The World According to… Constantin Flondor, Ioan Tugearu, Ion Grigorescu

The World According to…
3, 5, 6 October 2017, 10:00-13:00
series of workshops hosted by NEC – New Europe College
21 Plantelor St., Bucharest
access based on registration, events held in Romanian language

The Institute of the Present (IP) opens a series of workshops entitled The World According to…, a component of the Atlas of Personal Accounts project launched in 2017. Within the framework of these workshops, artistic intention is a key term for investigating and reading the vocabulary of artistic practices generated in a specific cultural context. Each workshop follows a script, a choreography of personal archives, carefully organised together with each of the artists around a number of themes or key concepts. The assumptions on which we rely depend on the profile of each artist, while the proposed approach is an attempt at transversely recreating a certain atmosphere and complicity among the various artistic disciplines and communities in the field of visual and performing arts. The laboratories will focus on the artist’s experiential and conceptual framework, revisiting from a new position and with a different set of tools the activity of artists such as Constantin Flondor, Ioan Tugearu, Ion Grigorescu. Each artist invited will receive the participants in his personal virtual workshop where he will make a presentation of his practice, themes and (un)realised projects, accompanied by collective screenings of video works or photographic documentation, and will sustain a question-and-answer session at the end. Each workshop has a duration of 3 hours and is open, based on registration, to a limited number of participants (maximum 15) — professionals and students in the field.

The World According to… Constantin Flondor
3 October 2017

Visibly distrustful of sheer subjectivity, the artistic practice of Constantin Flondor stands out through its internalisation of the structuralist lesson and its programmed experimentalism. The works between 1966 and 1982, corresponding to the 111 and Sigma moments, embody microcosms, microuniverses which adhere to a principle of order and systematic study of the world in which the artist breathes and contemplates. Starting from the important role ascribed to perception and to visual research, the artist proposes to explore the issues raised in his films I, You, Witness (1979) and DLMMJVSD (21.03.-28.03.1982) by revisiting his own research efforts, references, diary entries and lessons taught at the Timișoara Art Highschool that experimented with the study of perception, the analysis of the visual form in accordance with certain principles of Gestaltism and the apprehension of certain mysteries from our immediate universe (capturing the sky and the identity of weekdays).

CONSTANTIN FLONDOR was born in 1936 in Cernăuți and lives and works in Timișoara. The strongly interdisciplinary nature of his activity, the new type of objectivity he investigated and his experiments in the field of visual education have significantly changed the manner in which the artistic process and knowledge are understood. He is a founding member of 111 (1966–1969) and Sigma (1969–1978), interdisciplinary artistic groups – and landmark moments in the history of Romanian Neo-avantgarde – that were particularly interested in systematic thinking, advanced technologies and visual communication combined with a revisitation of early 20th century constructivism. Still, he has never abandoned inspiration from nature, as even his most geometrical shapes have references in the vegetal or mineral world. Through film and photography he returns to painting and expands his visual research, which causes him to establish, together with Paul Gherasim, Horea Paștina, Christian Paraschiv and Mihai Sîrbulescu, the group Prolog (in 1985). He was featured in exhibitions such as Art in Europe, 1945–1968, ZKM, Karlsruhe 2016; Mapping Bucharest: Art, Memory, and Revolution, Vienna Biennale, 2015; SIGMA: Cartografia învățării 1969–1983, Timișoara 2015. Two retrospective exhibitions were held in 2016 at the Timișoara Museum of Art and the Jecza Gallery, also in Timișoara. In 2017 he was included in the exhibition entitled Natural Histories. Traces of the Political, MUMOK, Vienna.

The World According to… Ioan Tugearu
5 October 2017

The laboratory sustained by choreographer Ioan Tugearu proposes an inside look at some of the key directions and moments of his artistic trajectory. We shall discuss his folklore inspiration sources and the resumption of such themes, starting from the show Sources and Roots, dedicated to his professor, Floria Capsali (1979, National Romanian Opera), shall briefly look at Toaca (1981, “Oleg Danovschi” Ballet Theatre) and shall analyse The Bridge (1990, Orion Ballet). We shall also tackle his attraction for meridional dances reflected in Bloody Marriage (1983, Bucharest National Opera) and for Medieval Art, as in Theatrum Mundi (1986, “Plastic Arts and Dance” studio, the National Museum of Art of Romania). We shall discuss his relationship with music and the use of musical collage and mix in modern and contemporary compositions, the references and artistic collaborations that have left their mark on him and shall revisit the project of institutional construction of Orion Balet, the first State-owned contemporary dance company established under his coordination in 1990.

