Adrian Grecu is a pioneer in combining traditional media with augmented and virtual reality. The artist started looking for the visual effects of joining real objects with those digitally modeled in 3D since the end of the 90s. His works have won awards and been presented at international exhibitions in London, Seoul, Koga, Sint Niklaas, Gliwicze, Kanagawa, Cheju, Venice.

"The exhibition brought together some of the most important landmarks of the artistic production of Adrian Grecu, one of the most relevant artists active in the sphere of new technologies in Romania. Adrian Grecu is a veteran of the use of digital media and their expressive and conceptual potential.

The RetroPerspectiva project is not only a recuperative exercise - although the retrospective dimension remains obvious, being so necessary in the case of a mature artist with a vast activity - but it also wants and succeeds in being a manifesto of our way of relating to the current world. It's a speech about the utopias and dystopias still present in the collective mind, it's a comment on the idea of power, both political power and its abuses, as well as cutting-edge artistic practices and tools, more precisely their power of visualization and conceptualization, suggested by the defiantly waved flag in the title of the exhibition and which proudly bears the Power symbol specific to electronic instruments," pointed out curator Horea Avram.

"And, like any manifesto, this exhibition has programmatic value: naturally including previous digital works, in two-dimensional format, graphic or pictorial, the artist fertilely speculates in the recent works the direct, moving encounter between the digital and the real facilitated by the use of Augmented Reality. RetroPerspective. A digital manifesto is an exhibition that constitutes itself as a real manifesto of the era in which we live and of our (always) extended experience of this world, one that stands more and more under the sign of the digital".

Adrian Grecu was born in Cluj-Napoca in 1969, he graduated from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, but also from the Faculty of Physics of Babeș-Bolyai University. He had personal exhibitions in Romania, in Cluj and Bucharest and in the USA. He participated with works in various international graphics festivals in Poland, Japan, Korea, Belgium.

"El Gran Manto" by Ricardo Migliorisi

The history of Paraguay has always been crossed by weaving. Aó, a Guaraní word, refers to textiles in all their formats, from clothing to ornaments, including quilts and tapestries. "Paraguayan folk weavings tell the stories of the people who make them (mostly women) and use them in the domestic or work environment," said Lía Colombino, curator and director of the Museo del Barro's Museum of Indigenous Art.

Throughout the exhibition, the artists address central topics such as the role of women, work, readings of the conquest, popular art, and traditional knowledge through contemporary art. The works of Claudia Casarino, Mónica Millán, Arnaldo Cristaldo, Félix Cardozo and Joaquín Sánchez recover embroidery, lace and traditional fabrics to make women's labor emancipation visible.

"Sí, quería" by Joaquín Sánchez

The works of Marcos Benítez and Karina Yaluk use textiles as a weft to which plant or animal traces are attached. Meanwhile, in the center of the room, Ricardo Migliorisi's "El Gran Manto" (The great mantle) captures the viewers' attention due to its enormous size. It is a 12-meter-long patchwork made up of gobelins, which are carpets of French origin that reveal how tradition has been crossed by colonization. The pieces were intervened with texts from an inaccurate web translator, as a sort of textual and textile Babel.

The artists Osvaldo Salerno and Feliciano Centurión detach themselves from the locals also in terms of tradition, but to remember the domesticity of the sewing machines or the massively used blankets, so close to their histories. Salerno, brings up the language, that other clothing that dresses us; and Centurión, embark on small stories of affection.

Feliciano Centurión

The exhibition "Aó: Textile Episodes of the Visual Arts in Paraguay" is an invitation to delve into Paraguay's art scene, as well as its history and, therefore, the working material of its artists. A common axis throughout the tour is the conception of weaving as writing and the overflowing of stories as a critical activity necessary to think a territory.

The purpose of the project revolved around the need to preserve crafts and promote traditional culture through contemporary art, this project putting a local craft in the foreground.

"The charcoal makers from Lupeni (Farkaslaka) Harghita county have a tradition of over three centuries. Generations have taken care of this craft, by which they produce mangal - charcoal from burnt hardwood. Thick wooden branches are cut and built into huge cones, called bushes, then covered with sand and earth, after which a smoldering, flameless burn takes place in the absence of oxygen for nearly two weeks. As a result of this burning, the carbonization of the wood occurs.

Finally, the coal thus obtained is crushed, packed in paper bags and sold. The beneficiaries are all of us, when we light these coals on the grills, to fry various goodies. Recently, technology has been imposed in this field as well, with wood charcoal being obtained in special furnaces. There are only a few genuine charcoal burners left in the area who still practice this craft. Like other jobs, this risks being forgotten too. Within this camp, we set out to value of charcoal in the most noble way possible, namely to be used in drawing and other artistic techniques by contemporary artists. Thus, the work of art obtained with a few grams of coal can be worth as much as the equivalent of tens of kilograms of coal. Another approach to the theme was the representation of charring through other artistic techniques. So - with or without coal, but about coaling - it became the motto of the camp...", said Lucian Muntean, camp coordinator.

At the first edition of the project, a group of 6 artists were invited to take part in "a creative camp where they documented the activity of the coal miners, visited the cultural and historical sites in the area, then created a series of contemporary art works, using locally produced coal as a working material. During the creation period, as well as at the end of the camp, there were demonstration workshops attended by children from the community or those interested. The works of art were later exhibited in Lupeni, but also in itinerant exhibitions around the country, which are to be scheduled", Lucian Muntean also conveyed.

