New Genres

Christo and Jeanne-Claude at Proa Foundation: legendary couple of Land Art

June 27, 2022 | nadiaevangelina

"Christo and Jeanne-Claude" is an amazing retrospective exhibition held at Proa Foundation, an exhibition center located in the heart of La Boca, a neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Throughout four rooms, models, designs, and drawings of the works of the artist couple, exponents of the Land art movement, originated during the 60s, are exhibited.

"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.

"Wrapped Cans" (1959)

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.

"The Floating Piers" (1970)

"The Mastaba", Unfinished Project

"The Umbrellas" (1984-91)

"Christo and Jeanne-Claude"

Location: PROA Foundation, Av. Don Pedro de Mendoza 1929, C1169 CABA, Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Opening Date: 14th May 2022

End Date: 31st July 2022

Working hours: Thursday-Sunday: 12pm to 19 pm

Official website: https://www.proa.org/esp/

https://www.instagram.com/fundacion_proa/

Artists:

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

59th edition of Biennale Arte

Louise Nevelson at the renovated Procuratie Vecchie for the Venice Biennale

June 27, 2022 | BeatriceS

awards

World Press Photo, 2022 edition, focusing more than ever on its main concepts “world, press, photo”

June 21, 2022 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

The 122 photos in the exhibition, went on global tour, now in Romania until August, capture important events from around the world, from the big fires in Greece and the fake news machine in Macedonia to the deforestation in the Amazon forest and the violent protests in Sudan. This year, out of the more than 64,800 photos submitted by 4,066 photographers from 130 countries around the world, 241 regional winners and later 4 global winners were selected.

Images sourse - WPP

“Together the global winners pay tribute to the past while inhabiting the present and looking toward the future” - Rena Effendi, Global jury chair

The awarded photos invites us to step outside the news cycle and reflect on the devastating effects of colonization and the importance of preserving indigenous knowledge.

Global jury chair Rena Effendi: “The stories and photographs of the global winners are interconnected. All four of them, in their own unique ways, address the consequences of humanity’s rush for progress, and its devastating effects on our planet. These projects not only reflect upon the immediate urgency of the climate crisis but also give us an insight into possible solutions.” She adds: “Together the global winners pay tribute to the past while inhabiting the present and looking toward the future.”

WPP exhibition in Romania, May 1st - August 25th

The 4 global winners

World Press Photo of the Year
Kamloops Residential School
Amber Bracken, for The New York Times

For the first time in the World Press Photo’s 67-year history, the World Press Photo of the Year is a photograph without any people in it.

Amber Bracken’s photograph commemorates the children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, an institution created to assimilate Indigenous children, following the detection of as many as 215 unmarked graves in Kamloops, British Columbia.

“This is a quiet moment of global reckoning for the history of colonization, not only in Canada but around the world”, Effendi said about the photograph.

“Colonial history is not ancient history [...] this is a living history that survivors are still grappling with. If we want to talk about reconciliation or healing, we need to really hold and honor the heart that still exists there”, Bracken said.

Bracken is the fifth female World Press Photo of the Year winner. Her recent work has focused on the ongoing legacy of intergenerational trauma from residential schools for Cree and Metis youth, Wet'suwet'en reoccupation and land rights fights, the overrepresentation of un-housed Indigenous people displaced in their historic territories, and interrogating the impact of race in her own family.

World Press Photo Story of the Year
Saving Forests with Fire
Matthew Abbott, for National Geographic/Panos Pictures

In 2021, fires ravaged different parts of the planet, from Greece to Siberia. Saving Forests with Fire by Matthew Abbott shows how the Nawarddeken people, the traditional owners of West Arnhem Land in the north of Australia, live with and strategically use fire to protect their environment.

Matthew Abbott, the photographer, said: “This story goes back a long time. In 2008, I was living and working in Arnhem Land and I was invited to a bush walk with the Nawarddeken people. That's where I met them for the first time and I learned how they were caring for their country. Over 10 years later, I returned, this time with National Geographic, to work on a story about how the Nawarddeken people are strategically burning their lands to prevent destructive wildfires and how this process is actually helping to save the environment.”

