city. It presents a resemblance of the old times, providing a bigger image of the Polish public art of the 60s and 70s. It is crucial to notice that, in comparison to the other countries under socialism, the Polish art scene could enjoy a bit more freedom.

At the exhibition, visitors can see abstract forms and figural sculptures showing sportsmen and women (e.g. Józef Kopczyński's The Swimmer), animals and maternity scenes. Figural sculptures, especially ones that show mothers with children, cover a flagship topic of the socrealist time. However, only Polish and Yugoslavian artists could officially show abstract art. This is why abstract sculptures are a unique example of the public pieces created during socialist times.

This exhibition can be considered as an attempt of elevating sculptures that lost their value in the eyes of the people, to the rank of the museum piece. Most of these sculptures over the years became anonymous or forgotten, even though the artists that created them were quite popular and appreciated at the time when the sculptures were created.

It seems that sculptures that used to be a part of Poznań's landscape, over time, become silent ghosts of the past era, that would be rather forgotten by most. Just a few of them still enjoy the attention of passers-by and are in a good state. Rest, literally and metaphorically, becomes a quiet forgotten past.

 

Bringing old projects and old pictures of sculptures and juxtaposing them with current photos in a museum space gives these pieces a new context. This new setting can be interpreted in two ways.

First, by exhibiting remnants of the forgotten sculptures in the art gallery, curators gave them a new life. They drove the attention of the residents of Poznań to these pieces. Even though these sculptures do not fulfil the aesthetical taste of the modern viewer, they're part of this city’s (art) history and deserve to be noticed. Showing them in the national museum also has an extra meaning. National galleries are, by their name, the places where national heritage is shown. The time of socialism and its art might be considered by many as uncomfortable and unpleasant, but it is still a big part of Polish national history.

Another way to read this exhibition is to consider a museum as a place that shows items from the previous era. When sculptures go (back) to the museum, they become relics of the past that still exist somewhere in the back of the communal consciousness but are no longer part of contemporary life.

Artist Cezara Moraru lives in Iasi, Romania. She has a Bachelor Degree in Visual Arts and Design from George Enesco National University of Arts Iasi and a Master Degree in Language, Literature and Hispanic Civilization from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iasi. The artist paticiped on many group exhibitions like “Jam Session” (Bonn, Germany), “Atelier35” (Victoria Gallery, Iași) and “Visiting Art History” (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iasi). The artist’s solo exhibitions include “Hypostases of the Gaze” (Iași Municipal Museum), „Subjective Substrates” (Meru Gallery) and „Identities” (Victoria Gallery).

I wanted to find out more about Cezara’s practice, about her projects, about what inspires her and about her goals in art, so I asked a few questions. Her practice focuses on experimental painting but also easel painting, working with mixed techniques that include ink, acrylic, pastel, oil or spray on paper. „Some of the conceptual works are graphic interventions on texts from old, abandoned books that I took from antique shops or from my personal collection. The texts I choose are mainly philosophical writings or poems. After reading a page, our mind will involuntarily extract a series of terms that remain in our subconscious, which are in line with our emotional and cultural baggage. Through subsequent interventions, following the process described above, in a subjective way, I reveal the pun that raised in my mind while reading”, the artist sais.