Bartha József / Lost Paradise April 29-May 25 2022 White Cuib, Cluj Napoca, Romania Lost Paradise, installation, 2021, a review by Miruna Dragusanu, 2nd year, ITA

 

White Cuib Gallery in Cluj Napoca is hosting the Lost Paradise exhibition of Bartha József between April 29 to May 25. The project Lost Paradise and personal experiences working with pulses opposite the current state of society, the concentration of powers in it and limit the autonomy and capacity of the individual / community.  Factors contributing to this social disillusionment are found in political apathy, characteristic of the period, the failure promise in capturing the phenomenon of critics of capitalism, unable to think in any other system.

 In these works, criticism feature highly energetic artist József Bartha turns, getting a personal and reflective tone, giving rise to an emotional and poetic high sensitivity within materiality.

The so called "cocktails" elegant aestheticism is actually built on the ruins of activity (true agency) and the possibility of any change actions, stopping the system.  However, it appears the reason of bourgeois nostalgia for a lost world.

The installation is joined by another work that starts from the same basic emotions: melancholy almost resonates with the inaccessibility to the changes and social objectives.  Ophthalmic anchor panels in position regarding the artist, observer, "read" the signs society, emphasizing passivity, but at the same time embodied experience (embodied) of this position. 

What is so Paradise, or ideal state of society?  It might be a situation where we have reason to hope or reason to revolt?  Or it when it is clear and obvious what to do, you do not have to choose between thousands of possibilities are actually broadly similar? 

Personally, I enjoyed very much the fact that all of the glass bottles that were used to make the "cocktail" were very different between them. There were not two or more bottles that looked the same. Each one of them had a unique form, shape, size and even different color of liquid in it. The bottles were very old and made you think about grandmother's glass cabinets full with ceramic animals and glass bottles shaped just like those in the exhibition. So the exhibition can also give the feeling of thinking to the loved ones that maybe are not with us anymore.

I think the exhibition even if confined to a small place, was very intense and complex and well-structured, and I consider it my favorite at the moment. To conclude, I think this exhibition was that kind that you could photograph from every corner/perspective and it would still look amazing in every picture. Like, you cannot take a bad photograph of these beautiful shiny glass bottles.

More info about the artist: József Bartha (1960) lives and works in Targu Mures is a visual artist, designer, curator, lecturer at the University of Arts in Targu Mures.  It is the initiator and organizer of several national and  international projects of contemporary art.  He is also founder and president of the Foundation ARTeast and contemporary art space B5 Studio in Tg.  Mures.  Studies at the Institute of Fine Arts in Cluj (1987) and the University of Arts in Budapest (DLA 2012).  In 1996 he won a scholarship ArtsLink in the USA, and in 2005 received a grant from Boswell Art Committee in Switzerland.  József Bartha's conceptual works include installations, video installations and artistic interventions.  He had personal exhibitions in Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech Republic and USA.  He participated in many group exhibitions at home and abroad.

 As a designer, since 1992 collaborator of director László Bocsárdi, also worked with other directors, as Radu Afrim, Sardar Tagirovsky Olga Barabás or Alexandru Dabija.  In addition to several national and international awards for set design in 2014 won UNITER award for best set design. 

Lia & Dan Perjovschi - Ongoing, a review by Alma-Brita Cristea, 2nd year History and Theory of Art

Lia and Dan Perjovschi are very well known in the Romanian art community for their various types of art but only a few people have the chance to go beyond the art, to get to the process and their imaginative world. The exhibition Ongoing (în desfășurare)  that took place at Tranzit Foundation in Cluj-Napoca from the 29th of March until the 14th of May of the current year was just that, a chance to get familiar with the creative process and spaces of Lia and Dan Perjovschi. 

