Noima – Hidden Paradise

Vienna Art Week Special 2018


Hidden Paradise



Ciprian Bodea, Constantin Flondor, Cosmin Fruntes, Andrei Rosetti, Sorin Scurtulescu
21.11.2018 7 pm Vernissage and Round Table Talk with Ileana Pintilie and the artists


Duration 22.11. – 01.12.2018

Pictures of the Exhibition








Photocredits Mute Insurgent 2018
Hidden Paradise is a group show by Ciprian Bodea, Cosmin Fruntes, Andrei Rosetti, Sorin Scurtulescu, students of Constantin Flondor and a round table talk with Ileana Pinitilie, art historian and curator.
What Ileana Pintilie and the 4 artists have in common is the passion for art history as development of art projects and Timisoara.
Timisoara has been kind of cradle for innovative and contemporary artist like Constantin Flondor, Stefan Bertalan, Doro Tulcan a.m.m. Their Neo-avantgarde approaches in Eastern Europe, i.e. Sigma group (Stefan Bertalan, Constantin Flondor, Lucian Codeianu, Doro Tulcan) is still surprisingly contemporary. Nature and science became platforms for a nonconformist art in the increasingly restrictive nineteen seventies under Ceausescu regime.
Many western European artists have been influenced of the Eastern European development in contemporary art and performative art especially, without referring or mentioning it.
Hidden Paradise allows the recipient a glimpse in different levels of history. Intimate stories from the childhood or won experiences in the changes of times and systems. Sociopolitical stories about disobedience and revolt. Historical stories about transformation from modern to contemporary art. All these stories are fixed to the specific example of the Romanian border town Timisoara, the relevant cradle of political and art historian revolution.

Ileana Pintilie:

Between 1965 and 1989, two developments coincided in Romania: the rise of Nicolae CeauÅŸescu’s communist party to state power and the slow but predictable establishment of his personal dictatorship. When CeauÅŸescu was elected in 1965, an initially impression emerged that he was pushing ahead  the much-anticipated domestic change, a liberation from the influence of Stalin, and the beginning of a dialogue with the Western world. The desire to become independent from its neighbors to the east was particularly evident in Romania’s secession from members of the Warsaw Pact, when they ended military reform in the Czech Republic in the summer of 1968 in Prague. In 1971, after a visit to China and North Korea, he expanded censorship and ideological control in all areas of society, from education and culture to public life to state-led initiatives, impressed by totalitarian communism and the Cultural Revolution in Asia to the birth increase.
In parallel with official art dictated by political power, some artists sought to establish their own “survival strategies.” They developed experimental practices that revolved essentially around ephemeral forms as well as ironic and socio critical positions. Although they worked in rather isolated conditions, artists occasionally managed to exhibit in alternative spaces: in cultural clubs, the Hall of the Architectural Institute in Bucharest, or in their own studios and apartments. Others tried to build open and nonconformist communication forums. Mail Art provided an independent, ironic and subversive medium – and a way to circumvent censorship.

The perfect form of a snowflake was part of the passion of Constantin Flondor, the perfect rendition of nature was one of his objectives. Following the principles of the idea Ciprian Bodea is transforming the conception in contemporary reflexion. He used an flower of an apple tree as a example. While studying the little flower and then the flower branch, he noticed the shape of the pentagon in the apple flower and half of a dodecahedron. He played a little with geometry and organics starting to mirror concrete elements in nature. The tendency of bursting the bounds of frame is obvious. Through shaping the frame Bodea tried to approximate the natural crystalline form and to refer to the naturally molecular structures.

Cosmin Fruntes´s work is a childhood memory when he was lying in the grass at night and watching the constellations of the stars above. He was in the mountains at his grandparents place. The work is made by a piece of his grandparents’ house. On this piece he found some marks which reminds him of the constellation of the past and the vision of a paradise, even hidden in old  bricks and wooden beams.

Andrei Rosetti is telling about his option for art, which came after the exit from the totalitarian regime of Ceausescu. The influence through western medias in Timisoara during the 80ties was affected by its position close to the border. Even if it was illegal people knew about the life outside. The object Rosetti is presenting at the Hidden Paradise Show in occasion on Vienna Are Week Gallery night on 21.11.2018 is part of a series, which is enclosed with a bracket of time, from his very early times as an artist in 2007 till today. The idea is to start drawing with seeds, let them grow in a transparent box, observing the fragility and power in growing, watching the transformation from a two-dimensional drawing to a three-dimensional object.

Sorin Scurtulescu is a maniac painter following the plain air idea. His output is enormous and his existent seems to be directly connected with brushes and paint. His versions of Hidden Paradise are made in Greece, impressions painted on the beach, diving into the colour of sea and sky, searching for the perfect moment, when intensity of the light and colour is in sync. While others are enjoying beachlife, Scurtulescu is captured in his needs of expressing his feelings, his observations through painting.

Drawing, painting, sharing visual experiences, changing perspectives and approaches, following game-moves and often a particular grammar, searching for collective visual perspectives in different contexts is the main aim of all of them.

 

In Cooperation with Vienna Art Week & AU-Strom

 

Photocredit: Invitation

Sorin Scurtulescu, 360 degrees / Thassos Palm Tree, 2015

Courtesy of the artist and 12-14 Contemporary, Vienna.