The Ukrainian artist of Romanian origin Ciprian Tokar completed his undergraduate studies in specialization Mural Art and Painting at the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design of the "George Enescu" National University of Arts in Iași. Currently, he is a PhD student in the same faculty, investigating the theme "The artistic image between document and monument: representations of recent history in contemporary art". The artist has been part of several group exhibitions and was selected in Borderline Art Space's Graduation Highlights 2018. The current project, part of his doctoral project, is an interpretation of the global crisis generated by the conflict in Ukraine. Thus, he publicly presents his first personal exhibition, in the form of a pictorial installation, called "The Black Box of the Crisis in Ukraine", and his paintings are based on photographs from the mass-media. The exhibition is ongoing at Borderline Art Space Iași, between March 2-26.

"This pictorial installation is like a black box of an airplane that preserves the evidence of the tragedy", Ciprian Tokar explained at the opening, for radioiasi.ro: "the crisis in Ukraine, in its complexity, hides information that was probably transmitted of the official speeches, but not entirely, and somehow I try to bring some alternative information about these events that happened in Ukraine, about the revolution, about the war. I took some images from the internet, from the mass media, from social networks that I processed, I manipulated them pictorially, so as to turn them into a painted image. I actually tried to adapt some photographic images in the pictorial medium".

Curator Cristian Nae offers more details about the concept behind this artistic approach: "One year after the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Ciprian Tokar is developing an artistic research (...) focusing on the relationship between the divergent interpretations of historical facts and the politics of collective memory that accompany the circulation of images both in the mass media and in social media. It thus opposes the authoritarian position assumed by modern historical painting, revealing the carefully orchestrated interplay between the subjectivity of the performer and the ideological constraints of artistic discourse.

His research process can be framed as experimental journalism defined by theoretician Alfredo Cramerotti as a way of critically examining the aesthetic means of journalism used to support the claim of objectivity of the report or the veracity of the documents. Artistic research of this kind can thus contribute to undermining the phenomenon of "fake news" by demanding increased attention regarding the multiple perspectives from which a historical fact can be read and mediated.

One of the fundamental convictions of this investigation is that, under the conditions of the democratization of access to image recording and communication technologies, painting has become an expanded artistic medium, in an indissoluble relationship with the other media that produce and transmit images, such as photography and the moving image – in other words, a "networked" painting or "painting 2.0", according to David Joselit.

Ciprian Tokar breaks down into fragments photographic images of the Euromaidan revolution circulated on various media channels and transposes them into new pictorial compositions (...). In some of these, the photographic image is manipulated like a historical allegory. In others, he combines multiple temporalities and uses the subjective filter of personal memory to examine the construction of collective memory, exposing the uncertainty that continues to loom over the future of an yet unfinished historical process. The resulting pictorial installation thus proposes a laboratory for collective reflection on the processes of forgetting and remembering, of involuntary camouflage and forced re-signification (...) of this crisis", stated Cristian Nae in the curatorial speech.

The exhibition is organized by AltIași Cultural Association and is part of the "Post-human escapes" project, co-financed by AFCN.