The exhibit also called an open workshop, showcases very different pieces from projects like Sense (Sens), Museum of Knowledge (Muzeul cunoașterii), different drawings by Dan Perjovschi, booklets that sum up some of his pandemic works, t-shirts, umbrellas, random inspiration pieces, books by the artists or with their contribution or just some of the ones that inspire them and even parts of their tv show that they had years ago. 

Just from the start, the show, open workshop, or exhibition doesn’t look like your average exhibition. Because it’s not an average one. But don’t get fooled by the apparent simplicity of the display of art, books, shelves, and clothing racks. This kind of display needs the involvement of the viewer, a viewer that loses its passive role and has to become a researcher, to be curious, dig through the papers, search for something meaningful to his experience, and to discover an inside world of two extremely passionate and creative people.

The works are not chosen, nicely displayed on the walls, or actively happening but as a participant, you get to skim through books, exhibition booklets, self-made collections of newspaper clippings with the specific drawings over them, racks that have xerox-copied books, and handwritten notes and seemingly useless ore non-art-related objects on them. It is as if you entered somebody’s personal mind. And it is at the same time freeing and your task to find meaning, to understand what lies behind some witty, almost comic-like drawings. Coming from a background of limited knowledge, spending a significant chunk of time in that room with all the art-infused objects I could learn about motivates the artists, what preoccupies them, which issues they criticize, and how they regard politics. 

Everything around felt full of meaning, and even if as a mere visitor you could never get to the level of closeness to the artists that you can understand everything you get close enough to feel their powerful presence, their message as artists, their indirect message about art, it’s role, politics, community and the sheer volume of information that Lia and Dan Perjovschi hold and try to embody in their works of art. 

Ongoing (în desfășurare) is not a controversial or eye-pleasing type of exhibition. It is an experience you have to be willing to take an active role in, to be curious, open-minded, willing to take a seat at a desk and skim through the notes, ideas, and pages and understand things beyond the image as drawing, performance and their image as artists. It’s about the human connection and understanding of the mind of two great artists.

Ana Postolachi - "Refresh" exhibition (an exhibition review by 2nd year student Alba Raluca Maria, ITA department)

Paul Sima Gallery in Cluj Napoca is hosting between May 12th and 8th June an exhibition by the artist Ana Postolachi. The exhibition is curated by Sergiu Man, a young curator. The works of art are made by one student of the University of Arts and Design of Cluj Napoca. It is worth seeing because of the nature of the exhibition. It's about hybridized plants. She managed to show us the way she sees the vegetal world through her artist's eye. The paintings are stealing your eyes as soon as you enter the room.

What happens when imagination and nature are living together on the same canvas? The Artist discovers new creative exploration through color, composition, and intention.

Ana Postolachi is one of the artists who managed to unify the strong sensuality and nature's erotism in her very personal way.

The paintings are made on canvases of various sizes. Leaks and transparencies used by the artist, provide the flavor of the composition. They somehow look palpable because of the color she used. The selected color palette and pastel shades build the area of ​​the chromatic combination under the rule of a new reflection of observing the motif of hybridized flowers. 

The search for symbols and beauty has always been a point of interest for art. The "Refresh" exhibition highlights the theme of sexuality inspired by the plant world. Flowers are often associated with the female and male genitals through the very complexity and diversity of nature. In correlation with sexuality, nature acquires new valences and boundaries of visual observation through the prism of the human eye. The search for new visual sensations is distinguished by the duality of the flower as meaning. Eroticism, love, or death: the fineness of the flower can complete any image that man carries in his subconscious, as long as he is willing to observe and explore it incessantly.

Like portraits or interiors, floral motifs are part of the repertoire of art history. There are few subjects as complex and full of symbols as the history of the flower motif. Today the flower motif is becoming the base for new reflections and observations.

The title of the exhibition "Refresh", allows us to look at the painting with a fresh mind and soul. This introduces us to the world of plants in a powerful way. We get to see their sensuality and purity, just as Ana did.

