Operator Block 1, the first part of the exhibition that inaugurates Sandwich NeuroHope, a new cultural and research space, brings together two complementary worlds, art and medicine, treated and built with the same passion. The new collaboration aims to continue the program of the Sandwich gallery by rethinking its impact in its own community, and, at the same time, to open new dialogues with the world that is now opening before it, through direct and indirect connections between the two disciplines.
Sandwich Art Gallery began a new chapter with this project alongside the founders of the NeuroHope clinic. They invited colleagues from the Malmaison Workshops to a still unexplored space, where each arranged their works as if in a miniature workshop. With the exhibition, the 5th floor of the clinic became a laboratory and a place for re-meeting between artists who have been close to each other for years, but have not met in this way before.
Operator Block 1 brings together works by the following artists: Liliana Basarab, Dan Basu, Béla Zoltán, Otilia Boeru, Lucian Bran, Larisa Crunteanu, Giles Eldridge, Cătălina Gubandru, Mihaela Moldovan, Răzvan Năstase, Daniela Pălimariu, Ramon Sadîc, Virginia Toma.
Founded by neurosurgeons Dr. Dorin Bică and Dr. Ionuț Gobej, NeuroHope Clinic (Bucharest and Craiova) offers excellence in minimally and ultra-minimally invasive endoscopic/keyhole neurosurgery, as well as consultations in a wide range of medical and surgical specialties, ensuring medical care at the highest standards. The NeuroHope team brings together doctors from 20 medical and surgical specialties, approaching a multidisciplinary practice in identifying and treating patients’ conditions.
“This collaboration gives us a clear framework to test how the public can simultaneously navigate a medical and a cultural space,” notes Dr. Ionuț Gobej.
“We have always wanted NeuroHope to be a territory of complete healing. Art has an intrinsic therapeutic vocation, and the encounter with Sandwich offers us the perfect context to explore this dimension,” explains Dr. Dorin Bică
Sandwich, active on the contemporary art scene since 2016, thus expands its activity into an interdisciplinary context, maintaining the same concern for flexible exhibition and production formats. Initially an experimental space at the Combinatul Fondului Plastic, it expanded within the Atelier Malmaison (2021) and, recently, inaugurated Vila Catena (2025) in collaboration with the Fildas Art Foundation.
From a curatorial perspective, Alexandru Niculescu, co-founder of Sandwich, speaks of “a common need to reposition the artist’s studio and the medical office as research spaces that, beyond technical differences, feed on the same impulse to build and understand the world”.
The exhibition can be visited until August 8, 2025. Visiting schedule: Wednesday–Friday, between 12:00 and 17:00. Free admission.
