UNAgaleria

Opening: Thursday, 16 October 19h00

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

16-31 October 2008

Artists: Lavinia German, Alex Grigoras, Bogdan Vatavu/ Andrea Hajtajer/ Dumitru Oboroc/ Mihai Verestiuc

Curator: Cristian Nae

A project run by the Studio for art practices and debates (coordinated by Catalin Gheorghe & Cristian Nae)

Assuming a puzzling impossibility of recording recent history, the exhibition takes as a starting point the erosion of the historical speech inscribed within public icons and effigies, constituted at the crossroad of fragmentary narratives and empty rhetorical speeches which legitimate them, denying the possibility of their solid coagulation. They facilitate critical numbness and constantly reproduce forgeries of public values seemingly erected overnight.

Playfully mimicking the masks of borrowed formal identities, the works in the show assume the possibility of exercising criticism by temporary appropriation, simulation and redistribution of conventional signs of power. Their common discursive practice lies in reinterpreting “monumentality” as sculptural embodiment of transience, imprecision and contingency. They stimulate conflicting aesthetics and critically use their symbolic potentiality. Ironically approached in its political and ideological function, the monument, understood as the name of the economy of public values and sign of persistence and durability, is transformed into a performative element of the proposed scenario, being often twisted on the verge of critical parody.

Referring in particular to the expectancies towards the stakes of contemporary public sculpture, the exhibition’s discourse aims to perform a temporary artistic intervention on the socio-political Romanian present-day representations, by constantly theatrically staging their own situation, caught between uncertain future projections, ideological heritage and blurred present-day public identities. (Cristian Nae)

The studio for art practices and debates is an educational platform for critical research and art production run by Vector Association in collaboration with the Research Center organized within the Faculty of Fine Arts, Decorative Arts and Design, Iasi.