Exhibition of Ioana Olăhuț: Fear, pain, hunger, by Alexandra Burtiuc

Ioana Olăhuț is a Romanian painter, who`s now a teacher of the painting department of the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca. She had exhibitions in the country and abroad too, with works that had as a theme  metamorphosis. Her style is a combination of Expressionism and Surrealism, in technique and themes, but what makes her works unique is her vision about the subjects that she chooses.

             Her recent exhibition is titled Fear, pain, hunger, which reminds us of the Expressionist most common themes. The exhibition is a collection of works from 2012 to 2016 which come after a period of black and white painting.

The images she had created made me feel like I was in a horror movie: the colors, the atmosphere, the subject, even the fact that the exhibition took place in the basement of the museum. And that feeling made me realize the power that those images have.

             The contrast that is most used for these paintings is a complementary one, between yellow and violet. It is said that this contrast is used for expressing the most dramatic situations and experiences, because it is the one that, to be balanced, needs more violet than yellow and pure violet is a lot darker than the pure yellow, making the painting darker just because of  the contrast. But the black that she used made everything even more intense and dramatic. There are paintings that are almost black and white like Dali and Galinacea, and there are, on the other side, paintings that are very colorful like Inward directed mortido II. The non-finito is very present in her work, being that invisible thing that guides the eyes of the viewers in a certain point of the painting. In some works this non-finito is a part where the color is dripping, in others is the part that is almost decorative or intentionally less worked.

The figures that express her concepts and ideas are humans, animals or even food--the exhibition is called hunger after all. But when it comes to people, the interest was not portraying them or studying the human body, expressions or proportions. In a lot of paintings the faces of the people  are actually missing or just sketched. For example, in the work named Two monks in front of my window there are two figures of men, with faces unclear, and that detail makes the image creepier than the subject itself. Or in the painting named The Maid where it is clear that it is not an anatomical study of the female body, nor a study of her expression, it is about  virginity as a subject.

The painting that I liked the most, was the one named Chicken`s Nightmare. This one is about a little chicken smashed by giant strawberries. The contrast is the same, violet and yellow, the dripping is there too. But leaving aside the fact that strawberries are my favorite, I find interesting the subject itself. She really imagined what the nightmare of a chicken might be and she concluded that this is the most relevant possibility. I find this one amusing, a dark humor actually, but it still made me smile just because I imagined it to be real.

The exhibition was opened on 27^th April, and in case you want to see it, it will be open till 15^th May, between 10 am to 5 pm, at the Art Museum in Cluj-Napoca.

Jarret at Seoul Spring 2016 collection , by Alexandra Burtiu

Jarret is a label established by Lee Ji Yeon in 2009 in South Korea, which now has opened a store in New York. The designer creates garments based on the relationship between women and men, that`s why she gets inspired by menswear and always has both genders in every collection that she creates. This label is focused on creating garments for on-duty and off-duty wear at the same time. It can be said that Lee Ji Yeon is creating garments that, even if are inspired from menswear, are mostly for women who want to express their femininity wherever they go.

The collection that was presented at Seoul Fashion Week, spring/summer 2016, was inspired by the Snow White story. The make-up evoked the description of Snow White: lips red as blood, hair black as ebony, and the white skin that the model had, exactly as the character from the story. The colors that dominated were pure white, black, intense red and a little dark blue for evoking masculinity. There are no accessories and the shoes are flat, a common thing used in the fashion from that side of the world. The patterns and the prints that were used were actually abstract drawings of apples and letters of the apple word, English and Korean version (sagwa). And if the apples or the prints aren`t there, it will be the color red to remind you that it is about apples.

             The predominant material that was used was veil, but there were cotton and silk as well. The see-trough material was in a clear contrast with the others materials, especially with the silk which is shinny, and always used in the collection made by Asian designers. The veil is considered by the majority of people to be a material which evokes femininity, but for Ji Yeon it is not like that. She uses this material for menswear as well, a thing that, in my opinion, is refreshing. Why shouldn`t a man wear veil? Because it is not manly? But what does make a man manly? This collection gives us the answer: the attitude and the physique, nothing else.

             Even if Ji Yeon gets inspired by the Snow White story for this collection, how she tells the story is a bit odd. I saw the collection before I knew the inspiration source of it, and for me it was about Adam and Eve story. But if you compare the two stories they are quite similar. The woman who eats an apple, which she shouldn`t, and gets “poisoned” and almost “died”. And there was the man by her side when she made a mistake. And like in the stories, even if the collection is about men too, the women's presence  dominates the scene. She is the one that you, as a viewer, see more.  And the fact that there is a clear contrast between black and white, colors that in Asian belief are the colors for the Yin and Yang concept, colors that reflect the good and the bad of the world, is a sign that this collection is not just about a story that originally wasn`t written for kids, it is about something more. And the presence of the color red can be a reminder of the blood as a penitence for what the woman did, not just a reminder for the red apples from Snow White, apples that can be green and yellow as well.

             But after all, who actually knows what is inside of an artist mind?

            

Bibliography:

1.http://jarret-official.com/about.html

2.http://www.mutzine.me/features/seoul-fashion-week-spring-summer-2016-day-4-the-studio-k-big-park-r-shemiste-jarret-supercomma-b

3.http://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/seoul-spring-2016/jarret#review

Vlad Olariu`s exhibition – Glory Holes, by Monica Dănilă

Beginning on April 14, the Museum of Art in Cluj-Napoca will open an exhibition entitled Glory Holes, where sculptures by Vlad Olariu will be on display until the 15th of May 2016.

