On Friday, June 12, at 6:00 PM, 2/3 Gallery will host the opening of the photography exhibition by artist Anton Roland Laub, in the presence of the artist. Titled “Mineriada”, the exhibition is curated by Sonia Voss and comprises 14 photographic works. It will remain open to the public until July 26, 2026, at 2/3 Gallery (4 Franceză Street), during the following hours: Wednesday–Friday (4:00–7:00 PM) and Saturday–Sunday (12:00–5:00 PM).
“Films move forward like trains in the night,” says François Truffaut in Day for Night, offering a striking analogy between the long succession of carriages crossing a dark landscape and the relentless forward movement of stories, which—unlike real life—do not tolerate dead time. The same could be said of memory, with the obvious difference that memory involves a movement backwards, its tension oriented toward a past that is often unclear rather than toward a predetermined outcome. In the night, as in the rumble of recollections, time loses its measurable and regular dimension.
Anton Roland Laub’s Mineriada series is filled with trains and nightmares. These act as vectors of a bleak and existential journey that simultaneously accuses and heals. Mineriada is the third part of a trilogy addressing the enduring stigmas in Romanian society 30 years after the end of the communist dictatorship and the events that followed the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the fall of Ceaușescu.
The June Mineriad was the most violent of the numerous miners’ interventions that took place in 1990. While elsewhere in the former Eastern Bloc anti-communist dissidents were invited to speak and contribute to the reconstruction of a new society, the hopes of young Romanians were crushed in bloodshed. On June 13, Laub’s father, on his way home from work, took the photographs that later inspired the artist to create this series. Bringing to light images preserved for decades in the family archive, Laub chooses to invoke the demons rather than banish them, opening a path toward confrontation and healing. His works approach these themes with a sense of the absurd: seemingly unremarkable views alternate with surprising details, whose unsettling character is intensified by abrupt breaks in framing, oblique camera angles, and violent lighting.” — Sonia Voss, curator
Anton Roland Laub is a visual artist born in Bucharest who lives and works in Berlin. He holds a Master’s degree from the Weissensee Academy of Art Berlin, having previously completed his studies at the New School for Photography in Berlin and graduated from the University of Bucharest. His work has been exhibited internationally, notably at the Wende Museum in Los Angeles; the Triennial of Photography and Architecture in Brussels; Les Rencontres d’Arles; FORMAT International Photography Festival in Derby; European Month of Photography in Athens and Berlin; Photo Saint-Germain in Paris; and the Helsinki Photo Festival. His work has been reviewed and featured in the international press and is included in both public and private collections.
Sonia Voss is an exhibition curator focusing on East German photography and, more broadly, on Eastern European art scenes of the 1970s and 1980s. She curated the Louis Roederer Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles 2021 and collaborates with contemporary artists such as Isabelle Le Minh, Anton Roland Laub, and Tarrah Krajnak, while also exploring lesser-known archives such as that of Uraguchi Kusukazu, which she brought to public attention through the project Shima no ama (Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2024; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, 2025/26; Atelier EXB, 2024). She lives and works in Paris and Berlin.
2/3 Gallery is a young contemporary art space dedicated exclusively to photography, conceived as a platform for the production, presentation, and circulation of photographic image-based practices. Founded with a commitment to contributing to the development of contemporary visual culture, the gallery promotes photography both as an artistic medium and as a critical field of research and reflection.
The research underlying both the organization of this project and the publication of the accompanying volume was supported by the Visual Arts Research Grant awarded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe of the State of Berlin and by the Publication Grant provided by Stiftung Kulturwerk, Bonn. We are grateful for the support of our friends at The Institute as strategic partners of this exhibition. Special thanks go to Crama Cotnari for their support and for providing NAIV wine for the opening event.
The exhibition Mineriada is part of the annual programme “Documentary Photography: Metamorphic Archives”, co-financed by the Romanian National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN).
This project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or for the way its results may be used. Responsibility for these lies entirely with the beneficiary of the funding.
