On Friday, March 15, starting at 6 PM, Borderline Art Space will host the exhibition In Search of Paradise by artist József Bartha. Curated by Kata Ungvári-Zrínyi, the exhibition will be on view until 8 April 2024.

Bartha József’s installation projects work with symbolically charged objects in a poetic universe. This world is constructed through a dream-like logic: objects meet in strange visions, but these visions hit us in the stomach with their political allusions and mature handling of complex connotations.

The installations In Search of Paradise and Paradise Lost are object manifestations of the collective imaginary of the present, fragmented and reassembled according to new, as yet unrecognised models.
Nostalgia is a recurring element, whether it appears in handcrafted coloured glass vases or surprises us in the pearls of cut trees. Even space seems to take on the character of dreams: we are locked in and out simultaneously. And among the multiple and complex power dynamics hang the bones of ideals—of beings created with care through the vibrations of the spirit and the quality of the mind.

József Bartha (1960, Odorheiu Secuiesc) lives and works in Târgu Mureș. He is a visual artist, scenographer, curator, and lecturer at the University of Art in Târgu Mureș, where he teaches scenography and visual arts. He is the initiator and organizer of several national and international contemporary art projects. He is also the founder and president of the ARTeast Foundation and the contemporary art space B5 Studio in Târgu Mures. He studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Cluj (1987) and the University of Art in Budapest ( DLA, 2012). In addition to other international grants, in 1996, he was an ArtsLink Fellow in the United States, and in 2005, he received a grant from the Boswill Art Committee in Switzerland. Bartha József’s conceptual works include photographs, installations, video installations and art interventions.

Bartha has had solo exhibitions in Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the USA. He has participated in many group exhibitions at home and abroad, working with curators such as Liviana Dan, Călin Dan, Irina Cios, Judit Angel, Harald Seemann, Jan Kafka, Omar Mirza and Oliver Kielmayer. Since 1992, he has created over 90 stage designs for theatres in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia. He has been nominated four times for the UNITER award for Best Stage Design, which he won in 2014 for the stage design of Hamlet directed by László Bocsárdi at the Tamási Áron Theatre in Sfântu Gheorghe.