"Refresh" is actually an exhibition I made something for. It was the very first time that I wrote a text for an exhibition. I saw my text all over the room and a lot of people were interested in reading it. I've even seen people gladly put the text in bags. It was a wonderful feeling for a young student who wishes to be a curator. 

It was the first time I collaborated with an artist and a curator to create a real exhibition. I love plants with all my heart and I am glad that my first experience of this kind involved them as well.

 

Digital Interactive Art Showcase – Group Show (Andrei Panghe, Anna Zhu, Andrei Boar, Cristina Pop-Tiron, Andreea Cristina Mircea, Toma Barbulescu, Jura Ruža), a review by Maria Rusu

Initiated by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and currently sponsored by the Council of Europe, UNESCO, and the International Council of Museums, the Night of the Museums is an internationally successful European event, now in its 18th edition. During this event, every museum or cultural institution opens its doors for a few hours in the late evening for people to visit. 

This year, Centrul de Interes was one of many cultural and artistic institutions from Cluj-Napoca that held an art exhibition during the Night of the Museums, which was opened only for that night. The group exhibition consisted of a selection of the best works made by the students from the Digital Interactive Arts, a master’s program from the Faculty of Theater and Film, Babes Bolyai University. Curated and coordinated by Cristina Pop-Tiron, together with the 2nd year DIA master students, the selected artists were: Andrei Panghe, Anna Zhu, Andrei Boar, Cristina Pop-Tiron & Andreea Cristina Mircea, Toma Barbulescu, and Jura Ruža. The exhibition included projects created by master students in the courses given by Klaus Obermaier and Cristina Pop-Tiron, two projects created in a workshop organized by Reactor de Creație și Experiment together with DIA, and two dissertation projects. 

Interactive art is a type of art that includes the audience in such a manner that it achieves its goal. Some interactive art installations do this by allowing the observer or visitor to "walk" through, on, and around them; others invite the artist or the audience to participate in the artwork. Interactive art installations are generally computer-based and frequently rely on sensors, which gauge things such as temperature, motion, proximity, and other meteorological phenomena that the maker has programmed in order to elicit responses based on participant action. In interactive artworks, both the audience and the machine work together in dialogue in order to produce a unique artwork for each audience to observe. However, not all observers visualize the same picture. Because it is interactive art, each observer makes their own interpretation of the artwork, and it may be completely different from another observer's views

The theme of the MA program from the Faculty of Theater and Film is an innovative, comprehensive, and multidisciplinary approach to new media art production, i.e. the creation and development of art projects using interaction in different ways: between artists and technology, artists and audience, works and exhibition space or simply between subject and visitor. The public is invited into a setting with various installations that invite introspection and reflection, which are achieved through interactivity.

Going up the stairs to the fourth floor of the venue, there was a lot of unintelligible noise coming from the exhibition itself. The dark hallway, where faces were not visible, and every person seemed to be just a silhouette, combined with the sounds of people screaming, singing, or laughing welcomed the visitors with a very peculiar, odd feeling. There were five rooms hosting one work each, and in between them, there was a considerable amount of empty space around for the centerpiece, a massive screen that had three microphones in front of it. This was Toma Barbulescu’s work, “The Howling Lights'', an audio-driven interactive installation that proposed a synesthetic exploration of the link between sound and image by using the human voice through a microphone linked to projected images, influenced by the characteristics of the voice in itself. The ambient in which the work was set, contributed to the performativity aspect of the installation.

The second sound-driven work was Anna Zhu’s video projection of a woman giving birth to a lot of babies and them being thrown on the floor like objects, called” The Birth striker”. Anna Zhu is actually illustrating a concerning question that a lot of women have, and that is ” What kind of mother would I be if I brought a baby into a world where I couldn’t make sure they were safe?” Also, this work suggests that many young people are reconsidering their personal life choices, including having children, as a result of climate change. At the same time, falling birth rates throughout the world represent a challenge to our current economic system, which is based on continuous financial expansion. These negative implications are still profoundly ingrained in our society's perception of women. Even if they live independently, women of a certain age who do not have children are harshly criticized. ”The Birth striker” is an interactive installation that highlights the irony of having children in today's world - a difficult and painful option for most young women.

