Dec 5, 2017

"Breaking Rules", by Alexandra Vasilescu, Ist year Graphics




Dedicated to the Future European Center of Contemporary Art Cluj-Napoca


The University of Art and Design of Cluj-Napoca (UAD) proposes a series of artistic events dedicated to the future Center for Contemporary Art (ECCA), which will open in 2020. The creation takes place both in the centers dedicated to artistic events and in partnership with some of the representative museum spaces, institutions that host works and support projects by artists, members of the university and of the Fine Artists Union of Romania, Cluj branch.

The concept of artistic expression is subordinated to the generic title and refers to the challenge to which the contemporary artist is constantly exposed, to value his creation and to spatialise his work according to the symbolism and destination of the exhibition frame. Breaking Rules implies exercising the ability to adapt an artistic approach and test the impact it may have on areas belonging to other areas, such as science or history.

The Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca hosts three temporary exhibitions of artists representing the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca (UAD) and the Fine Artists Union, the Cluj Branch, between October 26 and November 5, 2017 under the generic Breaking Rules , whose official inauguration will take place at the museum on October 26, 2017, starting at 18:00.



 image: the exhibition poster

Cluj Design – Christmas Edition, by Soriina-Ioana Crisan, Ist year Graphics




Cluj Design Days is an annual event that offers opportunities for young designers to promote, expose and sell their work. The creators of this project desire to promote local creativity and offer designers a way to get started in the industry, and the possibility to make a living out of their creative activities. They also wish to encourage designers to make original content that has not been seen before.

35 Romanian Designers will take part in this year’s event, exposing the coolest gifts crafted by them: accessories, home decor or fashion objects, cards, furniture, and much more! The atmosphere will be jolly and there will be cocktails waiting for everyone who shows up on the first day of the event, at 6pm.

Cluj Design Christmas Edition 2017 is the 9th event hosted by Cluj Design Days, and it takes place between the 15th and 17th  of December, at Muzeul Etnografic on Memorandumului Street 21.  

Images of Gypsy people in the collection of The musum of Art in Cluj-Napoca, by Lucian Barbu, Ist year Graphics

 Cluj Napoca





        Starting  this Thursday, the 7th of December, the Cluj-Napoca Museum of Art is showcasing a vast collection of Romania’s most prestigious portrayals of our compatriots, the gypsies.

Having such humble and bohemian origins, these nomad people settled in the Balkan region from the 14th century and their coexistence with the Europeans has been controversial. Fluctuating between slavery and the romanticism, these people have been a main symbol of freedom and joy.

In honor of the mark that they left in our artists’ many paintings, the Cluj-Napoca Art Museum is organizing an exhibition that will take place in Piata Unirii, nr.30, and  will begin at 6pm, this Thursday. The exhibition’s curator, dr. Ioana Filipescu will join us for this showcase that will end on the 8th of January, 2018.

Inspired by their colorful culture, well known artists such as Theodor Aman, Nicolae Grigorescu, Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck, Stahi Constantin have created popular paintings in the 19th century that are being showcased throughout the next month.

The artists who will enjoy the spotlight will be: Theodor Aman, Nicolae Grigorescu, Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck, Stahi Constantin, Nicolae Vermont, Ștefan Dimitrescu, Kőváry Endre, Papp Lajos și Alexandru Popp and Walter Rudolf Widmann.
image: detail from the official poster of the event






Engraving Exhibition. Giancarlo Pozzi, by Anamaria Stanciu (Ist year Graphics)






























Sketch session, by Flavia Tritean (Is year Graphics)


                                                                                                                   

The sketch session is an activity for teenagers and adults interested in art, who want to develop their drawing abilities

This meeting will give you the opportunity to relax by practicing your drawing. The resulting sketches could always serve as the starting point for your further works.

The session will take place at 21 Piața Unirii, apartment 2A, at the 
ground floor, on December 9.The hall is bright, there are 5 alleys and rows 
of chairs. 

