“Rhythmic Stress” brings together a large international group exhibition at /SAC @ ACADEMIEI, co-curated by Alex Radu and Charles Moore, exploring the relationship between movement, the body, and the invisible pressures of the present. Situated at the intersection of dance, performance, and contemporary art, the exhibition proposes rhythm as a mode of thinking and as a tool for negotiating tensions between control and release, resistance and collapse.
Artists: 111invers1, Hoda Afshar, Justin Baroncea & Cristian Matei, Cecilia Bengolea, Marius Bercea, Julius von Bismarck, Monica Bonvicini, Codruța Cernea, Sergiu Chihaia, Iulian Cristea, Nicolae Comănescu, Roberta Curcă, C. B. Evans, Aristotle Forrester, Dimitrie Luca Gora, Dumitru Gorzo, Eduard Gabia, Xenia Hausner, Gregor Hildebrandt, Christian Jankowski, Barbara Kapusta, Oliver Laric, Ligia Lewis, Tincuța Marin, Marta Mattioli, Jacopo Mazzonelli, Rachel Monosov, Ciprian Mureșan, Vlad Nancă, Gilberto Aceves Navarro, Marcus Nelson, Mike Pelletier, Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel, Bogdan Rața, Rebeca Rădvan, Haleh Redjaian, Aki Sasamoto, Larisa Sitar, Edra Soto, Asia Stewart, Mircea Suciu, Monika Szpunar, Ovidiu Toader, Virginia Toma, Jorinde Voigt, Judith Wagner, Kristin Wenzel, Leyla Yenirce
“Tensions in Rhythm” is an investigation of movement—of bodies in motion, breath, images, language, architecture, and power. It is an exhibition conceived at the intersection of dance, performance, contemporary art, and spatial practices, where rhythm becomes both a material condition and a political force. Approaching movement not as ornament or spectacle, the dialogue generated by these works becomes the primary strategy for negotiating tension: the tension between stillness and eruption, control and release, resistance and collapse, private sensation and public consequence. In this sense, “Tensions in Rhythm” positions movement as a response to violence, loss, systemic injustice, and the accumulation of micro-events that shape our bodies long before they become legible as history.
At its core, the exhibition questions how rhythm—understood as a temporal, bodily, and social structure—behaves under pressure. How does stress manifest in the body? How is it reiterated, absorbed, endured, or transformed through gesture, repetition, breathing, and spatial navigation? And how might dance, choreography, and performative practices offer models of survival, protest, acceptance, or collective recalibration within societies marked by inequality and division?
“Tensions in Rhythm” approaches movement as both a way of thinking and a way of being. It frames dance, performance, and embodied action as gestures that are at once deeply personal and irreducibly political. These are modes of resistance and repair operating across scales, from the intimate to the structural. Anger, pain, and exhaustion coexist here with detachment, release, and forgiveness. Rather than claiming resolutions, the exhibition creates a ground where contradictory states are allowed to coexist, collide, and reconfigure.
The exhibition is situated within a broader curatorial commitment that examines what brings us together, what separates us, and how relationships between bodies, communities, and systems are continuously constructed, negotiated, and contested. In this context, “Tensions in Rhythm” foregrounds shared concerns across architecture, contemporary art, and performance. The artists emphasize ideas of rhythm and counterpoint, spatialization and flow, duration and interruption, the choreography of attention, and the politics of presence. The exhibition space itself acts as an active participant—an architecture that breathes, resists, compresses, and releases in tandem with the works it hosts.” (curatorial text)
Graphic/exhibition design: Maria Ghement, Horia Lungescu, Alexandra Müller, Ioana Naniș, Larisa State
Curatorial assistance: Anne-Marie Lolea, Lidia Dobrea, Natalia Marin
The exhibition can be visited until May 16, 2025.