The photographer followed the Warddeken rangers and their practice known as cool burning, in which fires move slowly, burn only the undergrowth, and remove the build-up of fuel that feeds bigger blazes. As a result, these traditional burns prevent larger, more destructive fires from occurring in the hotter, dryer months of the year.

The Nawarddeken people see fire as a way to rejuvenate the land and use it as a tool to manage their 1.39 million hectare homeland. Warddeken rangers use traditional knowledge and combine it with contemporary technologies such as aerial burning and digital mapping to prevent wildfires. In doing so, they have successfully decreased the amount of climate-heating CO2.

Global jury chair Rena Effendi about this story: "It was so well put together that you cannot even think of the images in disparate ways. You look at it as a whole, and it was a seamless narrative."

Matthew Abbott is recognized for photographing social, cultural and political stories covering contemporary suburban and regional Australia. Abbott is interested in intimate storytelling, shining a light on quiet moments that usually go unseen. He believes that storytelling works best when it comes from a close connection to his subjects.

World Press Photo Long-Term Project Award
Amazonian Dystopia
Lalo de Almeida, for Folha de São Paulo/Panos Pictures

For the first time, as part of our regional model, the Long-Term Project Award recognizes stories that provide a long-term look at a specific issue.

Spanning over 12 years, Amazonian Dystopia by Lalo de Almeida delves into the social, political and environmental effects of deforestation, mining, and exploitation of resources in the Brazilian Amazon.

Since 2019, devastation of the Brazilian Amazon has been running at its fastest pace in a decade. Exploitation of the Amazon not only has devastating effects on the Amazon's ecosystem, with its extraordinary biodiversity, it also has a number of social impacts, particularly on Indigenous communities who are forced to deal with significant degradation of their environment, as well as their way of life.

Lalo de Almeida, the photographer, said: “You can't separate the environmental and the social questions as if they are two different things. You see that the majority of towns that have high levels of deforestation, have the highest levels of poverty as well. So these are elements that are completely connected: poverty, violence, environmental degradation and deforestation.”

Conservation regulation and enforcement have been eroded under Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s administration. The president encourages farming and mining in protected areas, arguing this will combat poverty. In addition, large infrastructure schemes have been built. Bolsonaro frequently speaks out against environmental protection measures, and makes comments undermining Brazilian courts’ attempts to punish offenders. Environmentalists say that this is encouraging deforestation and creating a climate of impunity.

Rena Effendi on why this project was selected: “Amazonian Dystopia unveils a multitude of disastrous results of the exploitation of land and natural resources – the impact of shortsighted decisions driven by greed and enforced by those in power without any regard for the planet’s future.”

Lalo de Almeida has worked for Folha de São Paulo for 27 years while producing other documentary projects including The Man and the Land concerning traditional Brazilian populations and their relationship with the environment.

World Press Photo Open Format Award
Blood is a Seed by Isadora Romero

The first World Press Photo Open Format Global Award went to Ecuadorian visual storyteller Isadora Romero for her video Blood is a Seed (La Sangre Es Una Semilla).

Rena Effendi said about the video: “The Open Format Award winner Blood is a Seed addresses the consequences of colonization, eradication of culture and loss of heritage, while reclaiming traditional agricultural practices in an act of resistance.”

In a journey to her family’s ancestral village of Une, Cundinamarca, Colombia, Romero hopes to learn about their history and explore the forgotten memories of the land and crops, and about her grandfather and great-grandmother who were ‘seed guardians' and cultivated several potato varieties, from which only two still mainly exist.

Through Romero’s personal family story, the project questions the disappearance of seeds, forced migration, racism, colonization, and the subsequent loss of ancestral knowledge. During the course of the 20th century, 75% of agricultural plant genetic diversity was lost globally. A main driving force of declining agrobiodiversity is the push for the cultivation of monocultures of modified and often non-native varieties, for higher-yield crops.

Romero explains: “Losing diversity and seed varieties is not only affecting us as a community because we are losing nutrients and probably some special species will disappear completely. Cultural memory is getting lost as well. This knowledge has been passed from generation to generation, and this knowledge is not usually validated by the Western scientific community. I think it's very important to understand how we are losing this memory.”

