Part of doijoi, the contemporary art gallery /SAC will organize a guided tour through the two exhibition spaces of Touch Nature starting at 6pm at /SAC @ Berthelot (Str. Gen. H. M. Berthelot, nr. 5), then at 7:30pm at /SAC @ Malmaison (Calea Plevnei 137 C, Corp B Etaj 2, Atelierele Malmaison).
The exhibition Touch Nature is curated by Sabine Fellner and Alex Radu, with an exhibition design by Justin Baroncea and Maria Ghement
Artists: Uli Aigner, Matei Bejenaru, Floriama Candea, Codruța Cernea, Adriana Chiruta, Ciprian Ciuclea, Larisa Crunțeanu, Anna Dumitriu & Alex May, Michael Endlicher, Thomas Feuerstein, Peter Hauenschild, Barbara Anna Husar, Nona Inescu, Kitty Kino, Aurora Kiraly, Alexandra Kontriner, Ana Maria Micu, Nicoleta Mureș, Klaus Pichler, Monika Pichler, PRINZpod, Oliver Ressler, Gregor Sailer, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Hans Schabus, Ramona Schnekenburger, Marielis Seyler, Paul Spendier, Oana Stanciu, Mircea Suciu, Dan Vezentan, Judith Wagner, Nives Widauer & Laurent Ziegler
The Touch Nature project, initiated by the Austrian Cultural Forum, with a concept proposed by the curator Sabine Fellner, is an itinerant exhibition approach presented in 11 countries in Europe and the United States. It brings forward an exploration of the role of art in questioning the increasingly severe ecological crisis through works by contemporary artists from Austria and each host country, always in an original, site-specific format adapted to each individual cultural context.
In Touch Nature at /SAC, the works of Austrian and Romanian artists engage in a dialogue proposing a critical look at the profound transformation of our planetary ecosystem in the Anthropocene and examining the ecological crisis from different perspectives. Through specific artistic mediums, each contribution formulates its opposition against the exploitation of man and nature on a global level or projects hopeful visions regarding new human–non-human dynamics/compositions. Introspectively, the exhibition-installation becomes an immersion in the spectral diversity of attitudes, experiences and psycho-emotional reactions related to the devastating effects of the ecocidal Anthropocene: from activism to climate anxiety, solastalgia, melancholy, shadowtime, depression, abandonment, and back to imaginings of innovative sustainable solutions. Demonstrating through documentation, formulating protests and conceiving possible-but-which-may-seem utopian scenarios represent the fundamental methods of this artistic confrontations at /SAC.
Part of the international journey of one of the largest and most challenging itinerant curatorial endeavours of its kind, the Touch Nature exhibition acquires in Bucharest a new interface between external and local contributions. Continuing a specific type research at /SAC, that of the (group) exhibition (space) as an medium in itself and meeting place implicitly approached collaboratively, the Touch Nature mise-en-scène is different from the practices/paradigms of white-cube, thus the exhibition design is conceived as an installation in itself, with its narratives connected to curatorial intentions.
The exhibition takes place in both locations of /SAC, Berthelot and Malmaison – distinct spaces both in terms of architecture and context. Each setting/medium has a different story and (re)contextualises the works in the discourse, while still keeping a continuity between them, but also a surprising contrast. At Berthelot, we become residents of a standard house from an imagined future, while at Malmaison we get lost in a laboratory-archive – a mutation in the evolution of the wunderkammer and collector’s room concepts – with countless artistic curiosities (perspectives) from a past that has become today’s present.
The exhibition is organised by /SAC Bucharest and the Austrian Cultural Forum, with the support of the Federal Ministry of European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria.
