Matei BEJENARU presents a new exhibition project, based on the extensive research that started in 2019, which materialized in 2020 in a cultural product at SwitchLab Bucharest: the exhibition "DIAPOZITIV", curated by Cristian Nae. The project was also presented in January 2023 in the space of UNAGE's Aparte Gallery.

Matei Bejenaru is one of the most renowned Romanian artists working with photography and experimental film. The artist lives and works in Iasi, where he teaches photography and video at "George Enescu" University. He is a founding member of the Vector Association and director of the Peripheric Contemporary Art Biennale. In his recent projects, through photography, video and performance, he analyzes how modes of economic production, technological knowledge, mentalities and lifestyles of people have changed in post-communist countries in the last three decades. The immigration of Romanian workers to the West was approached in the artistic projects "Travel Guide" and "Maersk Dubai", presented in various international exhibitions such as those at Tate Modern, Level 2 Gallery in London in 2007 or the Taipei Biennale in 2008.

His experimental choral music project, "Songs for a Better Future", was presented at The Drawing Room and Tate Modern in London, Western Front in Vancouver, Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen Innsbruck between November 2010 and July 2011. Since 2012, he has been an associate artist at Kettle's Yard Art Center in Cambridge, UK.

In his recent artistic projects, he is researching the materiality of the photographic medium and politics of representation in documentaty format. Using the analogue technological platform, he is focussing on photographic process as a witness of the crisis of singularity and artistic commitment.

Matei Bejenaru is the founder of Periferic Biennial in Iasi, Romania, an international artist-run contemporary art biennial defined as a platform for discussions on the historical, socio-political, and cultural contexts of the city. With a group of artists and philosophers from Iasi, Bejenaru founded the Vector Association in 2001, a contemporary art institution that supported the local emerging art scene to become locally and internationally visible. Together with a group of artists and professors he founded in 2015 the Center of Contemporary Photography in Iasi.

Between 2011 and 2012 he was a visiting professor at Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada). He is teaching photography and video at "George Enescu" Arts University in Iasi and collaborates with Anca Poterasu Gallery in Bucharest.

More about the artist, here:

2021 – "Print", ARTEP Gallery Iași (RO), curator: Cristian Nae

2020 – "Slide/Diapozitiv", SwitchLab Art Space Bucharest (RO), curator: Cristian Nae

2019 – "Same Histories", Spinnerei Galerie Leipzig (D), curator: Cristina Stoenescu

2018 – "Prut", Galerie Arts et essay, Rennes (F), curator: Bruno Elisabeth

2018 – "Prut – Image and Territory", Victoria Gallery Iași (RO), Museum of Romanian Peasant Bucharest (RO), curator: Cristina Stoenescu

2018 – "Reflector", apARTe Gallery Iași (RO), curator: Anca Mihuleț

2016 – "The steps, the words and the usual", Anca Poterasu Gallery, Bucharest, curator: Anca Mihulet

2013 – "Projects 1993/2000", tranzit.iasi, curator: Livia Pancu

2013 – "From A to B", Cupola Gallery Iasi, curator: Livia Pancu 2

2012 - "Art into Life / Life into Art", The Artery Gallery, North Adams (Massachussets, SUA), curator: Izabel Galliera

2011 – "Battling Inertia", Andreiana Mihail Gallery, Bucharest (RO)

2011 – "Projects 2008-2010", Contemporary Art Gallery of the Brukenthal Museum Sibiu (RO)

2009 – "M3 – Work, Memory, Movement", Cupola Gallery Iaşi (RO)

2009 – "Double Stereo", Galerie ERSEP Tourcoing (F) (with Yves Robuschi), curators: Ivan Polliart and Christelle Manfredi

2007 – "Travelling Guide", Galeria Posibila, Bucharest (RO)

2005 – "Travelling Guide", Insert in the IDEA Art Magazine, Cluj (RO)

2005 – "Strawberry Fields Forever", Galeria Noua, Bucharest (RO)

2002 – "Ave Bachtalo", Offspace Gallery, Vienna (A)

2002 – "Mehr Chancen Fur Unsere Jugend", Kulturkontakt Gastatelier, Vienna (A)

1996 – "9 Days", "Cupola" Gallery, Iasi (RO)

Sector 1 Gallery presents the new solo exhibition of the artist Norbert Filep, entitled "Chronicles from the Habitable Zone".

The exhibition presents three new series of conceptual works by the artist, starting from phenomena, discoveries, measurements and observations in the field of astronomy. Through a personal de-click, the artist attempts a possible subjectivization of the scientific results that affirm, with immeasurable veracity, the existence of complex processes in the astronomical field. At the same time, the works incorporate the intrinsic curiosity of human nature, to discover and understand the vast dimension and plurivalence of the universe of which we are a part - we learn from the gallery.

<<In recent years, Norbert Filep's practice has focused on using drawing to reflect on informational processes, in a hyper-digitalized era. Drawing once again becomes the main tool of the artist, who codifies scientific information in new artistic forms. In this case, he aims at the realm of astronomy, exo-planetary territory, extraterrestrial space becoming his playground.

Whether we're talking about spectroscopy or looking at the high-resolution pictures obtained by the Hubble and James Webb telescopes, the mixture of the two types of information helps to establish objective features in the discovery of exoplanets. The technological processes used in obtaining and reading data extracted from the field of astronomy are used by the artist to generate his own visual language>> - Sector 1 Gallery statement.

<<The simple and direct character of the drawing as a medium coincides with the minimalistic and objective aspect of the data found in the tables that measure the light transit of the planets. They "draw" with their shadow abstract lines by which different characteristics are determined: size, chemical composition, mass and the time interval by which an orbital cycle ends, used by Norbert Filep as starting points for the works. Thus the paper transcends the support status and becomes part of the Cartesian system, the XY coordinate system for abstracting the information resulting from the measurements of the Kepler telescope, for example. 

The same graphic is handled with the repetitive meticulousness of a watchmaker in the series of works “Spatial documents”, where through the excessive repetition of the transit drawing, spatial illusions of the transit phenomenon are created. Works such as Trappist-1e or Luyten B use the information attributed to the planets of the same name. The works represent the greatly reduced size of the planets constructed entirely of the figure describing the distance from Earth to them, located at various light-year distances from Earth.

Technological limitations in extra-planetary exploration generate information in an archaic form, which represents for Norbert Filep a subject for archiving in the form of a drawing, materialized in the form of an alteration of the boundary between objectivity and subjectivity. Thus, the objective information of astronomical research becomes a tool of artistic subjectivity, where the interpretations remain correlated with an open playing space and freed from the objective dimension of these types of information.>>

(Sector 1 Gallery)

Norbert Filep is a visual artist who works and lives in Cluj-Napoca. His conceptual practice uses drawing as a central mechanism to approach abstraction. Through accumulation and repetition, his works reconstruct, redefine and reflect on the various processes of information creation and structuring. He had solo exhibitions at MV Sci-Art, Timișoara, Mie Lefever Gallery, Ghent, Sector 1 Gallery, Bucharest, Matca Art Space and The Paintbrush Factory, Cluj-Napoca. His works can be found in the collections of the Bucharest National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Bucharest Museum of Recent Art, the ING Art collection, the Transilvania Bank art collection, along with many other private collections around the world.

The exhibition is organized by Sector 1 Gallery.