The video is composed of digital and film photographs, some of which were taken on expired 35mm film and later drawn on by Romero’s father. Although the project is an exploration into the past, it engages with contemporary techniques – playing with the parallels between genetic codes and binary codes of digital photographs – in order to preserve this ancient knowledge for the future.

Isadora Romero is interested in social, gender, and environmental issues. Her visual essays, exploring the border between art and photojournalism, seek different approaches using various narrative tools.

https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photocontest/2022

https://www.worldpressphoto.org/

Barcelona

In Real Time. Rafael Tous's collection of conceptual art now at MACBA

June 19, 2022 | Analía Vallejo Larrea

En tiempo real (In Real Time) is the first exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) of the Rafael Tous collection of conceptual art. This exhibition is an evidence of a particular historic period and specific artistic practices.

Image: Miquel Coll

This collection was donated to the museum a year ago, and will gradually be integrated into the museum's archives.

Rafael Tous was a passionate collector linked to the textile world, he bet on concept art as a set of plural practices that prioritized the idea and the process before the object.

Parallelism Body of Woman in Art (1979) by Jordi Cerdà

This collection contains the testimony of a generation that, located outside the conventional art circuits, gathered around exhibitions and alternative cultural spaces. Among the first were the Mostra d'Art Jove de Granollers (1971 and 1972), 1.219 m3 at the Vilanova de la Roca fronton (1972) and Informació d'Art Concepte at the Llotja del Tint in Banyoles (1973).

Image: Miquel Coll

Undoubtedly, the Rafael Tous collection is an evidence of the development of a different kind of art in the city of Barcelona, it responds to a very specific context, which is why it has become the portrait of Catalan conceptual art of the 1970s.

Let Me See What Is Not Seen: Las Meninas (1973) by Ferran Garcia Sevilla

Despite this, it is important to emphasize that what makes the collection special is Rafael Tous' gaze, because the artworks that are part of it were integrated organically as they were produced and it is the collector's eye that manages to give cohesion and unity to practices as diverse as those that are part of this exhibition.

Image: Miquel Coll

The interesting thing about the exhibition is that it is not a chronological display of artworks, but rather, it tries to show different approaches and lines of work of conceptual art practices, emphasizing the diversity of manifestations and behaviors that exist in this type of art.

Blockhaus-Blocblaus: Parallel Histories (1988) by Francesc Abad

The exhibition features 120 artworks by 28 different artists, with proposals linked to nature and that take the body as the subject of a cosmic order, artworks that emphasize the ideological element of images and the power of the mass media, as well as artworks that are shaped as devices of political criticism, and finally, we also find artworks that work on language and the value of signs as their object of analysis.

Image: Miquel Coll

The artists included in the exhibition are: Francesc Abad, Eugènia Balcells, Jordi Benito, Carmen Calvo, Jordi Cerdà, CVA (Comité de Vigilancia Artística), Benet Ferrer, Alicia Fingerhut, Teresa Gancedo, Ferran Garcia Sevilla, Eulàlia Grau, Josep Maria Joan i Rosa, Àngel Jové, Antoni Llena, Eva Lootz, Miralda, Fina Miralles, Muntadas, Pere Noguera, Jordi Pablo, Pilar Palomer, Carlos Pazos, Carles Pujol, Joan Rabascall, Àngels Ribé, Benet Rossell, Francesc Torres and Jaume Xifra.

You can see the virtual exhibition here.

art museum

Art, ecology and memory in the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires

June 13, 2022 | nadiaevangelina

Under the slogan "Earth Day" and to activate urgent conversations about humanity and its relationship with the planet, the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires designed five exhibitions that address environmental issues in art through group shows and guest artists and possible dialogues between the institution's holdings and new productions. Such is the case of "Enlaces Querandí" (Querandí Links), the anthological exhibition by Mónica Girón that stems from her research on the ancient relationship between people and territory.

"Pizarrón" (2014-2015) by Mónica Girón, silkscreen printing on mdf, fiberglass and epoxy polychromed material

The exhibition, curated by Javier Villa, traces the artist's career, with more than 40 years of work. This project includes a new series of paintings on the landscape of the Querandíes, a community that inhabited the Río de La Plata basin when the Spanish conquistadors arrived. The exhibition creates links between a series of new projects and works from different periods of the artist's career. Through these links, she attempts to stabilize the bewilderment that the world and her work can provoke.

