"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.

Vlad Nanca, In the natural landscape the human is an intruder, by Tania Turcan

The Modern and the individual. What is the connection between these two? The response of the inquiry is offered by Vlad Nanca in his exhibition "In the natural landscape the human is an intruder" at Galeria Sabot, Centrul de Interes, in Cluj-Napoca, between 30.03-12.05.2018.

The first thing the visitor interacts with is the separation, the essential element of the exhibition. A large wall in the middle of the exhibition space, on which 13 welded designs are installed, makes you question: Me versus what? In the first half of the exhibition, Vlad Nanca intervenes with the figures that result from enlarging de-humanized micro-silhouettes as architectural sketches to a 1:1 scale.

                                                    

         

 

  

This initial narrative tries to offer an insight in the contemporary understanding of a being, a creature immune to all the economic mash-up, but at the same time, with large inquiries regarding the verticality of the modern structure. The signs of the wall represent themselves another separation, as Vlad Nanca puts it "the separation of modernism from functionalism'', signaling the problematic of our obsession with the new. The signs look almost like a new coded/extraterrestrial language of the modernism, an accumulation of disparate forms and meanings that triggers the need to find out, what is on the other side? Continuing his journey, the visitor interacts with the plant holders on the other side of the wall, some of the artist's beloved elements used in other exhibiting contexts, as well.

The aesthetics become more striking, the narrative more significant. The modern is present even in outer space, a thought especially suggested by the "The sculpture of to-day" and "Colonisation of space". The human urge to change everything depending on its needs and understandings can bring more unwanted and unconscious consequences, accelerating the Anthropocene.

  

Sculpture of to-day    (left)                                                  Colonisation of Space (right)

 The manner in which Vlad Nanca tries to send this message is quite subtle but is more suggestive in the "Gaze into the Abyss". 

Worth of our consideration are also the empty spaces.  As one might think, there is a rather playful connection between the lack of the interior of the de-humanized silhouettes and the obscure void of the outer space. On the other hand, the three columns composing a grid are of a main interest, apropos the verticality of the modern structure.  We can see how the problematic is more palpable in the second half of the exhibition, urging us to meditate more upon the "invasion" of the natural space.

The exhibition offers a rather insightful and updated picture of the reality. It is also a good opportunity to see how an author such as Vlad Nanca handles the notion of the modern sculpture and the exhibiting space in creating connections. In the midst of the created atmosphere and the generated context, the visitor has to give the last proposition.

Gaze into the Abyss

        

In the Natural Landscape the Human is an Intruder (Vlad Nancă) by Adriana Bicazan

Landscape, space, silence, human, rationality...these are a few keywords that you could use to describe artist Vlad Nancă’s exhibition at the SABOT art gallery in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The exhibition – which was on display between March 30^th and May 12^th - took the public by surprise with its diversity as it included installations of photography, mosaics, as well as sculptures.

Vlad Nancă studied photography and video at the University of Arts in Bucharest, which deeply influenced him. His documenting of the urban environment symbolises this influence, with him using the many forms of art that I have previously mentioned.

The exhibition explores some of the less conspicuous aspects of Modernism in the 20^th century. In one half of the gallery, the artist is presenting an imaginary world, populated with installations in the shape of long figures made out of welded iron, painted black. The aesthetics of this exhibition is clearly showing a preference towards minimalism, with the figures and signs having a very contemporary feeling. When you first enter into the room, full of his art, you can feel the aspects of pop culture, primitive art, and mythology which Nancă is succeeding at portraying all at the same time. The symbols hung on the wall facing the entrance have a very mystical feeling, yet at the same time are reminiscent of the current generation due to geometrical signs becoming a very popular trend in the past years - they are used as patterns for clothes, tattoos and in other design projects.

In the second part of the gallery, the feeling of modernist aesthetic is even stronger, despite it not being clear at a first glance. The aspects of the present-day are, at first, shrouded as you become distracted by the intriguing, colourful mosaics with geometrical or spatial motifs. This modernist sensation is being deeply accentuated by a wall full of plants, strategically placed as if they were a part of a design show. Rationalistic and artificial sounds conquer the silence of the exhibition. In this space, you truly feel like a disturber of the peace - an intruder in the natural world.

