MARe/Muzeul de Artă Recentă Bucharest presents on Wednesday, February 8, from 7 p.m., the exhibition “See What. Photography in Romania After 2000”, curated by Michele Bressan and Ioana Luna Șerban.
“The mature photography of our time has aggregated into a form that (self) limits itself to showing us, with methodical care, only what there is to see, without indicating directions, without embracing aspirations, without pouring us bedtime stories to lull consciences, without causing us major pleasures or displeasures.
At first glance, such a photo does not offer much. But on a closer look, behind the restrained offer one can see the fusion of this photographic pattern with the anthropological pattern of our times, with the figure of the technocrat who knows his field without making a show of it and without having the ambition to change the order of the world in any way, but to add one more aesthetically polished piece to the ever-rotating and not-so-dazzling mechanism of the world as we know it.”
Erwin Kessler – Director of MARe/Muzeul de Artă Recentă
“What is there to see?: do we see what we recognize as beautiful, or do we recognize as beautiful what we have seen through the photographic lens? Not that it is about beauty in the photographic works of the 12 artists in the exhibition. On the contrary, we would say, rather non-beauty infuses the rough, semi-industrial landscapes, halfway between a world adapted to production and the eternal but unpicturesque countryside, then the human figures – chosen deliberately anti-glam -, the common people and the bystanders , or the diffuse shadows that we can fill with any identity, the sensational stories that don’t end up being headliners, but can be remembered by anyone from his story.”
Ioana Luna Şerban – exhibition curator
“The course presented at MARe creates a new moment in Romanian contemporary photography, offering a wider framework in which local approaches find resonance in the sphere of Western practices. We are not looking at a concept exhibition but rather a witness exhibition, a new landmark. We are talking about a first moment of clarity dedicated to artists who, through the continuity of their work, have become referential for a temporal arc closer to immediate historical reflexivity.
The chronology of those exhibiting outlines the corpus of the Post-2000 Generation. In this case, the decisive moment so exalted in the photographic context becomes rather a dilated moment of a decisive moment, one that will span three months in the two extremes of the museum, the basement and the top floor. The game of contemplation offered by each photo guarantees us all the elements necessary for an intimate experience. In fact, everything is there in plain sight; in the opposite sense of the game of hide and seek.”
Michele Bressan – artist and exhibition curator
The exhibition “See What. Photography in Romania After 2000” brings together the creations of 12 photographic artists: Lucian Bran, Michele Bressan, Valeriu Cătălineanu, Ioana Cîrlig, Bogdan Gîrbovan, Emőke Kerekes, Anton Roland Laub, Virginia Lupu, Andrei Mateescu, Patricia Moroşan, Andrei Nacu, Mihai Şovăială.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a genuine book dedicated to post-2000 Romanian photography, which will present the 12 artists exhibited through their answers to 4 questions, each a synopsis of their projects, alongside critical texts signed by Michele Bressan, Ioana Iuna Șerban and Erwin Kessler.
All of this is introduced by a photo essay made from relating the artists’ works. Concept and design: Mihai Şovăiala.
