Setting up an exhibition, budgeting production, the exhibition as a project during uncertain times, deadlines, stress, specialized art transport.
Matei Bejenaru, Oana Coșug, Larisa Crunțeanu, Sebastian Hosu, Adelina Ivan, Aurora Király, Iosif Király, Zoltán Béla
March 6 – April 17, 2021
Anca Poterașu Gallery, Bucharest
“The Show That Never Was” focuses on the notion of the exhibition art-space and its network of collective efforts, desires and hopes, setbacks and ideals that it emerges from. The works of artists Matei Bejenaru, Oana Coșug, Larisa Crunțeanu, Sebastian Hosu, Adelina Ivan, Aurora Király, Iosif Király, Zoltán Béla allow a view in the liminal space between the artistic laboratory and existing critical statements of the art scene. The exhibition unveils the artistic process, or otherwise revisits earlier works turning a mirror inwards, to the limitations and possibilities of an art-space.
Unravelling the process of creating an art-show, we reflect on what it means to be an exhibition-maker in the current social and economic climate, notwithstanding the absurd and impossible challenges that can sometimes only be met with humour and dare.
The gallery space – a playground / a space of both escapism and confrontation / a space of permutations and chance.
“Exhibitions for private online tours, the art show as an emergency, the urgency of an art show now.”
Whereas Matei Bejenaru shows us the inner workings of his artistic laboratory with the photographical work ABYSS (2020) in progress, Oana Coșug takes a more intimate look within the state of mind of the artist isolated in her studio.
Zoltán Béla exposes the pressure to produce new works while the game of chance, the competition, the power-relation within the art-scene reverberates on the large screening shown by Larisa Crunțeanu in the work A Story with 255 Possible Parts (2017).
In response, Aurora Király’s TALE (2013) series of acrylic on paper drawings map out episodes of stress and anxiety with text overlayed as processed trauma through storytelling.
Adelina Ivan reflects on the artistic process of sketch-to-work through drawings and erasure poetry texts, leading to the simultaneous making and breaking, an implicit self-annihilation and rebuilding that takes place in the studio. Evoking the same
Deleuzian concept of differentiation through repetition, Sebastian Hosu photographs his own works and then paints over the images with oil and charcoal, conceptualizing the relation between reality and representation in the series Reinventing my pictures (2020).
On the second floor of the exhibition, Iosif Király’s video Blowin’ In The Wind (2014) relates perfectly to the idea of a show that never is/was. Making the leap between artistic intent and reality, an unintended performance takes place at University Square in Bucharest…