Born in the city of Bariloche, Argentina, Mónica Girón connects social violence with internal violence and approaches art and life from nomadism, hybridity, and transformation. For the artist, art allows us to discern and understand that which overflows us and opens the way to the possibility of projecting, imagining, and transforming. Her works seek a point of balance between emotion and understanding, which turns art into an experience capable of reconnecting us from the present with our ancestors and reestablishing connections with nature, thus being able to improve the links with the biosphere.

Wax figures by Mónica Girón

“Atardecer la hora verde” (2020-2021) by Mónica Giron, 45 x 34 cm

Objects by Mónica Girón

Aerial Figures by Mónica Girón

Girón approaches different media such as sculpture, painting, drawing, mural, and digital production, with precise materials linked to each of her investigations: beeswax to allude to the social binder; watercolor to give form to the liquid currents of the body and the planet; three-dimensional printing in biodegradable materials to quantify the proportions of the seas and continents, and the blackboard to appeal to learning, among others.

Paintings by Mónica Girón

The artist generates dense, hybrid images, full of paradoxes and bewilderment. The pieces are part of her search for a greater understanding of the environment or critical space, both local and global. The local is elaborated in "Enlaces Querandí" through the paintings that construct an idealized projection that could intertwine the past and the future of the Rio de la Plata basin. In turn, global geography is explored by Girón to quantify, objectify and thus understand the corporeality of the continents, the movement of their land masses, and the circulation of energy through the seas and their marine currents.

"Enlaces Querandí" can be toured in conjunction with the exhibition "El Límite” (The Limit), which brings together works recently included in the modern museum's holdings and which are situated against violence, whether institutional, environmental, or gender-based.

Rio de la Plata Fauna Paintings by Mónica Girón

"Marsh Deer" (2017-2018) by Mónia Girón

"Enlaces Querandí"

Location: Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Av. San Juan 350, C1147 AAO, Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Opening Date: 8th April 2022

End Date: 28th February 2023

Working hours: Monday: 11am to 7pm

Wednesday-Friday: 11am to 7pm

Saturday-Sunday: 11am to 8pm

Official website:

https://museomoderno.org/

https://www.instagram.com/modernoba/

Participating Artist:

Mónica Girón

art historians

ICMA talk on the Autoethnographic turn, a recent concept in art theory that “rely on personal/subjective while conducting research or making art”

June 09, 2022 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

ICMA Institute for Multidisciplinary Research of UNAGE Iasi organized on Thursday, June 2nd, a discussion between art historian Mirela Tanta (Millikin University, USA) and visual artist Smaranda Ursuleanu (Iasi, RO), event moderated by Cristian Nae.

The main questions that were answered during the meeting were “What is autoethnography and how are present-day artists, curators, social scientists, and art historians using autoethnography in their research and artistic practices?” Autoethnography, a recent concept debated by todays art theory, is defined as “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience.” (Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams &, Arthur P. Bochner, Autoethnography: An Overview, 2010).

“In other words, doing autoethnography means to rely on personal/subjective while conducting research or making art. It is also a phenomenological quest which brings the body and its unique, and therefore personal, experiences to the forefront of research. Autoethnography allows for multiple voices and challenges the myth of objectivity or truth with capital T. Instead, it affirms that the ability to understand the other is conditioned by our willingness to understand ourselves”, pointed out assoc.prof. Cristian Nae, art critic.
”Mirela Tanta’s interest in autoethnography in art history seeks to connect the personal story to the official history. She invites artists to consider the following questions/statements as a starting point for talking about their own artistic practice and research methods: Why now? Why is autoethnography such a recent method? Are there any limitations when using autoethnography?
Autoethnography also means “relational ethics” (researchers do not exist in a vacuum). Is autoethnography solution for a crisis of representation? Is this possible, to have research that is rigorous and emotional?”, he added.
The discussion took place at the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design of UNAGE Iasi and was broadcasted on Microsoft Teams and live on the Facebook page of ICMA.