IOAN TUGEARU was born in 1937 in Babuc Durostor (a Romanian territory at the time, now in Bulgaria) and settled in Bucharest. He is a leading figure on the Romanian choreographic scene and a landmark personality for the generations of artists who reached their maturity in the late 1980s. He became principal ballet dancer of the Bucharest National Opera in 1967. Since 1977 until present he has staged numerous shows at opera houses in Bucharest, Constanța, Iași, Timișoara, at the “Oleg Danovski” Ballet Theatre in Constanța, as well as the Novi-Sad Opera (Serbia) or at Jerusalem City Ballet, being well-known for his neoclassical-modern style. In addition to his roles, mainly dramatic, in classical ballets, he occasionally interpreted modern and contemporary roles following the invitation of other choreographs (1965–2004). He was a teacher at the “Floria Capsali” Choreography Highschool in Bucharest (1976–1983, 1993–1998) and, also, a master of ballet at the Oslo Opera House (1983) and at the Teatro Lirico Arene di Verona (1984), among others. In 1990 he set up Orion Balet in Bucharest, whose artistic director he was until 1992.

Since 1965, Ioan Tugearu has toured extensively in Europe, America and Africa with the Ballet of the Bucharest National Opera, with the “Oleg Danovski” Theatre Ballet in Constanța, and with the companies Jeunesse Musicale de France and Grand Ballet Classique de France. He also had engagements as principal ballet dancer in Munich, Bordeaux, and Bari (1972–1974).

The World According to… Ion Grigorescu
6 October 2017

Starting from a selection of visual materials and diary entries, as well as from several texts published by the artist such as Back (2009) or On the Realist Artist (1973), the workshop conceived by artist Ion Grigorescu centres on the conditions in which we perceive and comprehend an artistic path, on our frameworks for reading those artistic endeavours that go off art’s “beaten”, recognisable tracks. The discussion will focus on the hypotheses suggested in the published text (Back), as well as on the artist’s propensities for various themes which pertain, most of them, to the individual condition rather than to the condition of art: “I see that we have constantly looked for roads and exits from those roads. Science, sports, ethics, religion, the family, the humanities, they all strive in one direction only, that of seriousness, and evince the same deficiency, the same error: they ignore the mistake. Their kind of obstinacy and narrow-mindedness is called, in art, Kitsch, and in psychology, the exaggeration of the conscious. Then what kind of role is the subsidiary one played by art? Could it be a subversive role, or the role of a traitor, of the fox that cannot reach the grapes? Then yes, I accept it: not the grapes of pure art, but of mixed or unexplored fields; I have great doubts about their taste, as they are too raw, insufficiently tasted.” (Ion Grigorescu, 2009).

ION GRIGORESCU was born in 1945 in Bucharest, where he currently lives and works. He is one of the best known artists of the Romanian artistic Neo-avant-garde. Proposing a wide range of works — from painting to photography to (video) performance to diary — which do not necessarily comply with the historical canons of art, Grigorescu is permanently on the lookout for “roads and exits from roads.” Aiming to understand the subsidiary role of art, the artist is strengthening art’s coming closer to one’s own life, to “mixed or unexplored fields.” His work has been exhibited at various exhibitions, such as In Search of Balkania at Neue Galerie, Graz 2002, In the Gorges of the Balkans at Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel 2003, Documenta 12, Kassel 2007, Berlin Biennale and Les Promesses du Passé, Pompidou Centre, Paris 2010, Out of Place at Tate Modern 2011, Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960–1980 at MoMA (New York, 2015). A vast retrospective entitled In the Body of the Victim 1969–2008 was held in 2008 at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, curated by Kathrin Rhomberg. More recently, the National Museum of Art of Romania has launched the exhibition Ion Grigorescu: The Painted Work, 1963-2017.

Atlas of Personal Accounts
Partners: CEREFREA – Villa Noël (Centre Régional Francophone de Recherches Avancées en Sciences Sociales), NEC – New Europe College
Media partners: Scena9.ro, Revista Arta, Zeppelin, România Pozitivă

Cultural project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund.

Cultural project funded in the frame of the cultural program Bucharest Participative City by Bucharest Municipality through the Cultural Centre of the Bucharest Municipality – ArCuB.

The project does not necessarily represent the standpoint of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN cannot be held liable for the content of the project or the manner in which the outcomes of the project may be used. These shall devolve entirely on the beneficiary of the financing.