LABORNA Gallery presented between September 30 and October 23 the collective exhibition “A history that is, One that could be and One that did not exist”, curated by Ciprian Paleologu.

Ciprian Paleologu selected eight contemporary artists: Ioana Alecu, Mădălina Lucșoreanu, Iulia Mirică, Ovidiu Morar, Ciprian Paleologu, Raluca Pavelescu, Oana Sima and Matei Udriște, who conceptually reinterpreted art objects chosen from Ovidiu Morar’s collection.

Empower Artists talked to Ciprian Paleologu about the context in which this project took shape and about the intervention of each artist.

What is the story of the exhibition “A history that is, One that could be and One that did not exist”?

Ciprian Paleologu: “A history that is, One that could be and One that did not exist” is an idea that has been waiting for its proper moment to be presented. Quite complex, this concept has anatomy fascinating through the prism of internal connections: it needed, on the one hand, consistent collectible pieces with threads that could connect, artists open to appropriating and reinterpreting them in a personal key and a moment of ample visibility.

Ovidiu Morar had the goodwill and pleasure to allow us to probe into his excellent collection of extremely diverse objects from all parts of the globe and many different historical periods to achieve this endeavor.
In the collections, there are classes of pieces to which their origin, story, and traceability are known, in parallel with another category that has not revealed all its secrets and complex life. The combination of certainties and enigmas is fascinating. It leaves room for artistic interpretations, and projections, about potential not yet exploited.

I chose eight contemporary artists: Ioana Alecu, Mădălina Lucșoreanu, Iulia Mirică, Ovidiu Morar, Ciprian Paleologu, Raluca Pavelescu, Oana Sima, Matei Udrişte to conceptually reconfigure the collection object and place it in a new perspective.

Each artistic concept was attached to a print in which two components were visible – on the one hand, the artist’s vision about the new construction and the proposed reconfiguration, in parallel with the notes of the collector Ovidiu Morar regarding how those objects became his property and their history (as much as it is known). Intentionally, any of the 13 collectibles had a mysterious, unspoken, and only presumed part.

Thus “A history that is, one that could also be one that did not exist” becomes fully functional: “The history that is” precisely translated the known form, the one “that could be” proposes probing in the related possibilities and assumptions proximate to the phenomenon, and the one “that did not exist” gives the artist the extra fantasy and reinterpretation, without destroying the deep ideational content of the object.

What is an item you want to collect? More exactly, how would you define the collection item?

Ciprian Paleologu: What is an item you want to collect? A perpetual promise of satisfaction, through the aura of its charge, of the history that accompanies it (known, suspected, or just presumed). An intriguing complex of feelings meant to get attached to it, research it, and project on it and through it. This element will generate new histories, depending on the context and ambiance in which you place it.

To what extent has the gallery’s architecture allowed you to create a coherent and unified presentation framework?

Ciprian Paleologu: Laborna Gallery, through its architecture, makes the spaces to be clearly defined, so we were able to build a square of four conceptual notes: the first space on the ground floor of the gallery was designed for a sequence with accents of socio-political irony, related to a system that is always reinventing itself (Iulia Mirică), then we used an aisle-room that connects the ground floor and the first floor as an element of self-reflection and reflection / meditation in relation to the deep self ( Raluca Pavelescu), the route continues with the first room at the top of the gallery where the combination of utopia and beliefs (Ioana Alecu and Ovidiu Morar) was imagined, and the last part / fourth space revealed a historical-temporary cutout, practically a sequence of a time stopped from history – the end of the 1800s, like a strange snapshot in which you almost do not realize that in different corners of the globe certain phenomena were unfolding in parallel (Oana Sima, Ciprian Paleologu, Mădălina Lucșoreanu and Matei Udrişte).

Please describe your intervention as an artist. How did you relate to the proposed curatorial concept?

Ciprian Paleologu: The sequence proposed by me is called “Difficult times have just begun/ The Curse of the Samurai” and benefits from three landmark objects: a Japanese Stamp, probably from the end of the XVIII century, the beginning of the nineteenth century representing a group of anxious samurai and captured from an unconventional, atypical perspective; an Engraving about the Meiji Emperor, circa 1860, perhaps showing the first public image of Emperor Meiji. It appears in the middle of the imperial suite, overseeing the casting of a screed by a French team and a photographic Photo-Print of Nagasaki City, about 1880, which shows us through the lens of an American the standard image of the bay, the port, the gateway of Japan to the overseas world.

The concept of the work, presented in the form of an installation, simulates the imprint of the Shinto faith from the samurai era, dominated by Kami – a series of deities, spirits, and holy powers, combined with the identity and power of the samurai, and finally a symbolic accent of what the city of Nagasaki meant for Japan. The reign of the samurai class for almost 700 years, which in some form was strongly affected under the restoration of Meiji, by the urbanization of the country and the exit from isolationism also meant a deep fault line. It blends into this samurai “curse” – symbols cut out and painted on the skin, a dominant Kami spirit, drawn with ink on the hanji paper, and, the shadow of a black, strange, wooden plane with direct reference to the tragic historical destiny of Nagasaki.

Can you please present to us the approaches of the other artists who were part of the collective exhibition?

