European Night of Museums, artnews by Alexandra Chartin, 1st year ITA

The European Night of Museums took place this year on the 18th of May. Twenty cultural institutions kept their doors open until midnight, allowing the public free entry in an effort to raise awareness about the museum and its activities. The European Night of Museums takes place every year around the world.

One of the main locations was the Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca, institution which first opened its doors in 1956,  and since then has attracted the public with its vast collection, notably on the Romanian art of the last century.

The public got to roam inside the multiple salons and exhibitions, soaking in the culture of the last centuries and assisting to artistic moments performed by the choreography section at „Gh. Dima” Arts and Music Highschool. Collaborations between the Art Museum and the History of Arts section of The University of Art and Design (UAD) offered a complete experience to the public, from carefully edited texts based on the artworks presented, accompanied by videos in which the students reimagined the famous paintings, to activities involving both students and children, aimed to educate the younger generation about museums and art. The night’s program attracted over 20.000 people, including families, students and famous personalities of the Cluj artistic scene.

The evening was a true success, especially for the History of Art students, who learned first-hand what organizing an event of such proportions  really means. All the preparation, work and sweat finally paid off when the first visitors entered, and watching the children’s reactions and excitement when learning about the artworks was the ultimate reward.

SUBstrat, artrnews by Laura Carpov-Hritac, 1st year, ITA

This year, the Art History and Theory students and those from the Graphics department at our university are organising exhibitions together. The first exhibition to mark this collaboration was SUBstrat. It took place at H33, a social hub in Cluj-Napoca, from 20 to 24 May. The title of the exhibition is a wordplay, highlighting the location choice and the theme of the artworks. The title literally translates as substrate. The capital letters in the title make up the Romanian word sub which translates as under. The location was a basement, with artworks depicting the under layers of the nowadays society.

The exhibition was curated by two BA students from the Department of Art History and Theory, Oana Dico and Sînziana Stănese. Those who exhibited at SUBstrat were twelve BA second-year students from the Graphics department: Adela Aldea, Lucian Barbu, Ovidiu Comanici, Adina Constantin, Sorina Crișan, Manu Harutyunian, Claudiu Daniel Iuga, Anke Renaud, Codrin Șotea, Sebastian Ștefan, Anca Vatavu and Alexandra Vasilescu.

The group of second-year Graphics department students put on display various works, from etchings to art installations. Colourful and witty, the artworks show the students’ creativity and skill, proving that they are not afraid to explore both new and traditional artistic mediums. The opening of SUBstrat was crowded with students from Cluj-Napoca University of Art and Design, who came to admire the artworks and congratulate their colleagues. 

The following exhibitions in collaboration are Tragedy in three acts, which will take place on May 28 at Tranzit House and Buy Nothing Day, between May 31 and June 5, hosted at H33. Tragedy in three acts will focus on the relationship between humans and nature, through the eyes of thirteen BA and MA students of the Graphics department. Buy Nothing Day will display works that criticize consumerism, made by second-year BA students of the mentioned department. The two exhibitions will also be curated by students of the second-year BA of the Art History and Theory Department.

The Museum of Never-made Photos, review by Ioana Trușcan, 2nd year ITA

The well-known and popular lilliputian art space on Str. Roosevelt 2/1, White Cuib, hosted last week the opening of a new exhibition. One that no one has ever seen before, and when I say “never seen” I mean it because it was actually about 13 photos that 13 photographers never made, but they wished to and their stories.  

Mircea Albutiu / Laura Bâlc / Nicu Cherciu / Tiberiu Crisan / Dorel Gaina / Cristian Ioan / Rares  Ion / Raed Krishan / Marius Mariș / Julius Paul / Roxana Petrean / Soós Attila / Loránd Vakarcs  invited the public to learn about undone works (how convenient for a deadline) with narrative  help from George Roșu’s illustrations.

As we approached the place, not long after 7 PM, on a Friday, the street in front of the gallery was already crowded, with Dorel Găină sitting in the middle of it, on a chair, almost as a part of the exhibition, with his statuary and movie character-like figure.

The visitors created a system of which 2 or 3 people entered the space, while 2 or 3 others left it so that everyone could get inside and read carefully each one of the 13 stories. Because they were real stories that one couldn’t understand just by watching the illustrations from a distance. In my opinion, this is by itself a nice way of relating to the artworks and the atmosphere. 
 
