In the dinosaurs' world stars are green by Ingrid Dan, ITA, Ist year

On the 7th of October the opening of Tincuța Marin’s exhibition “In the dinosaurs' world stars are green” took place at Atelier Patru, and it stayed open until the 16th of October. The young artist showed a few pieces of her work, both paintings and drawings, that her depict her personal creative style.

Her work explores the limit between reality and the realm of the absurd, by reinterpreting parts of the real world in the artist’s own perspective. This way, she created the dream-like atmosphere of a magical world filled with atypical, deformed characters. Through her pieces, the artist creates a metamorphosis of reality and beauty into a distorted area of fantasy full of grotesque elements. She introduces to the viewer a new creative way of perceiving the real world, and encourages creating an individual reality through exploration of the concrete facts and forms.

"DEAR" – PAUL MUREȘAN, by Alina Grozav, Ist year ITA

This exhibition signed by the Romanian artist Paul Mureșan (29 years old) opened its gates to the public on October 13th and took place in the Forum House, Alba Iulia. The whole exhibition is dedicated to forced relationships, quarrels and loneliness felt in a relationship. In this project the artist made a sincere confession through his artworks, in an attempt to explore his most hidden thoughts, to know and understand his own feelings.A small collection of artworks made up of 23 paintings, brought to the public by MozaiQ, tell a love story, a story that the author shared in the simplest words because "There is no need for big words to express deep feelings." They show the life and dynamics of a gay couple and the fear of sharing your life with a wrong person.

Paul Muresan is a young animator, director and illustrator with a solid and diverse artistic experience.  His short films have been selected and awarded at festivals around the world such as Annecy, ITF Stuttgart, Cannes and Anim'est. Paul is the author of several personal exhibitions not only in Romania but in  Europe too, and is known especially for the animated shorts "Nap" (2014) and "Mom, Dad, I Need to Tell You Something" (2016).

ZAIN 2018, by Alexandra Chartin, ITA, 1st year

This year, ZAIN, a Cluj based design festival, opens its doors to the public from 19 to 28 October. Celebrating its 4th year on the Cluj art scene, 40 events are set to take place all over the city, from different art areas such as design and fashion, but also dance and theatre.

Over 100 exhibits of  Romanian artists are to be shown in the 800- metre exposition space built in the central square. This year, ZAIN granted 2500€ in scholarships for young artists, whose art can be seen Saturday, October 20, in the central square. The program is available on the festival's official page.

Ludomir Franczak's Atlas of Sounds by Laura-Gabriela Carpov-Hriṭac, 1st year ITA

 On the 11th of October 2018 the Paintbrush Factory presented Atlas of Sounds, a multimedia performance by Ludomir Franczak, a Polish visual artist based in Lublin. It was a Memory as a Vision project, organised by the Cluj Cultural Centre.

The audio recordings employed by the artist came from his personal collection. He used a camera to record the movement of various objects. While this collage was being presented on a projective screen, a montage of photographs and text was projected on a canvas on the other side of the stage.

 

Sound is the common element of the ever-changing story collection. Varying the speed of the narrative every time, each story uses different methods to take us to a private world with weird memorabilia and impossible archives.

The performance was followed by a workshop of the Polish artist on the 12th of October. The participants had to create signs for the following show, Walden, which took place on October 13th.

Romania in 100 Faces Collaborative Mural Painting by Carolina Beu, 1st year ITA

A new mural painting was unveiled earlier this month on the walls of the “Onisifor Ghibu” high school in Cluj. Non-profit organisations Launloc and BLANĂ submitted the project for city funding on the occasion of the Romanian centennial, with the aim of reminding us about 100 people that made a change in their fields of expertise, from arts to science, literature, politics and medicine.

The concept is signed by urban artists Kero Zen and Ocu, already known for other projects around town, and a hundred people helped them complete this collaborative mural. The unveiling was done through a show of video-mapping that animated the painting, accompanied by live experimental music, performed by “Cercul Întreg”.

Regarding the work of art, organisers transmitted that “The shape of Romania is more than one of a fish, Romania’s shape is outlined by the people that inspire us, that left beautiful things behind”.

“Romania in 100 faces” can be visited anytime at the high school situated in Grigorescu neighbourhood, on Alexandru Vlahuță street 12-14.

"YOLO" - Anca Andreea Cobzaru, by Daniela Sand

Anca Andreea Cobzaru  is studying graphics (she is in her third year of university) at University of Arts and Design Cluj-Napoca. Her exhibition, "YOLO", was part of the Expo Maraton Cluj 2018, a competition for exhibition projects which takes place each May of the year. The exhibition was held at Galeria Casa Matei on May 10th.