The art historian

Mirela Tanta is currently a Fulbright Scholar researching contemporary artistic and curatorial practices addressing women’s reproductive rights in Romania. She is an Associate Professor of Art History at Millikin University. Dr. Tanta completed her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) with a focus in Modern and Contemporary Art, Socialist Realism, and Gender Studies. Prior to Millikin, she taught at Loyola University, Columbia College Chicago, North Central College and UIC. Her interest in the ways in which underrepresented, ephemeral, and personal art objects can empower the individual to become a maker of knowledge informs her poetry as well as her research and teaching. She received awards and fellowships from the UI-Chicago (Institute for the Humanities Dissertation Fellowship, The Dean’s Scholar Award), Mellon Foundation (CLIR) (Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources) and New York ArtsLink Program (International Writing Program at the University of Iowa).

The artist

Smaranda Ursuleanu (b. 1995) is a graduate of the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design in Iași (UNAGE, specializing in Mural Art). In 2016, she was awarded an Erasmus+ scholarship at Novia University of Applied Sciences, Fine Arts Program (Jakobstad, Finland) and in 2021 at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, The School of Conceptual and Contextual Practices, Copenhagen (DK). Smaranda renders stereotypes and social taboos concerning identity and sexuality in subversive, usually feminist visual representations, multiplied and transposed in space through various techniques. Selected exhibitions: Lay Me Down Across The Lines, Kunsthalle Bega, Timișoara (2019), Libidoland 2, apARTe Gallery, Iaşi (2019), ppm#4 copy art show, Aici Acolo Pop up Gallery, Cluj-Napoca (2019), Soon this body will be still, MATCA Art Space, Cluj-Napoca (2019) Common Space - Images, Stories, Voices, Art Encounters Foundation, ISHO House, Timișoara (2018), Where do we go from here?, Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest (2018), Art Encounters Biennial. Life A User’s Manual 2nd edition, 2017, Timișoara (2017).

About ICMA

ICMA acts as a catalyst for advanced knowledge and artistic experimentation promoting intersectional research in the history and theory of visual arts, music and performing arts, as well as in the field of artistic research.

The Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art (ICMA) encourages the analysis of the forms and practices of artistic knowledge developed in modern and contemporary art, and in a broader sense, in contemporary culture and society. ICMA conducts research projects in partnership with institutions of higher education, of research and development, as well as with other institutions that produce and promote artistic events.

ICMA also seeks to contribute to the intellectual dynamics of the University by organizing conferences, seminars, exhibitions, publications, workshops and performance events. Constituting a separate department within the George Enescu National University of the Arts, ICMA therefore acts as a link between the Research Centers and the existing Doctoral Schools within the institution.

art now

Three simultaneous solo shows at Arte Actual FLACSO

June 01, 2022 | Analía Vallejo Larrea

Seeking to reactivate the cultural sector, and on the occasion of its anniversary, the gallery Arte Actual FLACSO proposes an intensive agenda for 2022, consisting of 15 exhibitions (as it celebrates its 15th anniversary), in 5 periods, with 3 simultaneous solo shows, in addition to various parallel activities.

Melcocha Kitsch (2022) by David Andino

Until June 4, 2022 we can find three exhibitions: El Azar Elige, by the El Azar Elige collective; Zhiro by Alessandro Bo and Melcocha Kitsch by David Andino.

Image: Arte Actual FLACSO

El Azar Elige emerges as a podcast that takes chance as a production strategy to make a colloquial and unexpected journey through contemporary Latin American photography. The collective is composed of Martina León Valdiviezo, María Inés Armesto, Santiago de la Torre Freire, who, in each episode, culminate with a question and a slogan to explore the themes addressed, their personal experiences and the different possibilities of photography as a medium. The exhibition consists of the results of this exploration.

El Azar Elige (2022)

The six photographic series of El Azar Elige are a correlate of the six episodes of the first season of the podcast, which you can find here.

El Azar Elige (2022)

Zhiro, on the other hand, is the exhibition of Mexican photographer Alessandro Bo. Here, the artist seeks to reconstruct, through storytelling and photography, a mythological beast that inhabits the forests of the Andes Mountains. This beast is known as Zhiro. Alessandro manages to enter the imaginary that surrounds the beast, through an extensive photographic archive and testimonies that reflect its possible existence.