Once in there, in the middle of the exhibition, you tended to look first at the drawings, which are colourful and goofy, in the established playful manner of working developed by George Roșu. Once caught by the illustration, the eyes would go down on the text, revealing some of the most intimate and emotional moments of some photographers' lives. One of them, Marius Mariș chose for this topic a moment where he had the opportunity to catch a nice frame with people dancing while being at the Pata Rât concert hosted by Jazz in the Park last year. Seconds before shooting, a few little kids came to him and ask him to let them play with his camera. He then decided to let that shot go away and just share a joyful moment with the kids. Another one that stayed in my memory was made by Roxana Petrean that resembled a moment catching a ravishing rain and while the couple was just enjoying a picknick, under an umbrella, as if were the sunniest day. She took the photo, but not checking the if the exposure is correct, she missed the right light and atmosphere from which resulted in a boring photo with a couple sitting on the grass and nothing about the surrealist frame in rain. 

Besides these ones, two or three of them just made me recall those long nights before the deadline when you can’t get a really good idea and you just send something. I think in this case, the artists were not prepared or they did not dig enough down the memory lane. 

Thinking about the exhibition as a whole, it is certainly something to see. It’s something else, not painting, not sculpture, not abstract works, just a conceptual exhibition using storytelling as the main technique, visual or written, that addresses a very human and vulnerable side of creation. Something that everyone has experienced at least once in their lives, that something that could have been big, amazing, astonishing, but the timing was just wrong. 

The exhibition is open from 23th to 26th of May.  

Apparatus 22. To the reading room. We applied ourselves to mid-air visits.review by Cristina Ciulei, 2nd year, ITA

The exhibition was open for visits since the 19th of April until the 23rd of May at Lateral Artspace in Cluj-Napoca.

The team of artists behind it is known as Apparatus 22, an interdisciplinary art collective active since 2015. The members are Erika Olea, Maria Farcas and Dragos Olea. In their work, they explore the relationships between economy, politics, gender studies, social movements, religion and fashion, in order to understand contemporary art. 

The exhibition is composed of four works that were decomposed. This offers the possibility of a different approach towards understanding their meaning and acknowledging each piece for its respective contribution and importance.

The first one in line, “Still Life, M Series” (2016), is an  installation of three pieces of textile with a floral motif, on which text is written that depicts still life images composed of luxury feminine items from the 20s and 30s. The texts are painted on using flourescent paint. Every element of this work suggests  luxury, playfulness and desire.

The second one, “Disco Punch I” (2014), is dedicated to the late Ioana Nemes (1979 - 2011), a former member of Apparatus 22. The piece consists of a concrete rectangle decorated with a curtain of silver tinsel and in front of it is a fan moving continuously from left to right. Because of this, the piece is constantly sculpted. The entire installation is a antithesis between surface and depth, movement and stillness, exuberance and severity, attention and inaccessibility.

The third one, “Above and Beyond” (2019) is once again, as we have seen in “M Series”, an  installation of three pieces of textile with images of the ruins of the rediscovered Pompei, on which text is written that depicts images of underground party scenes in Iran (70s), Romania (80s) and London or New York City (90s) as the symbol of the fight against the oppressive dominant. In the original arrangement of the work, there was positioned semi-transparent red foil  in front of the pieces as a symbol of censorship.

The final piece of the exhibition, “Sky Naive I it begs a Question” (2017), is composed of three raincoats that were part of a performance in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Once again, they all have text written on them. On those particular ones have written  on them messages of empowerment, symbolizing protection from the influence of advertising.

Each work of art has written text that is a crucial element of the strong, loud and, ironically, visual message. The exhibition gives out a feeling of empowerment, playfulness and individuality. It is also a very elegant combination of poetry and visual representation.  I found the duality daring but at the same time refreshing.

Apparatus 22 - To the reading room. We applied ourselves to mid-air visits, review by Alexandra Crăciun / ITA / II

How can you make and unmake an artwork, how do you give it an obvious interpretation while leaving room for everybody else to interpret it as well? The artists from the Apparatus 22 group show us how.
 On Thursday, the 18th of April was the opening of the exhibition “To the reading room. We applied ourselves to mid-air visits” at Lateral ArtSpace, opening I attended.  The artworks were made by Apparatus 22, a transdisciplinary art collective that explores the relationship between economy, politics, gender studies, social movements, religion, and fashion in order to understand contemporary society. The first thing you notice is the arrangement of the room. Four walls, four artworks,               with the fourth one being hung from the ceiling instead of being placed in front of the windowed wall.  An interesting fact about the artworks on display is that they are a deconstructed version of the original ones. The pieces were first presented in places such as Venezia, Brussels and Bucharest, while for this exhibition, only a few were selected.  We know of the artworks that they are ten in total, meant to be reinterpreted by the artist, the rest of the team, and lastly, the viewer. The exhibition is both a dedication to Ioana Nemeș, member of the Apparatus 22 group, alongside Erika Olea, Maria  Farcaș and Dragon Olea, as well as a way to connect with the society by letting others reinterpret the deconstructed artworks.  The multitude of notes surrounding each and every art piece show that they have been put through the process of dissection many times before, each time getting put back together in more and more diverse ways. While carefully arranged, they give off an air of disorganised order, and people who visit the exhibit are invited to contribute to the already-existent notes.  As for the artworks themselves, they are 4 in total, the M series, Disco Punch, Above and Beyond and Sky Naive | It Begs a Question.

