Sigma Group with Adriana Babeți

The Sigma Group (1969–1978) has been acknowledged as one of the seminal moments of the Romanian art of the 1960s and 1970s. Co-founded in Timișoara by Ștefan Bertalan and Constantin Flondor, the group further gathers the artists Ioan Gaita, Elisei Rusu, Doru Tulcan and the mathematician Lucian Codreanu. The activities of Sigma Group are triggered by the belief in interdisciplinary collaboration, by the necessity of bridging the gulf between science and art, art and public. The theoretical, philosophical and pedagogical principles that are at the heart of Sigma’s work foster a visual vocabulary, which radically juxtaposed various references from constructivism, cybernetics, bionics, mathematics, structuralism, semiotics, and psychoanalysis. The group is characterised by its interest in visual research, in a holistic pedagogical practice, and in a conscious search for an exit from the traditional readings of art in favour of an experiential detour, which meant testing the boundaries between disciplines, and bringing back to the forefront as a model, nature. Their collective presuppositions take the form of mathematically generated structures, objects and large-scale environments, urban design projects, actions and interventions in nature, analytical photographs, and film experiments.