I was preparing to interview Ioana Maria Sisea, whose Bega Box exhibition Harvest Time was closing when I learned that Cristian Rusu my friend – artist and scenographer, was going to Timisoara the same day. So, we travelled to Kunsthalle Bega in Timisoara in a car assigned to pick up Cristian since we live in the same city.
A large cardboard model swayed on the backseat of the car, which resembled a London cab. Cristian excitedly told me we were carrying a cardboard model of his new “Ghost Geometry” to show Alina Cristescu and Bogdan Rata, the institution’s directors. “Please watch it so it doesn’t topple,” he said.
On September 13, 2022
I was invited on a private tour by curator Diana Marincu. She was about to close an exhibition of internationally acclaimed Macedonian artists Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska, who live and work in Skopje and Berlin. Diana Marincu then put together a small show with paintings by Ioana Bătranu and Adela Giurgiu and a short video by Agnès Varda. The Art Encounters Foundation’s “Symmetrical, Never Identical” show ended in March. It was part of the foundation’s curatorial and strategic goal to bring together artists from different generations so that their works can be put in a conceptual rather than a chronological context.
Cosmina Goagea, Corina Oprea, and Brindușa Tudor were in charge of putting together one of the most important events for this year’s Capital of Culture. A project called Chronic Desire takes place in four locations: the Corneliu Mikloşi Museum of Public Transport, Maria Theresia Bastion, Stefania Palace, and Timișoara Garrison. It brings together works by Harum Morrison, Joan Jonas, Slavs & Tatars, Renée Renard, Dan Perjovski, Saskia Holmkvist, and Tarek Atoyi with a sound performance at the Stronghold Synagogue, to name a few.
At the Museum of Public Transport, Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan have a public sculpture or installation that is worth mentioning. It was commissioned for 2023 and is called “When Stones Are Talking.” The work is a series of stones with engraved messages about climate engineering and how the agricultural industry and military use it. In the context of climate change, the work becomes a sensor of hydrological manifestations and an invisible public monument in the Bega riverbed, perhaps Timișoara’s most discreet monument.
In the most beautiful central square of the city, the National Museum show of one of the most complex and daring artists, fills the entire second level. It goes into detail about many practices, from sculpture to performance, but most importantly, Friedemann Malschm, Magda Radu, and Georg Schollhammer show him as a thinker whose objects are a work in progress, a search for something immaterial. Paul Neagu is in a league of his own in the history of art. This retrospective, brought to Timisoara with the help of Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, BRUSEUM/Neue Galerie Gratz, and the Paul Neagu Estate, prides itself on being the first in Romania, but in fact curator Liviana Dan organized with the support of the British Council between October 27 and December 15, 1994 at the Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu an exhibition that filled the entire museum space; this is not to say that what we have at the National Museum in Timisoara is not a good approach to his oeuvre. However, I would add that it was a tactical mistake on the part of both the exhibition’s designer and the curators to display his works in such small spaces. This has led to untidy viewing angles where doors and radiators or dehumidifiers interfere with an otherwise brilliant work. Known for his performances (Ramp, 1975, 1976, 1978), Gradually Going Tornedo (1975, 1975, 1976, 1998), or Blind Bite (1971-1976), and his explorations in the medium of sculpture in the mid-1970s, as well as for his best-known invention, the Hyphen, a simultaneously conceptual and material entity that encapsulates a wide range of symbols and metaphors associated with the basic geometric forms, Neagu founded the Generative Arts Group: “complex zigzags made up of hesitations, steps forward, demolitions, and reconstructions, as in the process of forging, on several planes.” (1)
His Hyphen, perhaps his best- known series of works, are open rectangles supported by three legs. The form was originally developed in the context of his performances. Neagu observed: “A hyphen-prototype is a rectangle kept in mid-air by two parallel legs that are bent like hooks over a triangular base. The third ramp-like leg shaft is diagonal and longer, supporting the rectangle in opposition to the other two. Formed as a bridge inside the hierarchy of manifestation and becoming. As in mineral-vegetable-animal-human-superhuman… or point-like-angle-triangle-rectangle-circle-spiral (amorphous-like-conscious-self-aware, etc.). Thus, the hyphen is an epistemological metaphor in the spirit of mediation and ‘betweenness’. (2)
The inauguration of the City of Culture 2023 drew a large number of visitors to the museum, where Paul Neagu’s artwork was being shown at the time. Because of the enormous number of visitors, it was a poor decision to isolate three of his large aluminum Hyphens in a separate corridor from the other artwork that was on display. It is inappropriate to hang art in corridors with the intention that people will go past it without looking at it or giving it any thought before moving on.
Timisoara, October 22, 2022
At the whispered end of autumn, I found myself in the company of Adrian Notz, the newly appointed curator of the 2023 Art Encounters Biennial, painter Dumitru Gorzo, PR strategist Andreea Draghicescu, and esteemed guests and friends, including curator Liviana Dan and artist Mircea Stanescu, in an atmosphere of conviviality that I have come to expect at Kunsthalle Bega since its opening in 2019. The event celebrated Cristian Rusu’s amazing partnership with Diana Marincu (artistic director of Art Encounters Foundation) and her well-deserved Kunsthalle Bega curator of the year award.
Since September of last year, I’ve been in and out of Timisoara, which was on the verge of being named European Capital of Culture and opening its doors to a slew of events, some of which had been long-awaited, such as the magnetic first retrospective of Romanian surrealist painter Victor Brauner “Inventions and Magic,” or the upcoming blockbuster exhibition of the works of pioneering Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, which is set to open on September 30, 2023
I had the pleasure of conversing with Andrei Jecza, the owner of the same-named gallery, during my visits. At the time, Ami Barak had just curated the group exhibition “In and Out, Out and In,” which featured well-known artists like Mircea Cantor and SubReal Group as well as other amazing artists, and it had just opened. Liviana Dan, who was with me and who professed her love for it after she spent a scorching summer at the gallery working on The Impossible Garden, could not help but relax for a moment in the gallery’s neighboring garden of showy yellow grove bamboos.
Jecza Gallery then presented renowned artists Ritzi Jacobi and Peter Jacobi (Textures of Memory. Works from five decades), whose works in textile, wood, and metal earned them the opportunity to represent Romania at the Venice Biennale in 1970.
On the same day, Mircea, Alina, Andreea, and others joined us as we went into the open studio of New York artist Dumitru Gorzo. He had been sculpting and painting for a few weeks after moving into the urban military compound from the 18th century. A project he is still working on in other cities, as it appears that such live practice suits him well.
1 – Witold Gombrowicz, Diary, vol. 2 (1957-61), trans. Lillian Vallee (Evan- ston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1989), p. 5.
2 – Paul Neagu and Monica Omescu in the catalogue of the Paul Neagu. Drawing-Engraving-Sculpture exhibition, edited by Paul Neagu and Ruxandra Balaci with Marica Grigorescu and Horea Avram. Romanian National Museum of Art, Department of Contemporary Art, 1996, p.11
