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Reading Together (I)

Duo exhibition

Hosted by tranzit. ro/ Iași space in Elena Doamna, no. 37, Iași

Friday 16th of July, 7 pm


The current exhibition is part of a series of three duo shows organized in the frame of the project Expoziția ca lectură (Exhibition as Reading) featuring works by artists and colleagues Beatrice Anghelache (RO), Baran Caginli (FI), Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan (RO/AT), Cătălin Gheorghe (RO), Dana Andrei & Sorin Popescu (RO) și Maxim Polyakov (MD).

It is superfluous to consider that exhibition making simply consists in bringing together “separated” artworks. This assemblage creates new contexts, raises awareness, promotes, presents and actualizes, frames and historicizes, evokes, develops, attempts to re-address questions, integrates and contextualizes, explores, challenges and collects to name but a few of many ways an exhibition can work. However, more or less importantly they construct the subjectivity of a curator, a position that is often contested, many times for good reasons. Who, why and what is this authority that acts as a gatekeeper of cultural affairs?
Therefore, one way to approach this was to try working with conceptual and esthetical counter expectations and move forward towards one of the questions of the reading groups organized in the frame of the same project: Who is the subject that reads and how do we read together?

Beatrice Anghelache and Baran Caginli are two artists that never met and that live in Bucharest, Romania and in Helsinki, Finland respectively.

Currently featured in Helsinki Biennial, Baran Caginli’s work often addresses contradictions of today's reality as it is lived, often from the perspective of the migrant, of the displaced, thus pointing out towards the system gaps that one has to surpass in order to arrive to safety. His contribution for the exhibition organised in Iasi is starting from the process of map reading. As a section of the ”Blackout” project, “Untitled is a photo series of various satellite views locations in Turkey, Spain, Italy, Poland, France, USA. These locations are used as military bases, state buildings and unknown facilities. The censoring creates a new aesthetic where architecture, environmental planning, vegetation blur together. The prints are cut to the censored area’s shape” (Baran Caginli).

On the other side of the room, Beatrice Anghelache’s artistic research consists in a series of interviews with a number of people, often active in the cultural life of Romania, to whom the artist addresses political questions such as “How did I become leftist?” “What left means for you?”. The artist’s process also included sketching portraits of these people that were later offered to them as a gift. The resulting texts, in the genre of the political autobiography, seem to track and trace the construction of political opinions, signaling the citizenship role that many of these people publicly assume and questioning the conceptual limits of “left” as a political identity.

Baran Caginli (b.1990, Istanbul) is a Helsinki based artist, working with different disciplines. The framework of his practice relates to issues such as systematic repression, extermination, disappearance, amnesia, ethnic discrimination, state power, forced migrations, forced disappearances but in the same time re-appearance, collective memory and the state’s contradictions. Most people and objects he has included in his works are in the position of witness of an incident. Although the witnesses belong to local problems and realities, they also refer to problems and witnesses in other geopolitical contexts.

Beatrice Anghelache is a Romanian artist living in Bucharest. She studied painting at the Fine Arts University "George Enescu", Iasi, Romania, and also physics and chemistry at the Technical University "Gheorghe Asachi", Iasi, Romania. She had solo shows at 1001 Arte Gallery, Bucharest (2020), Th. Pallady Gallery, Iasi, Romania (2019 ), EuropaNova Gallery, Bruxelles, Belgium (2018), Arthis Gallery, Bruxelles, Belgium (2015), CMU University Gallery, Pittsburgh, USA (2010), Galeria Cupola, Iasi, Romania (2008 ), Galeria Triconc, Iasi, Romania (2006), Institutul Cutural Roman, Berlin, Germany (2005), University Gallery, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA, USA (2000 ), Arte Gallery, Iasi, Romania (1998). Among the group exhibitions we can mention: "Oracol", National Museum of Romanian Literature, Bucharest (2020), "Phallus Impudicus", "Pudendum Feminum", Alert Gallery, Bucharest (2020), " Maiastra EA" Galateca Gallery, Bucharest (2020),"Gradini suspendate"/ Suspended Gardens, Ion Frunzetti Gallery, Bacau (2020), “Arta contemporana feminina” / Contemporary Feminine Art, Caminul Artei, Bucharest (2020), "Beyond the Infinity", Palace of Culture Iasi (2020), “Imaginile lui Enescu”, National Library of Romania (2019) and many others.

Cultural project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. This project does not necessarily represent the position of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how project results can be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.

Image: Untitle
2020
8 laser cut photographic prints on aluminum







 

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