Each participant is supposed to bring the necessary materials s/he is going 
to use:  paper, pencils, paint. There are 6 seats available and the price 
is 25 lei for 3 hours. 
 
You can confirm your presence by email at 
antonia.rusu92@yahoo.com.
 
 Works by Flavia Tritean
 




Images of Gypsies in the collection of Cluj-Napoca’s Art Museum, by Oana Cervinschi (Ist year Painting)

Between the 7th of December 2017 and 8th of January 2018 the Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca is going to host the exhibition called “Imagini ale țiganilor în colecția Muzeului de Artă Cluj-Napoca” (“Images of Gypsies in the collection of Cluj-Napoca’s Art Museum”). The show will be opened by its curator, doctor Ioana Filipescu on the 7th of December, at 6 PM.


Imagini ale țiganilor în colecția Muzeului de Artă ClujThe artworks are from both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. They are made by such famous and important artists as Theodor Aman, Nicolae Grigorescu, Kőváry Endre, Constantin Stahi, Walter Rudolf Widmann, Nicolae Vermont, Alexandru Popp, Papp Lajos, Ștefan Dimitrescu and Cecilia Cuțescu- Storck.

The exhibition comemorates this minority, present in Europe for so many centuries, which has been seen by artists as a controversial subject. It has been represented multiple times in different artworks due to its ambivalent significance which embodies both a sense of freedom (due to their picturesque lifestyle) and slavery (due to their tragical history).

Anyone who is at least a bit curious about art or would like an insight of the Gypsies’ lifestyle, seen through the eyes of these painters, is more than welcome to come and see the exhibition! We promise, you will not be disappointed! See you there!



Jun 4, 2017

Black Market by Tudor Oltean, by Ana Crețiu, 2nd year ITA







                  - one of May's greatest art exhibitions -




Hosted by Launloc (55, Racovita St., open May 26-May 31), the world created by Tudor Oltean is governed by its own laws. Student of UAD's Ceramics, Glass & Metal Department, Tudor creates a system that brings into discussion the unspoken aspects of illegal trait, creating objects that, in our opinion, can be best described as having a "subtle monumentality". With an interesting materiality and an unforgettable chromatic signature, each piece tells a different story, united by the idea of a field of activities which affect society in negative ways, yet are kept under the rug. Art trafficking, ivory trafficking, organ trafficking or even human trafficking are among the artist's concerns.


The world build  by the artist revolves around the mantra of  "creating a world governed by its own laws, where violence becomes universal desire, a world backed up by its own complex economy that is continuously and aggressively developed" (artist's statement). This promise is actually delivered to the public, because the feeling one has when entering the exhibition is indeed that of entering the space of a fully organized organic system.


The two main rooms of the gallery where the exhibition takes place manage to somehow be different yet governed by the same unity stated before. A crucial aspect of this diversity is played by the experiments conducted using different art manifestations. Thus, besides ceramics, we were able to encounter various paintings or even engravings. Their unity  comes firstly from the specific shade of black used by the artist. Black, the color of darkness, of the night, the color of crime, of the unknown, and of the underground. Every piece of Tudor Oltean's exhibitions wears the black grey-ish coat of the organized crime's world.


Among the exhibits stands out a group of sculptural ceramic objects whose non-figurative shapes embody the project's concept with reference to specific cases. With the matter of organ trafficking in mind, for example, the artist takes the shape of a kidney and formally abstracts it until a non-representative object emerges, emptied of the original shape yet filled with meaning.


Tudor Oltean's Black Market is without doubt one of the highlights of the year's art exhibitions, scoring high points in regard to the idea, as well as the executions and also the presentation. The young artist's work is something we are looking forward to encountering again.

photo credits Galeria Launloc


Jun 1, 2017

The Incomplete Survival Kit, by Ioana Morosan, design, I




On  April 10 started ‘The Incomplete Survival Kit’ Exhibition by Adrian Grecu. The selection of works produced by Adrian are displayed in Galeria 45, situated in No.3 Iuliu Maniu Street, Cluj-Napoca. The exhibition can be visited until April 30, everyday, except Sunday, from 8 pm to 9 pm.

