Substrat / Substratum. Review by Oana Dico History and Theory of Art, second year.

Can you see the true contemporary world?

Well, from May 20 to May 27, 2019, you are invited to the H33 gallery, to participate in a group exhibition presenting the contemporary world seen through the eyes of these young artists.

Twelve students of the graphics department in partnership with two students from the History and Theory of Art of the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca organized an event aimed to criticize contemporary society. 

Mixing with different work environments, artists have uniquely transposed their own opinion of the contemporary world, the layers of the society they live in, the vices that have become a habit and the youth's nightlife. The work environments and areas were varied. Going from video, installation, scraping, to linocut printed on blinds, manikin legs and other environments.

 The works flipped perfectly with the space in which they were exposed. In the first room, one meets the works of the artists Codrin Sodea, Adela Aldea, Anca Vatavu, Alexandra Vasilescu, Sorina Crişan, Lucian Barbu and two students coming from Armenia - Manu Harutyunian and France - Anke Renaud. Ovidiu Dominici's works are placed in the next room, while Adina Constantin, Sebastian Ştefan and Dani Iuga exposed in the last room.

Codrin Șotea: the technique used by him is scraping. He wants to highlight people's negligence over ordinary things and at the same time the layers left by generations over the years.

Adela Aldea: she went to an introverted side where she chose to interpret her own colleagues in the exhibition, representing them on a chair, isolated, approaching their own personality, everything filtered through the artist’s personality.

Anca Vatavu: aimed at how tattoos evolved. Nowadays any young person can afford a tattoo. This becomes a” normal thing”. As support for her works, she used some life-sized mannequins, which she etched with a cold needle - a tattoo needle - imitating the true cold-needle tattoo technique.

Alexandra Vasilescu: recontextualizes the texts written in the bathrooms of the Cluj-Napoca clubs. These are now to be found on postcards. Thus, the destination of messages in clubs changes altogether. As a medium, she used offsets.

Sorina Crişan: refers to the man-made subcultures and how they affect certain social classes. She used the linocut technique printed on PVC blinds. If closed, the face of Florin Salam (the singer of “manele”/ those low-quality Oriental-like songs) is depicted; if open, the face would be lost.

Lucian Barbu: brings a critique of the nocturnal community of Cluj through a throne of beer bottles with satirical labels made in the silkscreen technique. 

Manu Harutyunian: shows us the nightlife seen through Renaissance filters. Hands from Renaissance in today's nightlife, with electro music and club lights. Technique: lithography.

Anke Renaud: since the 20’s but mostly from the ’70s, the disco ball has been an important element of night clubs. Technique: silkscreen.

Ovidiu Comanici: there are three mediums at play, simulating a teaching environment through a video tutorial, an instruction book and printed plywood with the steps to follow. Ovidiu gives directions for tap dance.

Adina Constantin: she presents another view of the world, more precisely through the eyes of a cat. Assembling a go-pro camera on the cat, the artist transposed into an animation what the cat sees with its eyes. As a result, she got a series of offsetting with the cat in the form of Polaroid pictures.

Sebastian Ştefan: he wants to show through a linocut the agitation of the city and the way it transitions when you pass by the same place daily.

Dani Iuga: representing two Romanian personalities in vogue in the early 2000s, the artist made two clay busts in a degradation process. The irreversible transformation produced by contemporaneity is represented on the faces of these characters

The exhibition features just a small part of the world we live in as seen by these young and talented artists.  Agitation, introversion, irony, criticism, vices are just a few themes they deal with.

 The curators, Oana Dico and Sînziana Stănese, have successfully modelled these works in the exhibition space, getting positive feedback regarding the exhibition.