New Genres: October 2024

Kinetic sculptures: "Touch me" by Horia Hudubeț

October 17, 2024 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

The Art Museum in Brașov (RO) invites the public to discover the exhibition "Touch me", a fascinating exploration of kinetic sculpture signed by contemporary artist Horia Hudubeț, a project curated by Andreea Pocol. The exhibition offers the public a unique interactive experience, allowing visitors to be directly involved in shaping the works, inviting them to become co-creators and explore deep themes of consciousness, self-knowledge and human connection.

The exhibition, open to the public from October 17 to November 10, 2024, invites visitors to become an active part of the artistic process, offering them the opportunity to interact directly with the works and influence their form and dynamics.

Horia Hudubet explores concepts that reflect the inner states of contemporary man, from emotional chaos and loss of control, to human connection and mental strength. Through this interactive approach, the exhibition proposes a deep reflection on personal identity and on the relationship between the individual and his inner reality. Visitors are encouraged to get involved physically and emotionally, experiencing a silent dialogue with the sculptures, in a space that oscillates between static and dynamic.

"Abyss"

Notes about the artist

Horia Hudubeț studied at the Faculty of Arts and Design of the Western University of Timișoara, the Sculpture Department, where he obtained a diploma of excellence. In 2007 he completed a master's degree in sculpture, and in 2011 he presented his doctoral thesis with the title "Kinetic Sculpture in Public Space".

The artist lives and works in Brașov, where since 2012 he is a sculpture teacher at the Vocational High School for Fine Arts "Hans-Mattis Teutsch". His artistic activity focuses on both kinetic, medium-sized and monumental sculpture as well as interactive installations, with solo exhibitions and international participations that reflect an ongoing concern for the interplay between art and movement.

"Confused"

Photo credits: Brașov Art Museum

art gallery

Aurelia Mihai: "Living Monuments" at Sector 1 Gallery in Bucharest

October 13, 2024 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage

Cooperativa FIR, with the support of AFCN, in partnership with The Goethe-Institut Bucharest and Sector 1 Gallery, presents "Monuments In Time” - LIVING MONUMENTS, a two-part exhibition focusing on the work of visual artist Aurelia Mihai.

The gallery invites the public to discover the artist's latest work, "Living Monuments" (I & II), 2024, that unfolds as a performance caught on camera, in which 15 people, different in origin, skin color, gender and age, come together as one body - the gallery informs.

"Known for works that combine visual and cinematic arts, Aurelia Mihai explores monuments, myths, cultural identity, migration and belonging. Sensitive to critical social issues, her videos and films foreground a notion of humanity in a broad sense. Her body of work includes video, photographic and performative interventions with historical and social references, combining scientific findings with subjective memories and creative processes, often responding to the current global context" - curator Cristina Bută.

LIVING MONUMENTS presents the artist's latest work, the 4-channel installation Living Monuments I & II (2023-ongoing), taking over the gallery's generous space. "Situated between performance and film, the installation reflects on the invisible connections between people and places by staging these "living monuments" in the urban environment. A visual metaphor of humanity in the form of a living organism, Living Monuments unfolds as a performance caught on camera, in which 15 people, different in origin, skin color, gender and age, come together as one body" - states the curator.

The project "Monuments in Time" includes alongside the exhibitions a series of discussions and presentations with guest curators and artists, between September-November, at Goethe-Institut Bucharest.

The events program begun on September 3rd, 7 pm, with an artist talk by Aurelia Mihai, in dialogue with curator Cristina Bută, held at the Goethe Pavilion.

Notes on the artist's biography and activity

Aurelia Mihai (b. 1968, Bucharest, Romania) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Hamburg. She studied at the National University of Arts in Bucharest and later at the Academy of Visual Arts in Düsseldorf and the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. Between 2009 and 2021 she was a professor at the University of the Arts in Braunschweig. Aurelia Mihai has received numerous awards and scholarships throughout her career, including Villa Aurora (Los Angeles), the German Academy Villa Massimo (Rome), and grants from IASPIS Stockholm and Stiftung Kunstfonds.