The artist Adrian Grecu  was born in Cluj-Napoca in 1969 and graduated from the Academy of  Visual Arts “Ion Andreescu” in Cluj-Napoca. He has specialized in ceramic-glass-metal. In his works he mainly focuses on ‘the dynamics of objects, the expression of energy, the dialogue established between the real and the virtual’, as he says.

The exhibition hosted by Galeria 45 consists of drawings and sculptures alongside their virtual stimulations. By installing an application from GooglePlay and visualizing the art works through smartphone camera, the visitors are given the chance to see the objects  introduced to a virtual space which produce some special effects. The application was created especially for this exhibition by the media programmer Mihai Anton.

The creativity of the exhibition comes from a different form of art expression, but using the main elements of visual art in general: the form, the light, the color. The exhibition can be visited until April 30, so don’t miss the chance of a great experience.

May 31, 2017

Tincuţa Marin, "Distorted Realities", by Vlad Dobritan, 2nd year ITA



“The presented project incorporates elements taken from the scenography, street art and everyday imagery, passed through the postmodern filter as a way of composing and by the expressionist filter as a way of pictorial expression. 


My paintings coagulate scenes that do not necessarily subscribe to an aesthetic attitude, but delineate the search for a very personal process of making the image. For me, this project is a complex challenge in seeking and acquiring an own style of state expression through an artistic approach that helps me to reach the unique way of releasing my gesture in response to the chosen subject. The images taken from them are de-structured and re-composed to create various, magical and dynamic compositions, completing the collages through the basics of pictorial-gesture, line, spot and shape.


In my works I discuss the problems related to magic, dream, form and composition, metamorphosis of the perception filters, the characters rendered by me being deformed, with strange atypical faces. I like to reinterpret the facts of reality into a world of mine, full of magic, beautiful, ugly, through deformations, elongations, twists and turns sending them into a grotesque visual area. I want to suggest the atmosphere of dreams, to express an emotion without resorting to narrative clichés. What I am interested in is the absurd, the exploration of the limits of reality, which can bring about an individual reality. "

 
artist's statement (our translation)




Without narratives, without heroes, the postmodern community is composed of masses made of atoms in an absurd Brownian motion  and it’s fine! —because the big social stories break up; individuals find themselves in the nodes of communication networks socially positioning them and allowing them to perform movements in the middle of these language-based societies.

 As the society is atomized in simple language games, any statement must be considered a move made in a game — the players of the games respect the same rules to understand and accept each other; and that’s Lyotard’s greatest gift for us, it means that we can even build our own games as long as we can find someone to play with, someone who accepts and follows our rules of communications. Of course, these may seem like complications.


Those complications — of fitting in a society that works on  Lyotard’s theory of language game — spark in artist Tincuța Marin, in the wicked paintings of her own  distorted realities. She lives in Cluj-Napoca and studies painting at UAD; she lives, like every one of us, in multiple -language games- which bring to every one of us distorted views on things – views that even after expressed, will change their meaning in the eyes of the public. The artist reinterprets the common reality and gives us her own, which is a grotesque combination of ugliness, beauty, anxiety, and alienation – all this using her own language game rules.




 Where do the paintings power emanate from? The grotesque atmosphere is only a foyer to the effect. I think Tincuța’s intense awareness of her own emotions  is part of it — how she tries to find a style that would allow her to express herself in simple  gestures, and to be able to express emotion without narrative  clichés— that quest on itself becomes the source of power  for her works. 

