The group exhibition Shaped Around the Machine on display at MATCA artspace brings together the artistic discourses of seven Romanian artists: Alina Andrei, Diana Șinteuan, Andriana Oborocean, Sasha Bandi, Matei Toșa, Maria Elena Șofrac and Alexandra Mocan.

Part of Faster Than Your Local Delivery Service project, co-financed by AFCN, the exhibition “Shaped Around the Machine explores the complexity of the relationship between time, the speed of contemporary society and the pressure to adapt our way of living to the conditions imposed by dominant mechanisms: from institutions to corporations, or standardized value systems. The proposed selection of works reflects on the transformation of the informational environment and on our ability to keep up with certain transitions marked by the development of markets and consumer mindsets.

At a time when property has the ability to become an institution and a control mechanism, our principles and values ​​risk being governed more and more by stereotypes, both when it comes to productivity, aesthetics, personal or professional development, and value systems ( …).

Much of the current time is speculated under the assumption that anything can be augmented and improved, with technologies and large corporations playing a significant role in starting these constructs to ensure their own development/maintenance in the market. There is much more marginal than we can access through the lens of our own screens, and conflict between the professional environment and actual living. The form of life and its nuances, beyond branding, are in perpetual instability where the individual is always adapting and re-adapting. In this context, I invited the artists in this exhibition to mentally visit both places and times of their personal dynamics with what the consumer society means for them, but also to imagine a possible finality of it through various objective, ironic or sensitive approaches.

The subtle message of the exhibition criticizes the way institutions and the concept of ownership shape our lives, with the ultimate goal of automating us, homogenizing us, or identifying us as buyers. The exhibited works illustrate in one way or another the frenetic rhythm of everyday life, where the collision between the utilitarian and the artificial are central themes, both in the way of reflecting the present time and in imagining some speculations of the future, where inoculated meanings are no longer relevant or landmarks.
From this point of view, the presence of ruin is inevitable, and the need for change is correlated with the abandonment of what is trending now and the migration to fiction. Freedom from the pressures of the contemporary world comes with observation, irony, chaos, and dreaming.
If some contributions in the exhibition look nostalgically at society’s ability to invent and generate new and new worlds or the transition between working life and sacrifice, other works present in the selection tacitly investigate pollution with variable means of consumption meant to facilitate our efficiency, until the riot and chaos generated by the market’s inability to meet our true needs, and implicitly, the promises.” (excerpt from the curatorial text)

The exhibition can be visited until July 20, 2024. Admission is free