The subject of the exhibition focuses on the unjustified hedonism of these days and the artist’s works present real aspects of the society. Central to these works is the phrase yolo  (you only live once) which is so overused nowadays in so many contexts and is every time related to positive and very joyful things. It seems that the young generations are often mistakenly using the phrase, they tend to give it wrong meanings, so the real meaning of  the concept is therefore misunderstood. They tend to send messages with no essence because they don’t always assume the things they do and the absence of justification lead to a partially assumed state of hedonism.

On the walls of Casa Matei the works stand out pretty clearly and from the first glance they don’t look like anything that is related to the phrase yolo that you see or hear elsewhere - and that’s because the artist is mocking this popular phrase and uses not so positive depictions of it. Every work is centered around a single figure - for example one of  them represents a person, who seems very bored, staying on a sofa with a remote control in her hand - and another one depicts a man sleeping in his bed. We know nothing more about the characters from these appearances; we can only assume things about them. The irony is emphasized when the artist mentions the definition of yolo from the  urbandictionary.com - "carpe diem" for stupid people. Carpe diem is also written on the work with the person sleeping. To my surprise, the exhibition is pretty rich in color and the background music that the artist chose to accompany the works creates a distinct atmosphere, especially in combination with the space at Casa Matei.

I encourage readers to go visit Anca’s works of art - if you didn’t see "YOLO", the exhibition will be probably reopened on another occasion. She will also participate in another exhibition in Bucharest on May 19th  at Manasia Hub.

Rubens: The Power of Transformation, by Vlad Joldis

               It's amazing how big of a difference it makes seeing a painting in real life compared to seeing it on your desktop, even if it's on a very high resolution.

The stiffness of our desktop steals from the magic of art and it serves as an appetizer  at best, preparing us for the "face to face" confrontation with a given artist or image.

That's the conclusion that I came to when I visited the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main earlier this year, and that's how I related to the title of the exhibition, "The Power of Transformation":

 The sheer force of a painting when seeing it in a controlled environment;  the way it can transform your perception of it and  tattoo a mark of genius on your retina.

               The Städel Museum in Frankfurt hosted an exhibition showcasing the work of Peter PaulRubens, arguably the most influential painter of the Flemish Baroque era. The exhibition started on 8 February 2018 and ended in 21 May 2018, and I was lucky enough to be in the city during this interval and visit it.

The air was getting thicker as I was getting closer to the location, and I felt so small in front of the Museum, an imposing building that breathes the history of beauty  through its every pore.

The Städel was honoured as “Museum of the Year 2012” by the German art critics association AICA in 2012. In the same year the museum recorded the highest attendance figures in its history, of 447,395 visitors.

Entering the building I was impressed by the tidiness of it and the modern atmosphere it created. It might not seem like that big of a deal but it was my first visit to an international museum, that looked the way a 21st century museum should look like.

I visited the permanent collection which is a chronological order through art history hosting huge names and works across centuries . This first encounter which, mind you, lasted for more than six hours got my eye more than calibrated for the cherry on top, the aforementioned Rubens exhibition.

The entirety of the museum was bright and well lit, creating a sort of neutral atmosphere in which every work of art could express itself in its own space, but when i entered the Rubens exhibition the light became dim and intimate.

The space was a bit constricted, with small rooms, allowing the huge paintings to tower over the man and swallow your whole being into them.

The light bonded with the paintings' palette making them seem like an organic whole, and making the oil on them literally glow. This picture was completed by the blue  and dark green walls that contrasted with Rubens' warm colors.

That space at that time felt like a limbo, like a self-governed heaven where the paintings tell you all you need to know and give you all that you need, as long as you don't break eye contact.

The exhibition consisted of roughly 100 items, 31 paintings and 23 drawings by the master. Those were completed by contemporaries and precursors such as Titian, Tintoretto or Rembrandt  to complete Rubens' dialogue with his era in his 50 years of production.

 Among paintings and drawings, there were sculptures and prints. Some of the paintings exhibited here were: Prometheus, a collaboration with Frans Snyders, 1612-1618; The Entombment, c. 1612; The Head of Medusa, 1617/18; Crown of Thorns (Ecce homo), c. 1612; Death of Hippolytus, 1611-1613 and Self-Portrait, 1638.  The works I mentioned are based on my personal taste, and not named in a specific order.

I must have completed anywhere from three to five laps around the exhibition trying to grasp my mind on every detail, and not necessarily because I felt an aesthetic need to do so, but because I felt the presence of Rubens' genius, and when you get to encounter it, it forms a black hole in which you let yourself desintegrated with a smile on your face.