Claudia Retegan is an artist-photographer, founder, and curator of the 2/3 gallery, a contemporary art gallery in Bucharest, that opened to the public last year in June. The gallery’s official opening was marked by the exhibition of the international artist John Divola whose works were exhibited for the first time in Romania.
You will be soon celebrating one year since the inauguration of 2/3 Gallery. How would you describe this experience?
(Pause) It was a year that passed extremely quickly. I often feel that I do not have enough hours in the day to finish all the things I intend to accomplish. It has been a difficult year. At first, there was a lot of uncertainty, especially in the first part of the year due to the global situation and the pandemic, but pulling the line after almost a year, there is satisfaction if I sit and look back because many things went better than I would have expected.
When exactly did the idea of opening the gallery come about? What was the context?
This thought came to me during my visit to Paris in the fall of 2019, and now I know for sure that was the moment of my decision. I was at Paris Photo and seeing all the galleries and all the buzz around that fair, I turned back with the belief that I wanted to open an art gallery, an art gallery specialized in photography. I realized that the motivation behind an art gallery is not exclusively related to the simple need for uniqueness and reinvention, because an art gallery, and in this case a photo gallery, at least from my point of view, such places are too rarely found in Bucharest. Many admired my courage, others told me that enthusiasm was fleeting, and remained skeptical about 2/3 gallery. Opening a gallery specializing in photographic art was a belief of mine, and I do not think it was a mere stubbornness, it remains to be seen.
2/3 of the gallery is located on French Street, no. 4, in a spectacular space. What is the story of the place?
Indeed, it is a very interesting space with a long history. The building was built in 1890. Initially, it had the destination of a hotel, and on the ground floor, it had spaces for shops. I found the building very interesting, because it began in 1890 with a special destination, with all the history of the French street in the interwar period, which changed during communism; thus the ground floor was converted into a food cooperative, called Gostat, which was famous at the time. This is visible through the materials in the space we are in, there are vestiges of different periods willfully preserved. I have this brick that I restored, which since 1890 is on the walls, there is that very iconic, communist mosaic, a Roman marble mosaic in the middle of which is written Gostat, which I decided not to give up. I felt like an archaeologist when I did the renovation of the gallery. Since the ’90s I think it has been part of the Ministry of the Interior, after that, for some time, it became a bar called ‘Date’, then a restaurant, and subsequently it has remained uninhabited for a very long time and now I hope to bring new life to this place with the art gallery.
Now, a year after the opening, please tell me how important is the location for the proper functioning of an art gallery?
For me, the location was important, because I wanted to open a gallery like I was used to seeing in New York City, which means a commercial gallery, a gallery that would be on the street, be downstairs, have generous windows, and good light. I wanted a gallery open to the future, to the public, accessible to any passerby, and I wanted it to be obvious once you enter the space. I wanted the positioning of the gallery not to be an obscure one, thus becoming a closed-circuit place, and difficult to reach the general public. I wanted an audience that would go beyond the self-referential condition. When I first entered this location, I knew that here would be the space where I would open the gallery.
The contemporary artist has an unlimited number of mediums to choose from. Do you see current pluralism as an advantage or a disadvantage?
It depends a lot on the artist and his understanding and affinity. More in art than in other fields, pluralism can become a disadvantage when the artist chooses at random, or feels oppressed by this fullness of mediums and modes of expression, choosing them randomly, without any aesthetic consideration, or any conceptual consideration, simply takes them at random. But that is solely my point of view. Otherwise, I think it is often an advantage and an expression of the technological impact that we feel daily. There is another downside, but I do not even realize if it is a disadvantage or an advantage, by the way, what we were talking about before, everything that is internet art or this new capitalization of art through NFT, in which the tendency towards a dematerialization is accentuated, or a capitalization of non-matter. I still cannot decide which side of the barricade I am on, because certain works, which I have seen marketed, seemed like a joke to me at one point, especially when I saw the related amounts. But at the risk of repeating myself, many of these, so-called revolutionary ways of capitalization, are at the beginning, and maybe over time these jokes, as I called them, will at some point become similar to Duchamp’s.
Most of the time when entering a contemporary art gallery, the viewer faces the difficulty of discovering if what he sees is an art and why it is art. How do you think they could overcome this blockage?
Very often artists consciously choose to provoke. When you enter a space destined for art, such as the space of a gallery, you should also become aware of the transition into a so-called ‘suspended’ space, clearly delimited, known as the white cube, this space outside of society, and outside of everyday life, outside of the modernity and visual agglomerations, of the urban information and the other interferences to which we are subjected. This place allows us to dream. Living in Bucharest, I think I feel this state of disconnection strongly. Once you go in, you assume that you have entered to look, think, listen, consume the art between these white walls, that this way of exposing, of contextualizing the works in a certain light, knowing that behind every piece of information delivered there is a decision, and so it can mean something. Deciphering a narrative often becomes part of the experience of an exhibition, each coming up with a different set of expectations and other sensibilities. The awareness of this demarcation is quite important because we are asked to leave behind the things we know or knew and to somehow enter another mindset, in which theoretically we should have the freedom, to anchor ourselves in a critical hypostasis towards what we see, whether it is a subjective one or a documented one. In any case, I suggest that viewers find the readiness to be open. The most important thing is to have a reaction to what we see and to spend that time, which we spend in a gallery, or in a museum, or any kind of exhibition, as in a special space, in which we can get rid of some of the prejudices, which we may have or some of the routines in which we find ourselves engaged. I do not know if I made myself very well understood, speaking of the expectations of an opening. I would be glad for the public to be open, whether they like it or dislike it, whether what they see fits or not their system of values. I would love to see the audience reacting to what they see and a curiosity…. because this is the most important starting point.
What message would you send to young artists in search of an art gallery?
To be persistent and to be honest when they send the artist portfolio. Ask for feedback. To ask for face-to-face meetings rather than online ones, and not to demotivate themselves. It has happened to me many times that I have received messages to which I did not have time to respond, and I felt very guilty after, and I wish that these young artists would not lose their self-confidence if they did not receive a positive response after the first attempts, even after several attempts not to demotivate themselves and, secondly if these young artists use the photographic environment or have curiosities regarding light and installation they should contact me.