Anna Zhu’s second installation was a motion-driven projection of an eye following your every move, called “The Witness''. This work brought the public into an introspective mood, letting them think about whether or not they are judging their every action themselves, not God or Karma, as many would believe. 

Andrei Boar (“Ki”) and Andrei Panghe (“Primavera”) approached a similar theme, and that is the eternal rebirth of the vegetation and the power of the human, or the public, to actually influence and manipulate nature through their actions, which include body or hand movements. Both of them had a plant-like subject projected in front of the viewer, a tree or a flower that grows, deteriorates, or burns.

“Body language” by Jura Ruža, a motion-driven video projection, was an experiment that tried to fragment the human body through the usage of space, image, and sound. A specific movement of the body dismembers its projection and initiates the innate bodily “noises”, like breathing, teeth-clenching, and vocalizing. Jura was interested in the idea of creating a spontaneous choreography while the unity of human senses is distorted and put into a new correlation. The subject’s motion, tempo, and position in space dictated the audio-visual representation of his/her body. 

Cristina Pop-Tiron and Andreea Cristina Mircea created a Motion-driven sculpture installation called ” An Error Occurred While Searching for an Update”, made from old T.V.s or monitors that were no longer or barely functional. Those monitors showed the person standing in front of it but in a very distorted way, while also increasing the volume of a very disturbing sound while coming closer to the installation. It shows the soul as an incompatible outdated software, an object that doesn’t exist anymore, a pile of slightly outdated elements.

Overall, this exhibition showcased the fact that the aesthetic impact of interactive art is more profound than expected. The space in which the exhibition took place was chosen wisely, it was a part of the experience. Also, the relationship between very human intrinsic values or defects suggested by the artists through their themes or subjects and the digital world which is the tool used in order to complete the work, and also the final artwork is very contrasting.

Contemporary Drawing Awards Crama Oprișor & University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca, Exhibition, a review by Daniel Muresan, History and Theory of Art, year 2

The Art Museum has a new art exhibition in which young artists exhibit their work. The exhibition will take place at the Art Museum in Cluj-Napoca. The exhibition can be visited until May 5, 2022.  The awarding ceremony takes place on the same date. The exhibiting artists are young people, some of them just high school graduates, most of them art students: Denisa Ceașcai, Tania Șimonca, Maximilian Pintea, Adrian Buda, and many others.

The exhibition was a beautiful one from my point of view. I could observe originality, beauty, spectacular works, contemporary works, and very good works. In my opinion, the exhibition is worth visiting and appreciating. The works are contemporary, with some inspiration from artists in the history of art. They are original, beautiful, impressive, fashionable, interesting, impressive, sensational, and pleasing to the eye.

The techniques are diverse: drawings in ink, pencil, charcoal, and pastel applied on different materials such as cardboard and paper.

Denisa Ceașcai's work titled Departures, 2022 (50 x 70 cm in ink, pastel, pencil, charcoal, see above) and Maximilian Pintea’s triptych ABC, 2021 (80 x 50 cm, printing ink on cardboard, see below)  are very good and impactful. So are  Tania Șimonca’s. Some of the exhibited works convey joy, others convey the state of meditation where the waves embrace you, others amaze you and who knows what other feelings they may trigger in the viewer. Come find out!

In conclusion, the exhibition gave me a sense of breath, pleasantly surprised me, encouraged me to discover more about art, and fascinated me. I am convinced that if you visit the exhibition, you will not be sorry. It is a true artistic event, a quality exhibition that needs a visit just like grandparents and parents need a visit, so the exhibition needs the public, it needs you. You are important to the exhibition. And if you need to refresh the wall that is empty in the house, you can buy as many works as you want.