Zhiro (2022) by Alessandro Bo

Finally, Melcocha Kitsch draws from a vast visual archive - coming from popular art, graffiti, posters, pop culture, animation, comics - and wanders through the crudest and most shameless aspects of contemporary culture, characterized by its superficiality, immediacy, consumerism and social gaps.

Melcoch Kitsch (2022) by David Andino

It also responds to the complex work context for artists during the pandemic. Economic precariousness translates into new representational needs and the use of unconventional materials. From the reuse of bar code adhesives, taken from the food and pharmaceutical industry, large and medium format supports are generated, which are intervened pictorially. Thus, Melcocha Kitsch, through a sort of visual recycling and cultural reappropriation, resignifies images and meanings that we sometimes take for granted, to give us a broken, dirty and vulgar postcard of what today defines us as a society.

As parallel activities we have some interventions and guided tours, so it is important to be attentive to not miss anything.

Ana Teresa Barboza

Textile art and contemporary art activate narratives at Malba

May 23, 2022 | nadiaevangelina

art museum

CRAMA OPRIȘOR AWARDS FOR CONTEMPORARY DRAWING – 2022 edition

May 17, 2022 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

The works of the contest finalists on display at the Art Museum in Cluj-Napoca,

between May 12, 2022 – June 5, 2022

"Crama Oprișor Awards for Contemporary Drawing" is a private initiative, which has been designed, from the beginning, as a contribution to the development of the social-artistic involvement and support for young students and graduates of higher artistic education institutions in Romania. If the first edition of the competition (2017) was held in collaboration with the National University of Arts in Bucharest, this year's edition benefits from the partnership with the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca.

Photo credits - the Art Museum in Cluj-Napoca

UAD Cluj-Napoca is one of the most important and original drawing resources, the "The Cluj School" influencing, over the time, the vision and expressive means of the Romanian art. It is, in this context, extremely relevant the role of the organizers to encourage contemporary creation, in the period of artistic formation, and for this reason the competition is addressed to the students and graduates of the art university in Cluj-Napoca.

Out of more than 60 applications, 33 young artists, painters, graphic designers or sculptors, passionate about drawing, were selected for exhibition and final judging.

With a large prize pool, which is in line with similar concepts in Europe, three awards will be given at the end of the competition:

- Crama Oprișor’s Grand Prize for Contemporary Drawing worth 3,000 euros gross, awarded to an artist chosen by the appointed jury;

- UAD Cluj-Napoca’s Special Prize – Crama Oprișor for Contemporary Drawing worth 1500 euros gross, awarded to an artist chosen by the jury appointed and

- Special Audience Award – Crama Oprișor for Contemporary Drawing worth 1500 euros gross, handed to an artist chosen by public vote on the platform https://www.crama-oprisor.ro/premiile

The artists on display are Iulia Alexandru, Ana-Maria Bozdog, Adrian Buda, Denisa Ceascai, Costel Chițimuș, Vlad Drăghici, Călin Dumitrașcu, Carla Forrai, Diana Grigorescu, Răzvan Liță, Mathé László, Ciprian Memei, Mihaela Mihalache, David Miholcsa, Rada Niță, Mihai Nuțu, Raluca Pavelescu, Matei Păcurar, Adriana Mihaela Pop, Ana Pop, Mara Popa, Lucian Popăilă, Maximilian Pintea, Diana Popuț, Ana Postolachi, Postumia Rus, Mădălina Stan, George Sorinca, Sevan Szekely, Tania Șimonca, Diana Șinteuan, Flavia Tritean, Tusai István.

Exhibition Commissioner: Alexandra Sârbu, art historian and museographer - The Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca

Presented by Professor Radu Moraru, PhD, Associate Professor Mara Rațiu, PhD, Professor Radu Solovăstru, PhD (The University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca), Gabriel Roceanu (Crama Oprișor) and Professor Lucian Nastasă-Kovács, PhD, historian and manager of the prestigious Art Museum in Cluj-Napoca.