That’s what Tincuța’s show at Expo Maraton’s VII-th edition made  me think about, the postmodern self, the search for a game  you can belong in by finding the rules— or creating your own. How do you face those distorted  realities?


photo credits Vlad Dobritan



May 28, 2017

Iris van Herpen Spring 2017 Couture Collection, by Alexandra Burtiuc

Between the lines            

             Have you seen a dress that vibrates? Or have you seen a dress so thin and transparent that is almost invisible? Well, they exist in the newest couture collection of Iris van Herpen. She is a Dutch fashion designer, who debuted in 2007 in the fashion industry. She is world known for her futuristic designs, her name nowadays being equivalent to 3D printing applied in fashion. The collection for spring 2017, released in Paris in January, is entitled Between the lines, a name that defines the concept and the visuals altogether.  
             The collection is composed of 16 outfits, the majority of them being dresses. And the reason for such a small number of garments in a collection is, firstly, the cost and secondly the complex process of making them. The dresses and the single jumpsuit are made of silicone and polyurethane (PU), combine with cotton and silk for making those non-conventional materials more comfortable for wearing. This means not just the fact that she used non-conventional materials, which may be more difficult to work with, but proving her knowledge and interest in the newest technology. And, of course, having connections around the globe for making it happened. The lines for the dresses made of silicone were hand-painted thorough injection molding, a technique shown step by step in the Process film that she posted on her Youtube channel. The lines for the dresses that were made of PU were laser cut from a block of material in Atelier 13 from Bucharest and sewed together to create the garment. The technology involved in such a process of creating just one dress is not easy to find and is pretty expansive, because of that. But this complex process of creating the dresses and the materials themselves is what makes the collection special and unique. Even the title says that you have to, literally, read between the lines, where the material, the main “character” actually is. 
             When it comes to colors, the collection is monochrome, combining different shades of white and black. When it comes to pattern… well, it is in the title: lines. They were everywhere and in every form. Black, white, thin, thick, curved, in zig zag, forming other shapes, on the dress, cut through, in the background… what a better way of expressing an abstract concept if not through lines? When it comes to structure, some of the garments were made of more layers which showed different degrees of transparency and some were made of a single layer, being so transparent that it could be confused with the skin of the models. 
          The scene (room) where the collection was presented was black, covered in white zig-zag lines, models walking between those lines. The room itself wasn`t too spacious, and the public wasn`t lighted. In my opinion the lighting in the room wasn`t good at all. It was too dark and the dresses deserved to be seen clearer, especially the little details that they had and the material that they were made of.  Or maybe that was the intention. 
             What I found far more interesting about the presentation itself was the background music. Or should I say sounds? Yes, they had a rhythm, but they weren’t actual music. More like a combination of different frequencies and vibrations. And that was the moment I realized what the concept of the collection was. Iris van Herpen never said what was her source of inspiration for this collection, she only said in an interview that she thinks about and gets inspired by abstract concepts and doesn`t use images, because she doesn`t like to recreate them. And music is not an image, even if you can`t define it as abstract. And sound is even more “abstract” that music. That`s why I strongly believe that the concept for this collection is frequency and representing visually the vibration of the sound. And what sustain this theory of mine about the concept for this collection are two dresses. More clear the dresses with number 8 and 9 (in the order they were presented in the show). They literally vibrate! It`s a visual effect created by the layers of the curved vertical lines of silicone put together on a silk dress, amplified by the movement of the model and a special rhythm in the background sound. And the dress number 15 reminded me of a bat. It was because of the A silhouette of the dress and the pitched, chaotic sound that could be heard when it came on scene. And, of course, it`s black color and the pattern formed on its surface. 
             Even though the last dress that had an unusual form and texture, made of silicone, is considered the climax of the show (this can be said because of its presentation), the dresses that I mentioned previously are the ones that, in my opinion, speak more about this collection. I really enjoyed watching this show because I could see what makes this fashion show being an “exhibition” and I sincerely recommend this show to everyone. And I could also see how the future of clothing will look like: the usage of non-conventional materials will be much higher, finding and making such clothes will be easier, the 3D printing will change the way we obtain clothes. Being able to see all of these in one collection proves the talent and the forward thinking that Iris van Herpen is capable of. And this is way I respect and appreciate her so much.
  Sources:
Iris van Herpen spring 2017 couture collection – Amy Verner http://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2017-couture/iris-van-herpen
Iris van Herpen Between the lines – show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWAVV2n4TIk
Process film – Ryan McDanials for Iris van Herpen Between the lines 2017 couture collection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiE3yVULRBY                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                      Alexandra Geanina Burtiuc,
                                        second year at History and Theory of Art and second year at Fashion Design


