Garden of Forking Paths brought together - at Sector 1 Gallery, Bucharest, Romania - 13 emerging artists belonging to a newer generation, working across different regions in Romania, and the Republic of Moldova. 

In their practices, intimacy, memory, spatiality, social critique and humour play an important role. Engaging in different explorations and instances of emotion translated through various mediums, these artists involve affect in their universe of creation.  

Drawing its title from the short story “The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges, the exhibition proposes to explore the many-worlds in their body of work tapping into a miscellaneous network of approaches and references ranging from popular culture to medieval history, AI or the subconscious. In each of their “gardens”, a particular story is told, from a different perspective, mapping trajectories of inquiry into conventionality and contesting the particular way in which systems of perception come to being.

Curated by:
Cristina Buta (@crissbuta) & Norbert Filep (@norbertfilep)

Artists:
Vlad Albu, Alexandra Boaru, Maria Brinet, Celina Cordos, Matei Emanuel, Dimitrie Luca Gora, Maria Gutu, Darius Iova, Andrei Ispas, Andrei Nutu, Raluca Pavelescu, Mihail Sarpe, Ana Maria Szollosi

Incorporating Suprematist or Constructivist influences, her practice also draws inspiration from religion, tradition or myths. Arantxa Etcheverria (born in 1975, France) lives and works in Bucharest and in France.

Ph: AURA Photo

The title “Jajan't”, inspired by a meme, synthesizes the essence of the show: that which should make you laugh but doesn't quite make you laugh. This ambiguous tone is reflected in the sculptures, representing bodies in tension and bewilderment states. From a dog with Crocs to migraine heads, Castro's works evoke images of contemporary culture and reconfigure the materiality of banal objects such as wicker canes, small commercial shelves, floral sponges, and rubber bands. These elements, commonly found in supermarkets or hardware stores, are combined with traditional art materials, creating a crossover that is key to Castro's work.

The artist transforms these objects to generate images far removed from their origin, bordering on the absurd and evoking both collage and assemblage techniques. During this creative process, the precarious becomes essential. This strategy is particularly evident in a sculpture representing a body that stumbles and falls. Here, the elements seem to crumble while maintaining their integrity, a metaphor for the fragile balance that defines the human experience.

One of the most striking pieces is a totem pole that appears to be preoccupied. Constructed from commercial shelving and ribbons, this assemblage generates an unexpected connection between the human body and inanimate objects. The work questions how our existence is trapped in the dynamics of accumulation and consumption, suggesting a parallel between the absurdity of materials and the absurd repetition of our routines. Along with the rest of the pieces, Castro's works take references from contemporary culture, from TV series to memes and stickers circulating on the internet, addressing themes such as physical pain, discomfort, and humor.

Curator Carla Barbero allows the works to unfold without any explicit dialogue with other artistic references, which strengthens the autonomy of Castro's visual and conceptual universe. Jajan't does not seek to please, but to provoke. From uncomfortable humor to the aesthetics of waste, the exhibition is an exercise in confronting our own contradictions. It is an invitation to rethink how we perceive the banal, transforming the everyday into a space for astonishment and criticism. A proposal that, far from simplifying, delves into the complexity of the human through the seemingly trivial.

"A highly versatile artist whose works effortlessly glide among different artistic expressions, materials, techniques and references, Gyárfás Oláh’s oeuvre consists of carefully built sculptures and installations. Taking as starting point the process of creation within a certain material -be it hemp, recycled fibers, self-made clay, wood, or a combination of all the above, the artist challenges us to explore a transitional space between different worlds. 

We invite you to come discover the newest body of work by the artist, a fascinating universe consisting of carefully built sculptures and installations in a variety of materials and experimental techniques" - states curator Cristina Bută.

Gyárfás Oláh is a visual artist from Tușnad, Harghita county RO, mainly working with organic materials. His archaic, hybrid sculptures open up a transitional space between different worlds, societies and eras. He is also inspired by his background in fashion design, which is reflected in some of his works evoking garments or utilizing recycled fibers from the fashion industry. 

