diapozitiv_02 | Matei Bejenaru photography exhibition at Borderline Art Space

At the Borderline Art Space gallery in Iasi, you can visit the photography exhibition of the artist Matei Bejenaru, diapozitiv_02, curated by Cristian Nae.

Curatorial argument:
“The latest iteration of the diapozitiv project, initiated by Matei Bejenaru in the period 2019-2020, brings back to the discussion the relationship between the photographic gaze and the human gaze in the form of a meditation on the condition of the photographic image produced analogically in a society flooded by the overabundance of digital images. He thus continues a larger project of researching the specificity of the photographic medium through material archaeology of technological devices and the language and ways of perceiving associated with these devices.

The optical technologies that construct the photographic image with analog tools and facilitate the careful contemplation of the surrounding reality through an augmented gaze, capable of perceiving details, and capturing situations that the retina cannot register, constituting according to Walter Benjamin an “optical unconscious”, are those that also determine the limits of the gaze.

In his artistic project, Matei Bejenaru lucidly analyzes the specific elements of photographic languages, such as the station point or focus, and their relationship with the slide as a specific type of analog image. Through a meta-analytical reflection, the subject of these images thus becomes the photographic process itself, the discursive and conceptual field of photography. For this exhibition, the artist has constructed a slide viewer that intertwines geometric abstraction with the tactile seduction of the large-scale projected image, in the space of which the human eye seems to touch intimately, corporeally, the open visual field in the presented images.[…]I risk affirming that, projecting an anachronistic time in the digital condition of our present, always synchronized temporality, Matei Bejenaru’s photographic projects generate an aesthetic experience and an experience of freedom.”
Cristian Nae, curator

Matei Bejenaru is an artist born in 1963 in Suceava who lives and works in Iasi. He graduated from the Iasi Polytechnic Institute in 1988 and the “George Enescu” Iasi University of Arts, Painting Department in 1996. Since 1999, he has taught photography and video art at the “George Enescu” Iasi University of Arts. He is the founder and artistic director of the Peripheral Contemporary Art Biennale in Iasi (between 1997 and 2008). He is a founding member of the Vector Association from Iasi, being the president of the institution in the period 2001-2011).

Between 2003 and 2007 he was the artistic director of the Vector Gallery in Iasi. In the same period, he initiated and managed the cARTier social culture project, which he carried out with colleagues from the Vector Association. In the 2011-2012 academic year, he was a visiting professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada).
In his artistic projects of recent years, through photography and video films, he investigates the materiality of the photographic medium and the politics of representation in the documentary format. Using the technological platform specific to analog images, be they static or dynamic, he brings to the fore the photographic process as a witness to the crisis of singularity and artistic commitment.

The exhibition can be visited until January 14, 2024. Admission is free.

Share on facebook
Share on whatsapp
Share on email
Share on pinterest

Do you love our content and value the work we do? Support it! Donate!

empower-long-logo-final2

Discover the contemporary art scene in Romania!

Sign up to receive Empower Art& Artists’ monthly art news update!