The M series (Speculative Still Life) is an installation made of three pieces of floral textile, on which the artist wrote short texts describing a still life with luxurious objects: cars, perfumes, jewellery. The three pieces of textile are accompanied by three neons and, in perfect darkness, only the words can be read.  DISCO PUNCH is an installation dedicated to Ioana Nemeș, who passed away in  2011, and it is made of a concrete block on which the word ‘WORDS’is printed three times, covered by a tinsel curtain and in front of whom is an oscillating standing fan.   The artwork is a study in dualities and the understanding of languages.  The ABOVE AND BEYOND installation is made of three poster-sized textiles with    poems written in acrylic that presented an overview of the quiet revolutions:how the people dealt with life in Iran in the ‘70s, life in Romania in the ‘80s and life in    London in the ‘90s, with words describing those times: girls in short skirts and   makeup, parties that got shut down by curfew, STDs and illnesses. It is a religious experience, a way for people to escape the oppressive regimes and to find others like them to give them hope. The last artwork I saw was SkyNaive, consisting of three rain ponchos hung from the ceiling, part of a performance in the Netherlands, in which the artists gave away100  of them to people. On the back of the ponchos were written aggressive messages protesting advertising - a double protection: from the rain, and from the media.

 In conclusion, the exhibition represents something akin to a dictionary. Where in a  dictionary, the words are broken down into definitions for people to better understand them, in this exhibition, the artworks allow the same process. It is up to us, the  viewers, to see, interpret and comprehend the artwork by rebuilding it inside our mind. 

Apparatus 22 - To the reading room. We applied ourselves to mid-air visits, review by Angelica Ungurean, 2nd year ITA

      How do you make an artwork better? You deconstruct it.

      On Thursday, April 18th was the opening of the exhibition “To the reading room. We applied ourselves to mid-air visits” at Lateral ArtSpace, part of the Paintbrush Factory federation.

      The exhibition is made by Apparatus 22, a transdisciplinary art collective that explores the relationship between economy, politics, gender studies, social movements, religion and fashion in order to understand contemporary society.

      As you enter the exhibition, the first thing you notice is the color of the walls. It is not a white cube or black box, the type of exhibition room we are used to. Instead, it is a pale grey room, which offers a perfectly neutral, blank slate for all the artworks presented. The room is arranged in such a way that each wall has an artwork on display, with the fourth one taking up a part of the room itself. The first impression as you walk in is of organised chaos or a chaotic order.

      The way they are shown today is not the way they were made at first. The pieces were first presented in places such as Venezia, Brussels and Bucharest, while for this exhibition, only a few were selected and deconstructed.

      By reading the exhibition text, we find out about the artworks: ‘Ten in total, they are physically anchored (except one shimmering like a lone star), silent (except one sculpting sounds with air just as rumors do), arranged in four genres (one having subgenres too). Each inscribed with quintessential thoughts.’

      The exhibition is both a dedication to Ioana Nemeș, member of the Apparatus 22 group, alongside Erika Olea, Maria Farcaș and Dragon Olea, who passed away in 2011, as well as a way to connect with the society by letting others reinterpret the deconstructed artworks.

      The multitude of notes surrounding each and every art piece are proof that the processes of dissection have been performed before. While carefully arranged, they give off an air of hard work and chaos at the same time, and people who visit the exhibit are invited to contribute to the already-existent notes.

      As for the artworks themselves, they are 4 in total, the M series, Disco Punch, Above and Beyond and Sky Naive | It Begs a Question.

      The M series (Speculative Still Life) is a modern take on the traditional subject, in which the artist painted words with neon paint describing elements that would belong in a contemporary still life. The three pieces of textile printed with roses are accompanied by three neons and in perfect darkness, only the words can be read.

      DISCO PUNCH is an installation dedicated to Ioana Nemeș, and it is made of a concrete block on which the word ‘WORDS’ is printed three times, covered by a tinsel curtain and in front of whom is an oscillating standing fan. The artwork is interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is the antithesis between static and movement, between dull and fun, between solid (the concrete) and fluid (the air moving the tinsel aside).