Her films and video works have been presented in international exhibitions, including at The Chelsea Museum of Art, New York, Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, Tennessee, USA, Museum Ludwig Köln, K21 Düsseldorf, "The Worldly House", Documenta 13, Kassel, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany, Cobra Museum Amstelveen, Netherlands, Palace of the Arts in Naples, Italy, MACRO - (Contemporary Art Museum Roma), Kunsthalle Salzburg at the Salzburg Museum, Austria, MOCAK, Krakow, Poland, Kaunas Pinakothek Lituania, BIENALSUR, Cordoba, Argentina, Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, Centre Pompidou, les Abattoirs, Frac Occitanie Toulouse Museum, France, The National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) Bucharest, Romania, Periferic 8, Contemporary Art Biennial, Iași, Romania, Timișoara European Capital of Culture 2023, Romania, TRIADE Founadtion, and important festivals and cultural institutions among which "Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin" at Louvre Auditorium (Paris), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), DaKino International Film Festival (Bucharest), and the FIFA International Art Film Festival (Montréal).

About the curator

Cristina Bută (b. 1992, Timișoara) is a contemporary art curator and writer with an interest for topics of decolonization. She has been a curator in training at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, where she worked on the solo shows of Maria Lassnig and Walid Raad (AICA Prize 2020), a co-curator of the 5th edition of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara (2023), My Rhino Is Not A Myth. Art science fictions and the curator of many solo and group exhibitions. She is based in Bucharest, working on projects in collaboration with artists, galleries and cultural institutions.

"Monuments in Time" is a project organized by Cooperativa FIR and co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund - AFCN.

Partners: Goethe Institut Bucharest, Galeria Sector 1

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Photos & info: Sector 1 Gallery

Argentinian Art

Alex Goldschwartz: the perfect communion of baroque and pop

October 10, 2024 | nadiaevangelina

Alex Goldschwartz's exhibition “Venus is the Promised Land” at PalermoH Gallery highlights a bold blend of styles that fuses the baroque with pop, creating a unique visual language. Through this fusion, Goldschwartz builds a dialogue between the monumental, exuberant, and ornate of the baroque with the vibrant and accessible aesthetics of pop art, generating an attractive tension between the ancient and the modern.

The proposal invites us on a reflective and, simultaneously, expansive journey toward the representation of the body and its landscapes, framed in a critique of the myths of beauty and fertility associated with the female figure. From the title, Goldschwartz establishes a provocative parallelism between Venus, the classical deity of beauty, and the earth, in its most literal and symbolic sense, as a space of creation, transformation, and struggle.

Upon entering, the visitor encounters large canvases dominated by warm tones and dense textures, combining abstract forms and recognizable fragments of human anatomy. The baroque is manifested in the visual saturation that dominates the room. The female bodies, often in contorted poses or overloaded with ornaments, seem to evoke sacred or mythological figures, but always from a contemporary and provocative perspective. The use of a palette of deep golds and reds in many works reinforces this association with the baroque, evoking a sense of opulence and historical weight.

However, this visual density is balanced and contrasted with distinctly pop elements. The use of neon and synthetic textures, combined with the dramatic compositions and themes of corporeality and female fertility, creates a visual clash that not only celebrates excess but reinterprets it in a contemporary light.

One of the most interesting aspects of Goldschwartz's work is the way she reinterprets female bodies, which seem at once deities and earthly beings, deeply connected to the ground, as if suggesting that the true paradise, the true promise of life, is in the earth itself and not in an unattainable ideal. These bodies, far from standardized canons of beauty, are scarred, incomplete, and often distorted, revealing an incisive critique of contemporary pressures on corporeality.

In short, Venus is the Promised Land not only invites reflection on the body and nature from a female perspective but also questions how these themes relate to myth and the promise of the unattainable. Goldschwartz offers a raw and poetic vision that reminds us that paradise may be closer than we think.