The title might sound ironic, but it includes one of the elements that his exhibit`s works have in common: holes. The pieces  are made of polystyrene, covered in a cold grey paint to give the impression of hard concrete, damaged by rough and aimless holes. Yet these works are not only covered in holes, they also depict  human figures, in heroic postures, recalling Greek and Roman sculptures; and some portray contemporary events while some are just abstract.

 They call this a sculpture exhibition, but the works are done on a flat surface, more like a relief, so it does not hold the same characteristics as the typical museum sculpture. The pieces are playful, arranged in various ways: on the wall, leaning on the wall, up on old, repainted barrels and trash cans.

 The artist constructed a glaring connection between the artworks and the other objects present in the exhibition (old barrels, trash cans, a plant etc), which were painted in bright colours, mainly red. It was an unconventional approach.

Vlad Olariu is a young artist, a graduate of the sculpture department of Art and Design University of Cluj-Napoca, being one of the most productive and active sculptors in Cluj-Napoca in the last decade.

Bibliography:

http://www.macluj.ro/vlad-olariu.html 

The Spring Campaign at MNAC – The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, by Monica Dănilă

 The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest opened this 20th of April the spring-autumn 2016 campaign with 6 new exhibitions. The season will end on the 6th of October, a period in which MNAC will organize other related events, such as meetings with artists, debates, workshops, concerts, theatricals.

 Going through to the new glass wing of the Parliament House, Konrad Smoleński`s kinetic installation Dizzy Spells is exhibited on the ground floor. The installation is composed of two inflatable figures, which are supposed to look fun, but they form a sinister atmosphere because of their impression of collapse and dark tones.

 At the first floor, Forms through time, the future of nostalgia is a selection of works brought together from the Deutsche Telekom collection, which concentrates significant names of the past four decades of art produced in Central, South-Eastern, and Eastern Europe. Some of the artists who exhibit are Nilbar Güres, Petrit Halilaj, Vladimir Houdek, Pravdoliub Ivanov, Ali Kazma, Šejla Kamerić, Lesia Khomenko, Genti Korini, Eva Kotátková, Zofia Kulik, Vlado Martek, Radenko Milak, Sükran Moral, Ciprian Mureşan, Vlad Nancă, Ioana Nemeș, Paulina Ołowska etc.

 The second floor is hosting an exhibition dedicated to the Dada centennial, a melancholic space, filled with the impossibility of the same experience. There  drawings by Paul Păun and Victor Brauner, manuscripts written by Tristan Tzara, Ion Vinea, B. Fundoianu, old magazines like Unu, Urmuz are shown.

 Romanian cities in decline or Shrinking cities is an event on the third floor related to architecture because shrinking cities is a global phenomenon referring the demographic, economic, social and cultural decay of the industrial cities built in the twentieth century. Petrila is the city used for the study case, a city that Ilinca Paun and Tudor Constantinescu studied for years. We can rightfully say this is an encyclopedic exhibition.

 On the last floor, is the exhibition The Second Law from the cycle The white dot and The black cube, shows two distinct themes: the documentation of the Furry community (people who spend their time dressing up in stuffed animals costumes) and the photographic re-enactment of the important moments in the modern history of South Korea, Suk Kuhn Oh conceived.

Left: Carmen Dobre-Hametner, Kashjew & Fjordwolf; Right: Suk-Kuhn Oh, The Text Book (Chulsoo & Younghee)

Paul Păun, Figurative drawing

Bibliography:

http://www.observatorcultural.ro/articol/campania-de-primavara-la-mnac/

http://veiozaarte.ro/de-citit-2/insert/program-expozitional-mnac.html

Manifesta 11, by Vlad Dobrițan

    
  Manifesta is the biennial of contemporary art that seeks to investigate and reflect on emerging developments in contemporary art made and set within a European context since 1990. Since its first edition(1996, Rotterdam), Manifesta sought to keep itself from the dominant artistic centres of Europe, instead seeking emerging centres for the mapping of a new cultural topography.

The 11th Manifesta will be held in Zurich, a town that has a very long history of artistic and intellectual liberalism. Today, Zurich is one of the most economically and technologically advanced cities in the world and with the rich and rapidly evolving urban setting will provide Manifesta 11 with a socially, politically and artistically significant trajectory for the coming years.

The Chief Curator will be the German artist Christian Jankowski, who’s best known for his artistic actions and media artworks in which he makes use of film, video and photography, but also painting and installation. His work consists of performative interactions between himself and non-art professionals (the world of contemporary art and the world outside the art). This procedure lends his work its populist appeal. Jankowski’s work can be seen both as a reflection, deconstruction, and a critique of a society based on spectacle. In his view, art has turned into a show, and as a result has undermined its critical potential.

Taking the Chief Curator’s view into account, combined with the host city – Zurich, known for its artistic and intellectual liberalism--  we might say that Manifesta 11 involves unpredictable outcomes and risks, and as usual – will embrace the criticism.

Manifesta 11 will open on  June11, and with the preparations near the end, we can only wait for the biennial to open its gates to see, if not in person, at least images from one of the Europe’s most important art exhibition.