2023
Starting from the way photography was used and understood in the local artistic context before 1989, Iosif Király discusses in this interview his own reception of the photographic image as a visual language and cultural phenomenon, focusing on some personal projects started in the 1990s, when photography becomes for the artist the main tool for research of the changes and the trends occurring in Romanian society. Thus, the process of tracing the dynamics of the public space, and the different strategies of re-appropriation of the social territory gives him the chance to develop the Indirect project—a set of narratives relevant today in a retrospective reading of recent history.
The dialogue with the artist Dan Perjovschi offers a lucid foray into the composite of transient and noisy realities of the 1990s, analysing the state of mind of Romanian society at that time, as well as the more or less attainable expectations of young artists that exit the grey umbrella of communism. The radiography of Romania under transition intertwines with the challenges experienced by the artist at the time, evoking his first contacts with the international artistic space, his first disillusions regarding the new path of society and first artistic efforts to coagulate an alternative thinking territory and critical view on the present with the help of drawing.
The exhibitions envisioned by Judit Angel certainly remain a reference point on the map of Romanian art during the 1990s. Innovative in the way they managed to integrate contemporary art into the museum discourse and reopen the art institution to society, they also constitute a turning point in terms of curatorial practice in Romania. Through the projects initiated by Judit Angel at the Arad Art Museum, the position of the curator acquires new values within the local public sphere and new responsibilities that engage not only the relationship with the artistic and institutional environment, but also with the social and symbolic context of the period.
The interview familiarises us with Teodor Graur’s artistic activity from the 1990s, characterised by various analytical approaches to deconstruct the recent post-1989 behaviour patterns. The political commentary, the (self)ironic and critical spirit, the appeal to the heterogeneity of formats and working media blend in his art with collaborative endeavours, with a careful observation of the shared life conditions. With the help of photography or of sociological surveys, Teodor Graur succeeds to place under magnifying glass the ecstatic promises of transition.
For Lia Perjovschi, (self)knowledge is a means of navigating a home-grown social and cultural universe that needs (new) points of reference. Her works rewrites, in some degree, these landmarks. While they may seem subjective, they highlight areas of collective interest and draw, through text and images, missing historical links. The interview brings back to the foreground key moments of her activity from the 1990s, such as the transformation of her studio in an educational alternative for those interested in learning about the connections established between art and society or the founding of the Contemporary Art Archive.
Dan Mihălțianu’s works lie at the intersection between official and personal histories, following an artistic practice that explores the boundaries between art and politics with a discursive and analytical lens. The interview is setting the artist’s creation against the social and cultural background of the end of the 1980s in Romania, discussing the specific relationship between artist and society, between the real existing socialist reality and the endorsed one, promoted through the media automatisms of state propaganda.
Marginalii Group was initiated in 1992 by dancers Irina Costea, Florin Fieroiu, Cosmin Manolescu and Mihai Mihalcea. The group had an informal character, with a horizontal leadership, the work within the collective being a form of knowledge through self-pedagogy, self-choreography and self-representation. In this film, the artists talk about the spirit of Marginalii in the context of the 1990s and the emergence on a terrain that needed to be discovered and invented, about the group as a force, an energy, a knowledge resource and a shared mental space where things were possible.
A creative and systematic character, preoccupied with the mathematical configuration of form and its transformation, Laurențiu Ruță (1955, Biled) has his own place in the history of experimental photography in Romania. In this interview, the artist is revisiting the journey of his formation—found under the auspices of the Timișoara Art Lyceum in the 1970s and of the alternative events held within Atelier 35 from Cluj during the 1980s. The singular and open spirit of his art is reflected by his interest in long periods of testing certain principles which govern the game of geometrical forms, as well as by its epiphanic nature.
A promoter of abstractionism in the Romanian sculpture, Ingo Glass developed his own working system and his own theory regarding the relation between geometrical shapes and basic colours. Under the influence of the industrial techniques learned in Galați, Ingo Glass brings colours in his sculpture. The interview lingers on the monumental work Septenarius (1976) made out of red lacquered steel, an abstract structure located on the Danube, characterized by the effort of the sculptural ascension and tension through the use of the semicircle.
