AnnArt Gallery opened the autumn exhibition season with a Duo Show of the artists Mircea Modreanu and Beniamin Popescu, curated by Călina Coman.
“Watershed determines opposition and balance. By analogy, the title of the exhibition is aimed at the central component of such a mechanism. It supports two parallel, opposition elements that appear balanced. Time Travel does not define a precious and complex concept related to the notion of time, nor does it aspire to unravel the depth of the sources of inspiration of the (hic) incipit of the works. Instead, it supports the selection of works and the joining of the two artists.
On the right pan of the balance called time travel, there is a weight. I recall the concept of parergon, known mainly for Derrida, who used the term in one of the essays in “The Truth in Painting”. Through para- (outside) and ergon (work) he deconstructs the status of the frame, the boundary of a painting, departing from the Kantian concept according to which the frame of a painting (or the column of a magnificent building) exists outside the work of art. For him, the setting is that part of the work that “gives birth” to the work of art. However, the history of the frame’s status cannot be neglected. In addition to philosophical decoding, frames (whether they have utilitarian, aesthetic, or mental functions) vary at once with the taste of the era or characteristic ornamentation. Mircea Modreanu starts from the photos taken to the frames in the Louvre Museum. The decision to treat the frame as a stand-alone, primordial object, and subsequently its transposition into a meta-framework, constitutes the contemporary instinct of isolation and exploitation of the artistic object. The discreet process of transferring the image to the support of a hard material (plaster) and its limitation by a wooden frame, restores the familiarity of a current attitude.
On the left pan, another weight causes the balance to stand in balance. Much more prominent is the chronology of formation and deformation within the works of Benjamin Popescu. The antinomy formulated in its structures starts from the intention to construct the unfolding of the double scenario of the existence of an archaeological site – from the origin to the contemporary contextualization of the topographical components from a historical past. The temporal character, in the case of the artistic process, is transferred internally, immanent to the reference themes embedded in the works. The materials from which it makes up the various anthropogeographic histories reside in compositional hardness. Shape and color, on the one hand, the metallic structure, on the other, disputes its supremacy in an inevitable start to understand its tendencies.” (Călina Coman, curator)
Mircea Modreanu (b. 1989) is a visual artist, manager of cultural projects, and gallerist. He attended the courses of the Faculty of Fine Arts within UAD Cluj, and immediately after completing his license, he reconfigured his route to Bucharest. In 2014 he completed his master’s degree in the graphics department of UNArte and, a year later, founded an NGO, representing his debut as a manager of cultural projects. Since 2018, when the E T A J artist-run space project was born, he has organized exhibitions in Bucharest, on 43 George Enescu Street, where he has invited so far over 200 artists. In a lockdown, as a form of documenting and archiving, he began filming interviews with artists that he uploaded to the YOUTUBE channel ETAJ TV. He is also the coordinator of E T A J Magazine, a publication launched out of a desire to promote contemporary art and local artists.
Beniamin Popescu (born 1989) is a visual artist who incorporates sculptural painting into his recent artistic practice. His works are an exploration of the texture and shape reminiscent of the structures of buildings in an archaeological site. Whether it is a living space or an old monument, his works examine the concept of a building, of space in continuous transition, where progress and regression meet. The role of a building does not end at the moment when it no longer performs a practical function for people. Benjamin Popescu challenges us to look differently at the architectural object: as a bridge between the present, the past, and the future.
The exhibition Time Travel is open until October 29, 2022, from Tuesday to Friday, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free entry.