One of the best of Nancă’s installations is the constantly rotating anthropoid forms. This is due to the fact that these humans, which are barely humanoid, give you the strong feeling that they are lost in this landscape. They seem to be directly communicating with the geometrical signs from the wall, giving you the strong feeling that they are familiar, yet they are still mystical. Another section that sparked my attention was the golden and silver Murano mosaic plastered on medium-density fibreboard named “Colonisation of the space”. This is because it is a hypnotic piece, representing a ship-like form ready to set sail into very mystical, almost divine space.

Vlad Nancă is an artist who created the proper setting and mood with his artworks, hence convincing the public to really feel like an intruder in the gallery space. Each piece of artwork was able to communicate his ideas and was very well executed in the manner of a truly contemporary artist, being able to gather together so many different art forms in one exhibition. The young artist is definitely on the right track, being able to be so versatile and flexible in his artworks.

Inaltari 2017, by Anesia Dican

 Aren’t we all bored with the same galleries that our city has to offer? Or with the same exhibitions? 

No worries, Jeydee gallery is here in Cluj and being at the beginning of a journey, save the date on 27 December at 6 pm to be amazed by an exhibition called "Inaltari".

The artists that will open the night will be Mirela Traistaru, Ioan Augustin Pop, Dan Istrate and Maxim Dumitras. They are all great painters, sculptors who graduated from the former Art Academy “Ion Andreescu” (today University of Art and Design) of Cluj Napoca . They are well known in Romania and also abroad having in their repertoire numerous solo and group exhibitions. All of them have won important awards during their career. 

              Mirela is well known not only for her paintings but  also for her works in the field of costume design and interior design.  She's a very complex artist, through her paintings you can escape from your day by day life and you can jump right into a world full of fantasies. 

              Ioan Augustin Pop is a more dramatic painter, he gives you the feeling of stability and force. 

              Dan Istrate thinks that through his sculptures  you can entirely manifest as a human being.

              Maxim Dumitras likes to combine the past with the present, the traditions with contemporaneity. His vital source of inspiration is nature, the human soul, and divinity.

 All  in all, all the works have a huge impact on the audience and they complete each other.

             The main painting of the exhibition captures all of the attention. The artwork that belongs to Mirela is composed of 5 large panels. the main colors that she uses are black and blue, and in the center of the painting, you can see that she painted colorful abstract flowers. This work takes you on an exotic journey, perhaps a place like Eden.

               The works of Dan Istrate are worth watching too. All of them are made from marble and are quite imposing. Most of them are black and white, the texture is smooth; all his works transports you to an unknown place  and  is quite a feeling when you stand in front of them.

The exhibition “Inaltari” is impressive, not only because is a unique opportunity to meet the artists but also you can get inside of their mind through their exceptional artworks.

Step-Sebastian Danciu, by Teodora Raducan, II ITA

How’s Cluj art life helping the young generation of artists? - a question often asked.

Sebastian Danciu is a young artist from Hunedoara. He is in his second year of university- studying graphics at University of Arts and Design Cluj-Napoca. His exhibition Step from 25 april 2018 was held in Atelier Patru, a small place on Bulevardul Eroilor. The subject  was a social study on the relationship between artist-concept, artwork-performer and art product-viewer. Moreover, it integrates a documentation on the aesthetics of hazard, the random, the synthetic and the organic. It presents an alternative way to capture reality, the raw matter, before the light hits it and our brains interpret the visual information. In addition, it tackles the matter of printmaking, which ultimately is more than a way of multiplying an image. His method was the following one: he used a plastic foil that he permeated with ink, which acts as a buffer between the contact surface (paper) and the deformed object (floor, tiles, parquet, etc.), the ink, therefore, is transferred to the paper; the remaining traces are a sum of the interactions between man and the environment, reactions that are going to be selected and archived by the artist.

The first impact over the onlookers is not overwhelming. On four walls, that give you a claustrophobic sensation and also builds a barrier between yourself and the outside, are nailed like eight works of art, eight pieces of paper marked with different patterns and colours. I consider that they become dependent on the entire concept, in order for them to make sense and become art. Contemporary art is no longer defined strictly formally, given the appearance of the readymade, there intervenes another criterion – the embodied meaning – that becomes mandatory for its understanding.