2021
Interview by: Alina Șerban
Camera and video editing: Andreea Lăcătuș
Artworks: © George Săbău, Ioan Plesh, Alexandru Pecican
Archive: kinema ikon
Fragments from the films: Simultaneous Hypostases (1970) and Cuts (1980) by George Săbău, Panta Rhei (1979) by Ioan Plesh, Subliminal Exercise (1979), Alexandru Pecican, and Diary (1970–1990) by kinema ikon
Music: Lucian Meţianu, Pythagoreis, 1970
Subtitles: Diana Bularca
Interview by: Alina Șerban
Camera and video editing: Andreea Lăcătuș
Artworks and archive: © Pavel Ilie, Ion Grigorescu
Additional archive: © Eugeniu Lupu
Music: Lucian Meţianu, Pythagoreis, 1970
Subtitles: Diana Bularca
Interview by: Alina Șerban, Ștefania Ferchedău
Video editing: Andreea Lăcătuș
Archive: © Miriam Răducanu, © Demarco Digital Archives / University of Dundee
Photograph by: Mircea Albuțiu
Video recording of the presentation of Genesis, by Miriam Răducanu, performed by Mădălina Dan in the exhibition 24 Arguments. Early Encounters in Romanian Neo-Avant-Garde 1969–1971, National Museum of Art of Romania
Fragment from the film The Great Passage, 1971, directed by Mirel Ilieșiu
Interview by: Alina Șerban
Camera and video editing: Andreea Lăcătuș
Artworks: © Roman Cotoșman
Archives: © Cotoșman Family, Jecza Gallery
Music: Lucian Meţianu, Pythagoreis, 1970
Subtitles: Laura Ionică, Alina Șerban
Interview by: Alina Șerban
Video editing: Andreea Lăcătuș
Camera: Alina Șerban
Archive: © Peter Jacobi
Music: Lucian Meţianu, Pythagoreis, 1970
Subtitles: Diana Bularca
Interview by: Ștefania Ferchedău
Camera and video editing: Andreea Lăcătuș
Artworks and archive: © Ion Grigorescu
Images from the films Clip-clop of Horseshoes, 1975, and In Beloved Bucharest, 1977, by Ion Grigorescu
Music: Lucian Meţianu, Pythagoreis, 1970
Subtitles: Diana Bularca
Interview by: Alina Șerban
Video editing: Andreea Lăcătuș
Artworks and archive: © Diet Sayler
Additional archive: © Eugeniu Lupu
Images from the exhibition Diet Sayler. Chance Doesn’t Lie, Neues Museum Nuremberg, 27.09.2019–29.08.2021
Music: Lucian Meţianu, Pythagoreis, 1970
Subtitles: Diana Bularca
Interview by: Alina Șerban
Camera and video editing: Andreea Lăcătuș
Artworks: © Group Sigma, Constantin Flondor
Archives: © Constantin Flondor, Doru Tulcan
Images from the exhibition Current Issues on Space in the Visual Arts, UNESCO Art Week, 13 December 1974, 6 pm, Bastion Art Galleries, Timișoara
Fragments from the film Game with Balloons, 1974, by Constantin Flondor
Music: Lucian Meţianu, Pythagoreis, 1970
Subtitles: Diana Bularca
Interview by: Ștefania Ferchedău
Video editing: Andreea Lăcătuș
Archive: © Octavian Nemescu, Erica Nemescu
Music and images from the score of Natural, 1973–1983, by Octavian Nemescu
Subtitles: Ștefania Ferchedău
Interview by: Alina Șerban
Camera and video editing: Andreea Lăcătuș
Video recording for the exhibition The Modern Idol. Henry Moore in the Eastern Bloc, National Museum of Art of Romania, 14 October 2021–6 February 2022
Music: Lucian Meţianu, Pythagoreis, 1970
Subtitles: Diana Bularca
Interview by: Alina Șerban
Camera and video editing: Andreea Lăcătuș
Video recording for the exhibition The Modern Idol. Henry Moore in the Eastern Bloc, National Museum of Art of Romania, 14 October 2021–6 February 2022
Music: Lucian Meţianu, Pythagoreis, 1970
Subtitles: Diana Bularca
