On Tuesday, March 14, at Scemtovici & Benowitz Gallery in Jean Louis Calderon street 34, took place the opening of the exhibition “HOURS…” of the visual artist Olimpiu Bandalac, curated by Raluca Ilaria Demetrescu.
The multimedia meta-installation incorporates musical pieces created by the composer Octavian Nemescu, which will accompany visitors of the exhibition between March 14 and April 20, 2023.
“If we were to illustrate, through a definition, the painting that includes the mental criteria (Leonardo da Vinci affirmed that “la pittura è una cose mentale”) technical-stylistic, intuitive, sensitivity, beauty and refinement and conceptual art, then the art practiced by Olimpiu Bandalac would be the true illustration of this combination between aesthetics and idea. An ensemble that is related to painting – and yet is not just painting – a montage of various elements (objects, lights, sound, music), which induce a state of reverie and anticipation.
The artist starts from a melancholic, poetic, sometimes tragic background, which, resourcing it, he brings to an end full of hope and color, the acceptance of destiny. The steps taken through the exhibition are small and difficult, visual and sound accidents intervene along the way, and the dialogue with the music of Octavian Nemescu started in 1983, forces the artist and the viewer towards introspection and soul analysis, during the (un)limited time of the generated emotion. The experimental music of the erudite composer Octavian Nemescu is the element that helps to compose the atmosphere that weaves between thought, observation, and emotion. The painting is structured around the idea of time – its flow: the time of life, the time spent in the development of these works, the minuteness of the execution, the patience waiting for the result, the endless questioning regarding the justice of the decisions, the countless returns…
The circuit through the exhibition halls is the guiding thread of a meta-narrative, route through chapters-states, paragraphs-sensations, and chapters-thoughts.
The “journey” begins with an installation that includes, in a cubic device, five painted panels supported by (oak) pillars – supports of the artist’s inner world, the room, music, the environment, and the world and life. We cross the room where 12 clocks of the day = 12 graphic-object works draw the vertical space. The handmade paper made by the artist himself grows through overlays and becomes an object, painted neon pink and fuchsia and visceral red with shades of white and yellow. The center of the exhibition is the place of passage (emulation). The graphic works are composed like a church altar where the reds superimposed on the support with the icons’ format create a sacred area.
The itinerary through the exhibition continues by going down the stairs into semi-darkness – a place and ritual of passage between worlds, to direct us to the two rooms: scenography of lights, shadows, and paintings, with heaven from light and darkness from hell, or maybe just purgatory in the space of the room where an image, an icon representing an element of a barbed wire fence repeated 12 times – the 12 hours of the night, all placed in a circle around the Emperor Time. This is symbolized by an old, family clock. The anecdote goes that the mechanism started working again following its move from the workshop space to the underground edge of the exhibition.”
Raluca Ilaria Demetrescu, curator
“Olimpiu Bandalac, an internalized, metaphorizing author, nourished his drawings, objects, installations, animation films, and then actionism, in which he made his presence felt after 1989, from the spiritual vital substance.” This is how the artist is described by the art critic and professor Adrian Guță in his book “The ’80s Generation in the Visual Arts”.
One of the important artists of our artistic current, a complex creator, he is a landmark of the local cultural postmodernism, a period that he assimilates and overcomes, being located today in the heart of contemporaneity. The artist operates with the “past-present” both at the level of the idea and the construction of the work of art. Although chronologically framed in the eighties generation, his art is timeless and located outside of trends.
During the exhibition, the gallery will organize evenings dedicated to animated films whose soundtracks bear the signature of the composer Octavian Nemescu (1940-2020), recognized as one of the most original creators of contemporary composition.
The exhibition is open until April 20, 2023, on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays between 14:00 and 19:30. Visitors will be able to listen to the pieces of the composer Octavian Nemescu integrated in the installations starting from 17:00, until the closing of the visiting program.
Media partners: Agenția de Carte, Curatorial, Empower Artists, PROPAGARTA, Radio România Cultural, TVR Cultural, Zile și Nopți