For this part, I appreciate the correlation that Sebastian made between nonverbal communication, a collective more or less close to him,  group which becomes an auxiliary character in his personal development and his creations, and graffiti, one of his main sources of inspiration. The urban character and the close relationship with its support questions an aesthetics at the limit between art and vandalism.

The most important work is the one with his own footprints, a self-portrait. The experiment took place in his working studio, where he was the only one that passed through there, so as we looked, there was just one kind of pattern imprinted on the paper.

            The rest of the works are situated around the city (Cluj-Napoca) where random people are becoming part of the show and everything becomes an erratic spectacle where actors are not aware of their role.

            Personally, I was a bit disappointed with the place, only a room space for so many art works, there was so little space to breathe between them, also it sent me the idea of anabandoned place; the four white and shabby walls from Atelier Patru are to be blamed.

            I would really like to affirm that Sebastian has a promising future in this art area, he is a discursive artist and his work is relevant.

Helga Paris: Photography, by Sara Pleșa Popescu, ITA, II

       An exhibition of the German artist Helga Paris, one of the most famous contemporary photographers, opened at the Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca on Thursday, April 19. The exhibition is organized by the German Cultural Center in partnership with the Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca and realized by the German Institute for International Relations and it will last until May 12.  At the official opening were present Franziska Schmidt, cultural manager, art historian, art critic and expert in photography, Ingo Tegge, director of the German Cultural Center, prof. univ. dr. Lucian Nastasa-Kovács, director of the Museum of Art Cluj-Napoca and dr. Dan Breaz, the commissioner of the exhibition at the Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca. The opening was followed by an open public debate on the theme of "The portrait of the daily life", between Franziska Schmidt, Ingo Tegge and Cluj photographer Andrei Niculescu.

       Helga Paris was born a year before the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1938, in Pomerania. She studied fashion design in East Berlin, and in the year of 1964, she made her debut in photography. From 1996, she became a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. After the fall of the Berlin wall, the photographer embarked on an in-depth analysis of her own early wartime and postwar experiences. Groups of works on this theme are also on show.

       Helga Paris refers to her photos as members of the family – while the people from those photos have forgotten her long ago and the times are already gone, she carries with herself each photo and each face from within. Each photograph functions as an anchor of the psyche in the human origin of the self. The empirical knowledge, the artist’s empathy and her interaction with the people behind the photos shape the compositions, but never as much as to impair their authenticity. But besides all that, what exactly makes Helga's art so special?

       The works exposed evoke the memory of the precarious times, far from the sign of good luck and a good living, outlining the artist’s routing from the industrial town Halle, Georgia, Polonia to Transylvania of the 80's. She captured unguarded aspects of everyday life, beyond their poeticization or suppression of historical truth: "Houses and girls", "Children with masks", "The Bulgarian dancers" - are just some of the topics covered by the artist in the 133 photos in black and white presented at the exhibition. The middle social classes, with scenes of apartments and dance halls, as well as the social underclass, with sanitation workers and homeless people, the childhood and the uncensored youth, the maturity and its related illnesses – all of these can be found in the artist’s works exposed at the Bánffy Palace. People seen on the streets appear to realize only partially the photographic moment: as they often gaze directly into the frame, at the same time, they are absent, looking somewhere far away. There were, of course, moments in which the closeness with those people has not been easy, as she sometimes uses to mention. Negative reactions were most often encountered among the beggars and the proletarian class, coming in response to the discontent of their poverty and suffering in which they were often forced to live, but this has not stopped the artist in her attempt to overcome together with them the barriers of some preconceived ideas.

       The exhibition is dramatic, of an overflowing frankness – a truthful anatomy of the human melancholy. The artist’s naturality emerges through her photos, producing an art reduced to the deconstruction and the reconstruction of the simplest forms of existence. Her pictures are not just an experiment in regard to the life of the socialist German and Eastern European countries, but also a portal between two different times and worlds. In a century where the aspirations poured one after another and the repercussions of the political and social conflicts, wars and poverty were felt at every step of the way, away from the promise of the absolute good and the utopia of an ideal world, the artist dared to show the naked reality. Through her photos, Helga Paris created bits of perpetual memories and stories, a string of a memory of a memory, expressing through them the helplessness in front of the temporality of life, succeeding at the same time to transpose the fears and worries, but also the hopes and simple joys of the human being, beyond appearances and the circumstances of the given cold times.