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

May 4, 2016

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.