New Genres: graphic

LAURA PARTIN: “FOREST CREATURES”, an exhibition of drawing, poetry and video

April 21, 2023 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

Borderline Art Space, art gallery in Iași, presents an exhibition of drawing, poetry and video entitled "Forest Creatures", by artist Laura Partin, opened on April 12. Curated by Simona Vilău, the exhibition can still be viewed by phone reservation until May 11, 2023.

Performers Alice Monica Marinescu, Cabiria Morgenstern and cameramen Mihai Florea, Marcel Trifan were involved in the project, and the music was provided by Fetter (Jessica Tucker, new media artist and musician).

Ph. Borderline Art Gallery

"Being a project both lived and imagined, Forest Creatures includes works of drawing, poetry and video, apparently incompatible. The correlation came naturally during the work. Trained as a graphic artist in Iași, in a school with respect for drawing, Laura Partin feels the need to perfect herself, to expand her area of interest for mediums and to always experiment with other ways of creating", we learn from Simona Vilău.

"The artist relies on the difference between the work in the workshop and its intimacy and the finished work, the exhibition, the message. She also relies on the complementary forces that arise from the text and from working with the camera, two other mediums she used in the realization of this project.

How many Laura Partins do we meet in this exhibition? At least four, projected into a room of mirrors. The pandemic helped her reformulate her goals and propose the same theme treated with the help of four different mediums: drawing with illustrative, magical-poetic notes, the video-performance with an ecological theme, the feminist poetry already contained in a volume published by The frACTalia publishing house and the theoretical work on the project, with explanatory notations and autobiographical references.

The creatures of the forest are a metaphor for transformation and suffering. The fear behind the suffering is immortalized in the portraits of innocent little girls, each lost in her own fairy tale world, populated by insects, fabulous characters and an apparent hardening of the self.

The ecological theme completes the experience and translates it into a worrying present, of global warming and climate change. Being aware of it or not, humanity has recently gone through at least three major episodes of humanitarian crisis, mediatized and experienced in an oversaturated digital collective", pointed out the curator.

Laura Partin is a contemporary artist born in Iasi, now living in Bucharest, who explores drawing techniques such as pencil on paper, watercolor and Chinese ink on canvas, but also uses performance (sometimes participatory), installation or video art. She studied Fine Arts, Art History and Theory at "George Enescu" National University of Arts in Iași, and between 2012-2014 she had a scholarship in Fine Arts at the Romanian Cultural Institute in Venice. In 2021, she obtained a PhD in Fine Arts at the University of Paris. Over the years, Laura has tackled topics such as gender stereotypes, the condition of migrant workers and concepts from social psychology such as cognitive dissonance or terror management theory. Her most recent project, Sfratto/Eviction (2020), exhibited in Rome, incorporated a video and a series of drawings about the eviction of Roma families from their homes in Romania between 2010 and 2020. Most recently, in the context of the pandemic, she became interested in the multimedia/performative potential of contemporary feminist poetry and time spent in nature as a form of introspective healing.

The exhibition is organized by Borderline Art Space through the AltIași Cultural Association and is part of the "Post-Human Escapes" project, co-financed by AFCN.

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“Nodal” / Mihai Țopescu at Annart Gallery

December 20, 2022 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

For the first time present in the exhibition space of Annart Gallery in Bucharest, the artist Mihai Țopescu brings to the public a new series of works, made in various techniques, materials and textures. "Nodal", Mihai Țopescu's latest artistic project brings together works in charcoal or wood, bronze and textiles, united thematically and symbolically, in multiple forms of representation of the same motif. "Known especially for his works in glass, the artist now proposes a meeting between the object - compact forms inspired by popular architecture - and key images that together produce meanings that merge and swallow each other, functioning on a symbolic level under the sign of the union of opposites, as well like a knot (nodul).

Photos by Annart Gallery

Nodal includes a series of recent works through which the artist reveals an entire Romanian metaphysics, but also major motifs from universal art. Through his twisted rope knots, Mihai Țopescu proposes an incursion among archetypes, binds and unbinds meanings, leaving the most divergent meanings available to the viewer.

This special project, in which the knot is the leitmotif of his artistic quests, seeks a reconciliation between a world with a specific Romanian substrate and influences from universal symbolism, just as the knots join in an interlocking that gives rise to a perfect geometric body, which marks in constantly the creation of the artist", emphasizes Gigi Mihăiță, the curator of the project.

NODAL is an adjective for essential, fundamental, first order, main, basic. The node is the zero point, it is the place of intersection and crossing, it is a verge.

“According to Kirchhoff's first law, also known as the node law: the algebraic sum of the intensities of electric currents that meet in a network node is equal to zero. The sum of the inputs (energy, talent, inspiration, etc.) equals the sum of the outputs (the art object and its qualities). As the ladder goes up and down at the same time, the knot ties and unties. (…) The artist is assertive and ambiguous at the same time. Through his art, Mihai Țopescu asks questions and gives possible answers, encouraging the viewer to be participative in the relationship with these works”, adds the curator.

The exhibition opened on November 24, 2022 can be visited until January 7, 2023.

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DACIAN ANDONI / "Fragmentarium"

December 08, 2022 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

DANA Art Gallery in Iasi, Romania presents the exhibition "Fragmentarium", a project that includes works of painting, drawing and photography by the visual artist Dacian ANDONI, Assoc.prof. at the Faculty of Arts and Design within the West University of Timișoara.

