"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.

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.