Besides using old textiles to (re)create ghosts from the past or mythology, he creates his own composites and experiments with form and representation. Referencing a variety of resources, from traditions, myths, classical art or Japanese culture, his works possess the quality of appealing to the collective imagination.

The exhibition Gyárfás Oláh: Vertical Expression of Horizontal Desire is open until 14 December, Tuesday to Saturday, from 2 -7 pm, at Sector 1 Gallery, Bucharest.

The aim of  “UNAGE IASI ART RESIDENCY” is to create various and complex events in Iasi, a cultural town with a lots of inspiration sources, to meet the students from “George Enescu” National University of Arts and the local artists, in order to exchange ideas and share experiences with them as for a future possible collaboration - the project team informs.

The artists-in-residence (Colectivo Cherani) worked in the studios of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Design, together with other students of the university. They also had access to the library of the art faculty, for computers and art books.

The artists had totally freedom to take their time while creating the art projects. Later, their art will be exhibited in Aparte Gallery which belongs to the Faculty of Fine Arts and Design, or in another local gallery.

The project consisted in a collaboration of resident Mexican artists: Francisco Huaroco Rosas, Giovanni Fabián, Josue Alonso (Colectivo Cherani) with the students of Painting, Fine Arts and Sculpture specializations, from the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design in Iasi. The artists carried out their project within the artistic residency program "U.N.A.G.E. Iasi Art Residency'', with the support of the Painting Specialization and implicitly the Painting Research Center - Contemporary Visual Practices belonging to the Painting Department.

The result was an artistic installation with colored balloons, filled with hot air and launched into the air at the end. The installation project consisted in making Chinese paper balloons of various models, colors and sizes. It was an interactive, interesting and useful collaboration that was well documented, to be published in a catalog.

This collaboration was possible following the conclusion of an Erasmus+ partnership agreement between the "George Enescu" National University of Arts from Iasi and the cultural association "La Coyotera Taller Estudio" from Mexico.

Piranesi is the unavoidable precedent when it comes to prison architecture. But his were monumental prisons, in the spirit of the Settecento: phantasmagoric prisons, where the pictorial dramatism of the image was accentuated with full blacks that evoked the function of confinement. Piranesi's prisons were social, but Horacio Zabala's are individual cells: for artists intellectuals, and opponents in general: “My prisons tried to solve in advance the problem of building prisons for those who opposed him. And I put on paper the most atrocious ones I could think of: there were subway prisons, floating, elevated on columns, etc.,” the artist explained with irony.

Zabala's prisons are part of a long series of individual prisons that he began to create in 1972. The blueprints include various types of prisons, but in all of them, he used strictly architectural language to give them verisimilitude, so that the world can easily recognize them. It was an obsessive project and one that he pursued for quite some time. Later, Zabala created other metaphorical prisons. For example, the idea that paper or language are prisons. “Violence always seemed to me an art theme, it always attracted me. It is part of the human being, like tenderness or love,” the artist expanded. As for the prison metaphor, it makes us think of the need for isolation and silence to concentrate, as did the artist. There one is free: it is a contradiction, but a fruitful one. The form is seen as a prison and at the same time, the artist can move with full awareness and, in his way, with complete freedom within those limits.

The prisons projected by Zabala in the early seventies are works against violence and in a way, they not only speak of Argentine history but also anticipate the political violence that would follow soon after in the country and the rest of Latin America. Andrés Duprat, director of the MNBA, in the introductory text, states about the works of both artists that “in the extensive temporal arc that goes from modernity to contemporaneity, both seem to trace a perfect circle, a tale of the past, present and future hells to which the human condition can be subjected”.

In times when power in Argentina is exercised violently and inhumanly, the exhibition is in direct conflict with what all citizens are living, where there is little freedom.