      The second reason is the fact that, if you say the word ‘WORDS’ over and over again, you end up saying ‘SWORDS’, a modern take, in my opinion, on the old saying ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’ It is up to the viewer whether he picks one or the other.

      Another artwork presented at the exhibition was the ABOVE AND BEYOND installation, made of three poster-sized textiles with poems written in acrylic that presented an overview of life in Iran in the ‘70s, life in Romania in the ‘80s and life in London in the ‘90s, with the specific imagery of those times. It is an overview of the peoples’ escape through clubbing.

      The last artwork one sees in the exhibition space is Sky Naive, three rain ponchos hung from the ceiling, part of a performance in the Netherlands, in which the artists gave away 100 of them to people. The ponchos were adorned with messages protesting advertising, which gave a double protection: from the rain, and from the ads that plague contemporary society.

      In my opinion, the exhibition is a very smart take on the idea of organised chaos, the way people understand contemporary art and the society in which we live, while at the same time leaving room for interpretation. Anyone who comes in can have a different take on the artworks, and chances are, they are right.

“TRAGEDY IN THREE ACTS” Graphics Exhibition: Art Review by Reka Lapohos, 2nd year Conservation

            The BA and MA students of the Department of Graphics at the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca had an exhibition on Tuesday, 28th of May, 17:30, at Tranzit House.
 A "Tragedy in three acts" about the relation between human and nature in the contemporary world, as understood and imagined by: Andreea Hoha, Flavia Chicin, Lőrincz Tímea, Petra Barta, Erdély Bálint, Adriana Mihaela Pop, Cătălin Tăvală, Laura Trăilă, Zsófia Bernát, Biborka Fejer, Vass Kamilla, Ioana Turcu, Moldovan Time, also featuring the BA students of the Department of Art History of the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca: Ioana Trușcan and Cristina-Iulia Ciulei. The exhibition was open between 28-29th of May.
            These 13 artists created an ecosystem of images and symbols, where every artwork is a milestone from the path Nature-Human intervention-The end. Personal micro-narratives: own fears, nightmares and worries are a part of the “Tragedy” where the characters-artists are faced with a superior force: the degradation of the environment in inevitable relationship with the degradation of their own body and psychic.
            The artists used many different techniques: colography, linocut, aquaforte, aquatint, serigraph, cold needle, mezzotint, indigo, monotype and mixed.
            The title is a reflection on the “Three Act Tragedy” which is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie. When the visitor of the exhibition faces this title s/he might think that the exhibition is about something frightening. This expectation is not fully completed by the artworks, because only some of them represent the tragedy (ex. Changes- Bernát Zsófia, The end of the road- Erdély Bálint, Overturned- Cătălin Tăvală)
            From the effects that our actions have on the future, such as the fragility of an aluminium sheet that is not applicated with the right pressure, to the seduction of ideological currents that do not keep up with the real challenges. From the renunciation of the ego to the reorientation of the discourse to a cause, to the reflections on its own degradation. We pass through a multitude of forms and expressions and adaptations of techniques, in fact, a number of coping mechanisms that each alert person develops in what happens to the environment. The open question is how we assemble the mechanisms so that they act as a blasting system,  not just suffocate, which create, not only destroy. 

            There were two works of art that seemed to be the most interesting for the receivers:

                The first one is the Labyrinth, Ravaged by Adriana Mihaela Pop, which was created in cold needle and mezzotint techniques. The Labyrinth gave the people the opportunity to get involved and be a part of the creation by the action of scratching down all the things they want to change in the world presented by the artist. This was only an illusion because in a short time all the vanished parts got back to the original.
In half an hour the artwork got vandalized with a key and was damaged permanently.                                                  

    Labyrinth, Ravaged
           

             The other interesting artwork was “I also give up the title” by Laura Trăila. Through this installation, the artist attempts to take the first step towards giving up the ego (at least artistically), destroying the multiplication plate without printing it for the audience. In addition to the actual destruction of the work, any option of archiving this facility will be avoided. The public has access to a private moment of reflection. The content of the work is linked to the stories of the martyrs who have been martyred by decapitation, who then lifted their heads and continued to walk and preach, in the same way that this work would take the message further after it melted. The used techniques are mixed.
            I also give up the title

            Every artist had a unique style and a different way to create. Some of them made installations from different materials like wax or T-shirts, combined with the graphic techniques mentioned before. The common point was the path itself: Nature-Human intervention-The end. This made the experience whole.