Curators of the project were Smaranda Bostan and the art critic Doina Emilia Mândru, who gave inspired hermeneutical addresses at the opening, together with the collector Ioan Bizău, the poet and teacher Adrian Alui Gheorghe and Cristian N. Ungureanu, from "George Enescu" National University of Arts in Iasi.

Photos by DANA Art Gallery

Dacian Andoni was born in Arad, Romania and studied painting at the "George Enescu" Art Academy (now "George Enescu" National University of Arts in Iasi), in the class of professor Adrian Podoleanu. He is a member of the Union of Visual Artists in Romania. He is currently a university professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Western University of Timișoara.

"In his current art collection, Dacian Andoni explores the symbolic and expressive potential of complex and harmonious subjects and visual representations, true centers of positivity in the ancestral archetypal fabric of the world, with his attention focused on the demiurgic condition and vocation of the human being, through transfiguration alchemy of some practices and elements specific to the construction of houses in the traditional Romanian and universal space. To this category of images are added transfigurations of some landscape fragments or "angelic" explorations, perspectives from Above on the anatomy of some localities or a carpet of dry leaves, all of which were received by the artist with the eye of the heart and transposed into pictorial, graphic or photographs of a refined poetics and metaphysical rigor, creations that have the quality of receiving and emitting energy, through the multiple visual stimuli through which the artist generates the power of transposing his own founding concepts and symbols into cosmogonic and poetic representations, equally inspired. Dacian Andoni's images vibrate on the cyclical and alternating rhythm of the attraction of the world and our civilization to the Sky and then to the Earth, in fulfillment of the disturbing and endless fact of Existence." - pointed out Cristian Ungureanu, from "George Enescu" National University of Arts in Iasi.

(...) In the small universe closed between walls, the hortus conclusus cultivated by the painter, the eye that easily encompasses the whole contemplates, searches, compares, chooses, discovers the motif, then transposes it as a fragment in some medium - drawing, photograph or oil painting. The gaze then goes up to the patch of sky on which the clouds roam, illuminating the two workshops, the inner one, another one to be arranged, with the windows to the garden and the perpetual one, open to the sun, the clouds, the city that can barely be guessed beyond the hidden wall of vegetation. (...) - we learn from Doina Mândru, art critic.

The exhibition opened on November 15, can still be visited until December 9, 2022.

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The National Art Salon “Contemporary Attitudes”, at the Art Gallery of the Harghita County Council

August 30, 2021 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

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“MON CABARET NOIR”, the exhibition of a play

February 22, 2021 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

CREART Gallery // Photography exhibition. February 15 - March 14, 2021

The CREART Gallery presents, through a photography exhibition, a part of the universe of an exceptional show - MON CABARET NOIR, signed by Răzvan Mazilu, which introduces the audience to the world of Berlin cabaret from the 1920s, where nothing is too bizarre and everything is allowed to experiment. The burlesque show was reproduced through photography by Mihaela Tulea, Florin Bondrilă, Dragoș Toader, capturing the expressiveness of the characters in the most unique poses and attitudes. The exhibition thus presents a series of a black and white photographs that stand out through the graphics, plasticity and power of expression of the theater, easily noticeable.

Photos by CREART

MON CABARET NOIR, a TEATRELLI production, is a unique, complex and exciting approach. It starts with the story of Anita Berber - dancer, choreographer, actress and model of great success from the 1920s, the golden age of cabaret. Not very well known to us, she was an avant-garde, rebellious and eccentric personality, with a destiny worthy of a film script. When he started directing Mon Cabaret Noir, choreographer Răzvan Mazilu was inspired by the stories and places he discovered visiting Berlin for documentacion. The famous choreographer Răzvan Mazilu has a silent role in the show, expressed only by dance and expression. Along with him, on the stage were the actresses Ilona Brezoianu, Anca Florescu, Alina Petrică and Ana Bianca Popescu.

"MON CABARET NOIR provokes with eroticism and probes the dark parts of our personality. It provokes, first of all, the idea of freedom - I could say that it is a plea for the freedom of being, a being shaken by all the prejudices and all the rules that society imposes. It is very well documented and, last but not least, I like to believe, the themes and ideas in the show touch some strings unknown or forgotten from the sensitivity of the spectators ", said Răzvan Mazilu, autor of the choreography, direction, costumes and concept of this play.

Contemporary Art

Cezara Moraru: "Ink art gives me the freedom to express myself in a relatively short time"

September 21, 2020 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

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.

The easel works focus on human nature that tends towards continuous dehumanization, despite the technological progress. Cezara sais that the great artists that inspires her work are Victor Brauner and Gerhard Richter. She usually expresses through abstract painting and conceptual works, but sometimes also creates figurative art, when she feels that the figurative expression is needed to render the artistic intention.

Her favorite technique, as she claims, is ink ark. This involves using ink on different types of paper to be able to make different kind of artistic structures. „I prefer ink art because I can use the directed spot, as well as the experimental spot. On text interventions the stain is directed, but it acquires a certain ink identity, so it becomes a spontaneous abstract intention. This technique allows me to create even if my free time is limited. Art is about moments and inspiration and I try to make my works out of every spare minute. If a figurative painting sometimes require weeks of work, ink art gives me the freedom to express myself in a relatively short time”, explains the artist.