On July 7, Estopia Art Gallery Lugano opened the exhibition “Mediating Illusion. The Temptation to Exist ”, by Ada Muntean, the artist’s first solo show in Switzerland.
Empower Artists talked to artist Ada Muntean and Irina Ungureanu, co-founder of Estopia Art Gallery, about the latest art project presented at the exhibition space in Lugano, Switzerland.

Estopia Art Gallery Lugano recently opened a new exhibition presenting the creation of a new Romanian artist. On July 7, you organized the opening of the exhibition “Mediating Illusion. The Temptation to Exist”, by Ada Muntean, the first personal exhibition of the artist in Switzerland. How is contemporary Romanian art received by the Swiss public?

Irina Ungureanu: We are glad that we managed, at the beginning of July, to present at Estopia Lugano the latest series of works, “Mediating Illusion. The Temptation to Exist”, by Ada Muntean. For us, it is very important to continue the direction started 3 years ago when we opened the gallery in Bucharest and Lugano with the thought of creating concrete opportunities for access to the international art market for young Romanian artists.

In the meantime, we could say that we have formed an audience in Lugano, increasingly interested in the art of Eastern Europe. In addition to its strategic proximity to Milan, with a very diverse and potentially interested audience also in art as an investment form, Lugano has for several years a contemporary art fair, Wopart, which is on the rise and offers a formidable openness to emerging art markets.

What we have noticed in the period since we opened the gallery is that, in the current dynamics of the art market, it matters less the nationality of the artists, let’s say, and much more the universe of their art, the concept, the frame on which the projects presented are structured. Just as much matters the coherence of the gallery that represents them – together, the artist and the gallery, they form a team that communicates a message from which the reception of the work starts.

Ada Muntean’s ongoing exhibition aroused a special interest both through the experimental area explored by the artist – the mélange of materials used, which brought her series of works to the border between painting and installation – and through the reference to Emil Cioran’s “Temptation to Live”, filtered through an extremely personal key.

It is the second personal exhibition organized by Estopia Art Gallery for the artist Ada Muntean. How did the collaboration begin?

Irina Ungureanu: We have a three-year collaboration behind us, which started with a collective exhibition, at Estopia Bucharest: “Blurred Is the New ID” was the title of the exhibition, and a very suggestive work of Ada even gave the image of the entire exhibition.

The highlight of our collaboration was then her personal exhibition, also presented at Estopia Bucharest, in 2020, which at that time included a selection of works from a larger project, “Corporealities. Uncertain Bodies”, and who actually had a very serious Ph.D. research behind it. We were very interested in her research in the area of corporeality, her preoccupation with metamorphosis and the transformation of the body – very inspired was, in fact, the phrase itself corporealities. The exhibition in Bucharest was a success, it was very visited and aroused a lot of interest, and the background of the artist, at the meeting between graphics and painting, I also think brought a plus of curiosity for the public: there were many questions related to technique and the concept of corporeality.

The exhibition now at Estopia Lugano I could say is almost a natural continuation of our dialogue – it was very stimulating for us to get into Ada’s new search, to understand her preoccupation with Cioran’s “the thinking condemned to lucidity“, the careful reading of the volume “Temptation to Live”, as well as the subtlety of interpreting some key concepts in this book. Through the words of the artist, “Mediating Illusion. The Temptation to Exist” aims to “mediate between reality and illusion, material and immaterial, intellect and affect, certainty and relativity and last but not least between reality and its projection in art”.

What was your biggest challenge as an artist/gallerist in preparing the exhibition?

Ada Muntean: The biggest challenge was to design the project specifically for the gallery location in Lugano, to imagine my work in a space that I hadn’t seen physically, but only as a plan and in photographs. For me it is essential to understand the context and specificity of the space in which I exhibit, these coordinates determine the way in which I conceive a series of works, starting with the elaboration of the concept behind them and reaching their aesthetic form.

Irina Ungureanu: I think a big challenge was to do the selection of the works together with Ada, being already a consistent corpus of works made in this project. When you make such a selection, as the artist says, you must be totally in the spirit of the space in which you will exhibit. It is difficult to choose, but once made and negotiated between the artist and the gallerist, the adventure of the new exhibition begins with the actual arrangement: there, the works acquire a new, sometimes unexpected, and surprising aura in dialogue with each other.

How important is it for you to convey a message through your art?

Ada Muntean: I think that for every artist it is very important to send a message to the viewer or at least challenge the receiver to ask themselves a series of questions, to question certain ways of perception, to transpose it into a state in which to “accept” reality per se but to analyze it perhaps from new perspectives, determined by experience, resulting from the meeting with the art/artistic act. The form and substance of the message are or should be, from my point of view, carefully constructed by the artist and are determined by the depth, maturity, and experience that the artist acquires over time.

What were the stages of your creative process, from the idea or inspiration to the new series of “Mediating Illusion works. The Temptation to Exist”?

Ada Muntean: I started thinking two years ago about the approach of conceiving a series of works starting from “The Temptation to Exist” by Emil Cioran, but the process was quite long, influenced not only by a single literary source but by several factors, namely all the powerful events that have happened around us in the last 2-3 years that have made me reflect, more in isolation, what is actually the temptation to exist, how do I see it in the light of the current reality, how fragile is our existence, what it is made of and how greedy we are to keep it. The works have developed intuitively. Following this red thread and experimenting in painting and drawing, inserting other materials such as artificial leather and fur, polystyrene, and so on, in mixed media compositions, I had as a starting point an immediate reality, doubled by the sensations, impressions, and projections extracted from my subjective and particular existence.

When did you know you finished the new series? Tell us more about the whole experience until you were fully satisfied with the result.

Ada Muntean: I worked for about a year and a half on this project, the artworks exhibited in the gallery being a selection from a more extensive body of works. Honestly, I don’t think I have finished it, it’s a topic that I would approach differently at different stages of existence. If now at this stage I have had a figurative approach in some relatively traditional techniques, in a future stage I can approach the concept perhaps strictly photographically, in a manner far from the predictable figurative. I believe that the series can be continued and I have to see how exactly, this is determined by my evolution as a human being and artist.

How would you describe the artist-curator relation?

Ada Muntean: I consider the artist-curator relationship a collaboration, a negotiation between two parties, where each side comes with its own perspective and experience, meant to bring a plus to the project and to materialize it in a consistent and relevant form.

You have participated in numerous exhibitions and collective projects in the country and abroad. How would you describe the experience of your first personal exhibition in Switzerland?

Ada Muntean: The exhibition in Switzerland was a positive experience and a desideratum that I proposed when I started working with the gallery, an international solo show being, I think, a dream for any visual artist. After a difficult period in which it was difficult for us to travel, and to have events with the public, this kind of project for me came as a reset, as a new motivation to continue my activity that I want to be permanent and sustained. I want to have a “body of work” as cohesive and coherent as possible, and this type of project determines me to assume a consistent approach.

With what attitude should we step into the exhibition “Mediating Illusion. The Temptation to Exist”?

Ada Muntean: I do not think that I am able to impose a certain type of attitude “right” or “appropriate”, I think that for any artistic gesture the receiver must be open and free to perceive it, to give himself time, availability and sincerity to interact with the work of art. An artistic intervention, of whatever nature it may be, gains life when the viewer creates a context of honest perception, being open to the dynamics that appear between him and the artistic object.