The project was attended by: Botár László (Miercurea Ciuc), Lucian Muntean (Bucharest), Justinian Scarlătescu (Bucharest), Marius Stanciu (Bucharest), Radu Șerban (Cluj-Napoca), Aurel Tar (Bucharest). Guest artist Florin Gherasim (Cluj-Napoca)

Organizers of the exhibition: Harghita County Council, Harghita County Cultural Center, Harghita County Council Gallery and Cultura Nostra Association.

"Pupil" by Eduardo Basualdo

Basualdo's work is part of "A Day on Earth," an exhibition program put on by the museum that revolves around the relationship of human beings with planet Earth. "Pupil" was recently inaugurated as the second part of this edition along with " The place of the soul" by Colombian artist Delcy Morelos, a monumental work that transforms the Museum's second basement into a space for reflective contemplation that problematizes the territory and the earth as matter.

The exhibition can be divided into two parts. It begins with the artist's drawings where he proposes "to see the dark matters that inhabit us". They are mirrors of singular and disturbing visions. These works express a gesture: "The eye that turns around and, as it can no longer see the outside, looks inward," according to the artist. Thus begins a literally introspective journey.

For its part, the mega installation is a "fabric" of numerous folds in a finite black aluminum like an indefinite mass spread out on the floor that proposes rough and also reckless forms. The viewer can perceive that there is a monster or even trapped people. This large figure occupies a surface of 10 by 15 meters.

"Pupil"

Draws by Eduardo Basualdo

"Pupil" is a proposal crossed by the idea of the sinister. It also refers to the trauma of the experience of the pandemic, confinement, and the mental space of confinement, through the presence of the domestic in his drawings. The post-pandemic character is another problematized theme in "A Day on Earth".

Basualdo builds through his works an interesting perspective on the power of the gaze as a constituent action of the human development process, but also as a performative action and, therefore, transforming life. "Pupil" is the result of an extensive research process by the artist. It is the journey of images and a fictitious narrative that begins as a series of chronologically ordered drawings and concludes as a great nightmare in the all-seeing eye. "Pupil" seeks to evoke and understand the experiences of the past and present.

Participating Artist:

Eduardo Basualdo 

"Surrounded Islands" (1980-83)

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were two artists of the public and monumental, remembered for their environmental art installations. The most characteristic of this duo was the use of fabrics to wrap gigantic buildings or cover extensive natural areas. They were pioneers of Land Art; an artistic current arising from conceptual and minimalist art whose purpose is to create art in nature, using its materials and location in natural environments. Therefore, documentation is the only thing that remains of these works.

From their works, a hybrid between sculpture and architecture, the artists created an ecological conscience that disapproves of the irresponsibility and excesses of capitalism. Thus, hosting this exhibition at Proa Foundation is logical. The building's transparent façade allows communicating experiences from the inside to the outside, building a direct dialogue with the emblematic Riachuelo River, which is one of Argentina's most serious environmental problems.

 

Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Credits: Proa Foundation

"Little Bay" (1969)

View from Proa Foundation

The exhibition "Christo and Jeanne-Claude" shows the process of their creation through the drawings, technical complexity, models, gigantic photographs of their work, and photos of the monumental projects that amazed the crowds. Entering the first room, we find the works of the mid 50's when Christo arrived in Paris: magazines wrapped in transparent vinyl, the showcases of some stores, and various objects before the works in the public space.

The tour continues with the monumental simultaneous projects during the 70s and 80s, a very fruitful artistic period. Among them are "Surrounded Islands", eleven islands with pink propylene fabric that could be seen from different places; "Valley Curtain" in Colorado, a sort of curtain between two orange mountains; or the disturbing "Wrapped Reichstag" in Berlin, a work that alludes to freedom since in the 50s Christo had escaped from communist Bulgaria.

 

"Valley Curtain" (1972)

"Wrapped Reichstag" (1995)

Another of the wonders on display is the famous floating dock of yellow fabric whose color changed according to the time of day on Lake Iseo in Sulza, Italy, where more than 10,000 people "walked on the water", an unforgettable physical experience. The sketches give an approximate idea of the scale on which they worked, the meters of canvas used, and the technical difficulties they faced, as in the case of "The Gates" in New York's Central Park, a 37-kilometer stretch of the park with orange canvases, a project that took 26 years to complete and was seen by around 4 million people during the 16 days the installation lasted in 2005.

The retrospective exhibition closes with a project that could not be carried out due to the artist's death, but will probably be inaugurated in the future. The project consists of installing "mastabas" in different parts of the world, monumental sculptures made of oil barrels. There are also "The Umbrellas", blue umbrellas for Japan, and yellow umbrellas for California among others that arouse astonishment.

Artists:

Born in Ukraine in 1899, she move to New York with her family in 1905. She was a sculptor who worked especially with wood and re-usable materials, because one of her main artistic focuses was to give a second life to the things she worked with, often re-modeling her works even when they were completed. The exhibition shows the history of her artistic practice, from the wooden sculptures to the collages – exhibited for the first time right here in Venice – that always turned around the theme of assemblage. 

Besides that, her practice had also a feminist connotation, where the magic and the original materials combine themselves with her feminine figure. Her gender became her symbol against the male domination of the art world, in which she found many difficulties to overcome. 

Overall, this exhibition gave prestige to the rooms of this ancient and renovated palace in the best way possible, remembering a woman who played a major role in the art world and in the Venice Biennale some years ago.