Zina Gallery presents Giulia Crețulescu’s first solo show within the gallery, “Sword Swallowing Acrobat”, which also marks the beginning of the official representation of the artist.
The exhibition, curated by Edith Lázár, displays a new series of textile and metal installations that continue Giulia Crețulescu’s investigation into the aesthetic and cultural dimensions of ergonomic surfaces and design. This time, she turns towards the mechanics of body enhancement and body control used in Pilates or fitness, seen as symptoms of interchangeability between human and device.

“Sword Swallowing Acrobat delves into the possibilities of optimization and automation of the body, and the seductive ideologies sewn in these desires for change. Giulia Crețulescu continues her interest in the ergonomics of adaptation and a fascination for technical drawing. Soft cushions, hard articulations and fluid plates, tapestries born out of industrial signaling or cylinders of the production line – show off the engineering principle of utmost efficiency ingrained in the objects’ original mundane design. Yet, they also speak of the body, hinting at an alchemical transfer of properties, in a correspondence between human and non-human agents. Of becoming body, and becoming machinic, of being worked out. Beyond the normative use, they appear as objects of fetish and totemic reverence.”- excerpt from Edith Lázár’s curatorial text

Giulia CREȚULESCU (b. 1994, Craiova) graduated from the National University of Art Bucharest. While studying graphics, she became interested in the representational phenomenon as a dynamic between consciousness and action and in how the two-dimensional image communicates in a system of three-dimensional objects, forming referential circuits on the human body.

Her interdisciplinary approach is embodied in hybrid objects that aim at the deconstruction of the object until the dissolution of its identity in a foreign body, deprived of any immediate function, thus becoming purely disruptive entities that force their placement under a new identity. The interest for the liminal, trans-categorical character of an object is powered by the desire to place the artistic object under an uncertain status that approaches and forces the viewer to come up with a series of possible ontologies into which they develop.

Her works have been exhibited in institutions, art spaces and art galleries such as The National Museum of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Recent Art, Cazul 101, Atelier 35, Ivan Gallery, Goodbuy Gallery, CAV Gallery in Bucharest; Matca artspace, Zina Gallery, and Aici Acolo Pop Up Gallery in Cluj-Napoca. Her works are part of the permanent collection of The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest.

The exhibition can be visited at Zina Gallery in Cluj-Napoca until May 17, from Wednesday to Saturday, between 4 and 7 p.m. Entry is free.

Cover photo: YAP Studio / Mădălin Mărgăritescu @m.dox