May 16, 2017

ZAIN Accelerator, by Nicoleta Trif, 1st year, Design


ZAIN accelerator is a program for creative people  which are at the beginning of the road, full of good ideas and bizarre projects. The project consists  a series of mentoring sessions which are aimed at personal and professional development, filtering and developing their ideas, and developing a personal project that benefits from the support and expertise of mentors as well as the possible collaboration of other candidates. The candidate may have either a concrete product or a well articulated idea that falls into one of the three categories: object design, accessory design or fashion design

The period of the accelerator is from 8 to 14 May, in Pta. Stefan cel Mare no. 18. The official program is between 9:30 and 18:00, every day, with the possibility of staying over the program in the space provided to the organizers.

The deadline for joining the accelerator is May 5th and  the link where you can sign up is on facebook on the page of ZAIN
The presentation of the projects takes place on 14 May at 12:00, in the presence of a jury of 3 people they will evaluate the projects according to the rating grid provided by the organizers.

This event does not require an enrollment fee, but if the person enrolling in Accelerator does not attend classes or at the meetings will have to pay a fee of 200 euros.

The Light Festival, by Nicoleta Trif, 1st year, Design



The Romanian Scouts have created the Light Festival, an event that takes you out of daily life and brings you closer to the simple joys of life. The Festival of Light is a national event, organized annually by the members of the National Organization "Romanian Scouts" and young local volunteers. In 2017, the festival reaches its 13th edition, and it Will take place at national level starting in May.The Festival of Light is organized every year in several locations in Romania, with the aim of creating a quiet space, disconnecting the participants from the agitation of everyday life and remembering that the small things around them .Those who are volunteers gain experience in communication, socialization and discover the art of light and the games a single candle can create. This year the festival it will take place in the park cetatuie in 3 june between 9 pm and 11 pm and the park it will be decorate with paper boxes wit candels inside which will show people the art that you can made with some paper boxes, fire, and young people.



May 11, 2017

Henna Workshop, by Bernadett Kovács (1st year, Design)






When?

19.05.2017, 13.00 o'clock



How to apply?

Send a message to Ana’s facebook:


What can we learn?

-Preparation methods

-Why natural henna and not black henna

- How to make your cones and how to use them

-How to prepare your skin before applying henna

-How to maintain a tattoo

-How to get a darker color

-The methods of preserving the paste / henna powder

-A short presentation of some models

-How to build a model from scratch

About Ana:

Ana-Maria Butura is fascinated about Indian culture and the art of tattoos. She decided to combine both of them by learning from tutorials and a friend. She stayed 2-3 hours a day watching tutorials and later she was practicing  on her sister and friends.Her inspiration is from  traditional Indian henna models and Maori tattoos. She also works with free hand without using templates, and every tattoo she is making is unique.

-About henna:

Henna is one of the oldest beauty and cosmetic products in the world. Henna painting art has been practised for over 5,000 years in India, Africa and the Middle East. The dye obtained from the henna tree plants is used to color the nails, the skin, even the hair. In the past, due to henna's cooling properties tribes living in desert  used henna to cool off. The cooling feeling lasts as long as the color remains on the body. It is also said that even Cleopatra used henna for her beauty.