“Sculpted Spaces”, the exhibition by artist Mihai Șovăială presented by 2/3 Gallery, is the first artist exhibition in the “Photograph after Photograph” series. Curated by Laura Bivolaru, the exhibition explores aspects of contemporary photography in monumental-scale installation forms.
“Every construction begins with a deconstruction, whether through excavation or demolition. The urban landscape is in constant flux, yet the construction site—space dedicated to building—remains a constant presence in the city. Typically noisy and dusty, a perpetual source of discomfort, the construction site conceals within its apparent chaos unseen forms, unexpected juxtapositions, and structures whose purposes remain indecipherable to passersby.
At once a spectacle and an object of contemplation, Mihai Șovăială’s photography translates a multilayered world rich in textures and shifts in scale into a two-dimensional format, capturing moments after the workers have left for the day. These laboriously sculpted spaces are marked by ephemerality—from one day to the next, the construction site progresses toward the finished building and, simultaneously, toward the idealized image of the city. In this context, the artist dedicates significant time to composing each image, selecting it from within the vastness of the construction site, much like a photographer documenting a sculptor’s archive or a curator choosing objects for a museum collection.
In “Sculpted Spaces” at 2/3 Galeria, Mihai Șovăială expands the photographic medium through monumental installations, metallic textures, and projections, proposing a construction site aesthetic that recalibrates our perception of urban space.” — Laura Bivolaru
Mihai Șovăială is an artist living and working in Zurich and Bucharest. He completed his Meisterschüler studies in 2020 at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig, under the guidance of Joachim Brohm, after graduating from the Photo-Video department of the National University of Arts in Bucharest. In his artistic practice, Mihai explores urban and peripheral landscapes, reflecting on how built spaces influence social transformations and historical narratives. His works are presented as site-specific installations or published in the format of artist books.
Mihai has exhibited both locally and internationally in museums and galleries such as the Museum of Recent Art, Bucharest; the National Museum of Art, Chișinău; Kunstmuseum, Magdeburg; a&o Kunsthalle, Leipzig; Circulation(s) Festival, Paris; the National Museum of Art, Timișoara; Fotogalerie, Vienna; the Contemporary Photography Biennale, Iași; 2/3 Galeria, Bucharest; Plan-B Gallery, Cluj; Gaep Gallery, Bucharest; BTV Gallery, Innsbruck; Moebius Gallery, Bucharest; and Switch Lab, Bucharest.
Laura Bivolaru is a writer, curator, and visual artist. Her texts have been published in Art Monthly, C4 Journal, Photography INFLUX, and Photomonitor, and her essay In Defence of the Small Screen won the Michael O’Pray Prize in 2022.
Her curatorial projects include Semantics of the Shell (2023) at The Balcony, The Hague; Grafting: The Land and the Artist at London Art Fair, 2024; Extended Spatialities at 2/3 Galeria, Bucharest, 2024; and The Other Side of This Side at Leilei Gallery, Bucharest, 2024.
Between 2023 and 2024, she was part of the Expanded Librarian project at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at the University of Cambridge, a research initiative exploring contemporary models of collaborative image-text production. She is a member of the artist collective Revolv, which facilitates professional and educational opportunities for emerging artists in the UK. She is also an associate lecturer at the University of the Arts London, teaching in the London College of Communication undergraduate program.
As a guest lecturer, she has taught photography courses at UCA Farnham (2020), Kingston University (2022), and the University of Westminster (2023-2024) and has led workshop sessions for the East Meets West Masterclass in 2021 and 2022.
Laura graduated with First Class Honours from the BA Photographic Arts program at the University of Westminster and pursued a Master’s degree in Photography at the Royal College of Art, where her dissertation, Inheriting the Interstice: The Time Trap of Romania’s Transition Process, was awarded Distinction.