Ciprian Paleologu: Iulia Mirică with the installation ” Oficiul Păcălelii”, in the ground floor space, has as a landmark two collector’s objects – a social game “The Game of Political Hazard” coming as a supplement to the newspaper Vremea from the ’30s, which has as a pretext the construction of the career of an aspirant politician of the times, and an enameled metal Plate from the 20s “The spit on the floor is stopped” that was collected from a collection of over 10 000 such a pre-war objects. Julia reinterprets the idea of a board game in an ironic key using an anamorphic element of spatially dominant character type, graphic references to vintage photographs, and a kind of theory of the act of spitting, in different hypostases with significance.

The aisle-type transit space that Raluca Pavelescu is building with the idea of ” Sevrajul de 56 de minute” starts from the reference point of a precious framed Mirror from the XVIIIth century, with a metallic framing full of details, superbly handmade. At one end of the perspective, the mirror has the artist’s black-and-white monotypes on the sides of the room, with a mob of characters pressing the frame and invading it. It is an approach with philosophical notes about identity, insecurity, masking, self-deception, etc. perceived through the prism of the fact that every day we spend a substantial part of our time looking for our illusory reflection.

The next sequence in the exhibition is Ioana Alecu’s concept called ” Etern Posibil”. It has in its proximity two extremely interesting collectible objects – A sculpture of a saint, the religious play of the early nineteenth century, recovered from the bin of a parish house in Transylvania, the sculpture becoming over time a respectful butaforie by adding a head from a dissipated puppet theater, from Obor. Next to it is placed the small engraving, also from the same century, representing saint Christophorus with a dog’s head.
Ioana discusses the reason for the evolution of the legends and the dynamics of their structural development, which bring with them multitudes of conceptual and representational polymorphic interpretations.

In the proximity of Ioana Alecu is the wall of Ovidiu Morar, who besides being a collector is also an artist, editor, physics teacher, etc. He chose a fictitious map of the “Accurata Utopiae Tabula” from 1694, designed by cartographer and editor Pieter Schenk, in the Netherlands. A gem of oddities. From this index, he built a map extension on the entire surface of space, minimally linear, which also maps a geography existing only in his imagination, a concept called “Catatonic”.

It is worth noting that Ovidiu Morar has been working on utopian maps, like an automatic dictate, for decades. Interestingly, in the artistic vision, in addition to the graphic signs of the acquisitive map, numerous frames of different shapes and styles are placed, alluding to a so-called becoming and aspiration to the “celebrity” of the landmark object.

Perhaps the most complex surface in the exhibition is the last room where the speeches of four artists are gathered – Oana Sima, Ciprian Paleologu, Mădălina Lucșoreanu, and Matei Udrişte. The key to this space is the special note of the fact that, at the same time, in different corners of the world, phenomena were happening that seemed so diverse and polarized.

Oana Sima, with “Mr. X”, analyzes in-depth and carries on the intensity of the collection object – an atypical Painting about Hunedoara, from the ’50s, which represents the ferrous metallurgy platform of the city, from the perspective of a visitor of the Huniazilor Castle. The opposite of most of the known tourist views, with a clear propagandistic purpose. The iron factory had been founded in the Austro-Hungarian period, in 1884.

The artist Oana Sima presents a new beginning in a city that promises to forget history and build a new one on the bases of steel, Mr. X being a fictional-ghostly character, one of the 15,000 employees of the former ferrous metallurgy plant in Hunedoara. Thus the intention of the discourse becomes social, with an emphasis on the drama of many existences that are grubbed up, permuted, and then forgotten. Continuous inadequacy, as a form of acceptance, leaves deep traces.

The speech of the last room in the exhibition continues with the wall designed by Mădălina Lucșoreanu – “Calm Tulburător/ Disturbing Calm” expression of two collectible landmarks: a Daghereotipie, circa 1880, which represents a soldier as an unknown character and an Engraving – London newspaper illustration from 1877 that recalls the episode of the Romanian attack on Plevna, drawn by an artist specially sent to the Turkish-Russian-Romanian conflict.

Mădălina puts us in a special context, configuring through her drawings a distorted world of what we know about conflict and war. We are used to busy, dynamic, overwhelming scenes meant to suggest a dramatic atmosphere. But now we are dealing with a conceptual upheaval, the emphasis being on the idea of an oppressive lull, on the repetition of symbols extracted from the context, etc.

The last sequence belongs to Matei Udrişte with “Secvențe Relative/ Relative Sequences” which benefits from an extremely important piece from Ovidiu Morar’s art collection, a copper plate in relief, from the Edo culture, which represents a warrior from the Benin Empire. This type of plaque was produced in abundance for the royal palace of Benin. They were taken, in 1897, by triumphant Englishmen, after which they entered the commercial circuits.

The concept of Matei Udriște’s project turns into a metallic structure of its own in the form of an altar of remembrance, in which the viewer enters like a cage, to look at and understand the object from a new perspective, in a graphic intervention, directly on the gallery wall.

In the end, it is worth noting that beyond being an exhibition concept that is suddenly consumed, “A history that is, One that could be and One that could not be” was also thought of as a possible series of events/episodes with important new collectibles and artists too, turning into a serial formula.