Visual Arts

Identity – even more in the case of the registry of creativity (and not only visual) – is not something to neglect (imagine only – urges us Zdenka Badovinac – what could happen if all the artists present at the Biennial from Venice or at the documenta from Kassel, would have the same name!).

Singing the love of danger, the skill of energy and haughtiness; raising, as being essential elements of poetry, courage, boldness and revolt; glorifying the aggressive movement, the feverous insomnia, the gymnastic step, the palm and the fist; declaring aloud the world’s enriching with a new beauty – the beauty of speed…

2009 is the second consecutive year in which The Romanian Cultural Institution in Paris offers creative residences for the professionals from the different segments of the humanist register and, not by chance, this time the invitation to sign up in the competition was formulated starting from the intention of privileging especially proposals having to do with the marking of twenty years from the 1989 Revolution.

Challenged by the thematic of an international symposium that is to take place in Bucharest (due to the effort of tranzit.org - network of autonomous initiatives in contemporary art), symposium entitled "The Invisible History of Exhibitions" and who's stake is to fructify the content of the events excluded many times from the great narration of the contemporary art; I scanned lately the old series of "Arta" magazine in order to realize sketches of exhibition portraits little known to present day actors.

If we go back a little, then it is useful to register (regarding the relation between art and industry) a case of ‘sociological art' relevant for the outline of a complete image of the 8th decade, as remarked by Alexandra Titu (in the volume published in 1997, Experiment in the Romanian Art after 1960)...

"Complex, contradictory, persuasive, voluntary personality (...) with a very rich visual culture, open to the experimental exercises but keeping ceaseless a rational measure" (George Radu Bogdan), Paul Gherasim was organizing in 1978 (together with Coriolan Babeți and Ion Grigorescu) a group exhibition hosted by the Bastion Galleries in Timişoara: Study I was putting into discussion, according to the recent essay published by Onisim Colta, the idea of ‘state of doing', of gestation, of an attitude of working with yourself, the understanding of art as a work "necessary for becoming spontaneous and conscious of the huge responsibility that is given to you, the moment that you possess the power of the talent or maybe of the genius".

From the position of a prosecutor who long ago swore to (im)pose, with the risk of loud arguments both with those who have disappeared from life or are too alive, order in all side slips (felt or invented) of contemporary culture, Erwin Kessler puts up these days an exposition - in what other way if not - with the value of a trial. Against ‘the neutral portrait of the Romanian art from the 80's - 90's", against the hair of "experimentalisms, culturalisms, intellectualisms or spiritualisms of the literary circle", despite the ideologies, styles and model artistic careers. In the interest of "those that did not make it", privileging thus moral integrity, the anthropological value, life - in a word.