Published by Art Encounters:
Our Other Us
Art Encounters Biennial 2021
Curators:
Kasia Redzisz & Mihnea Mircan
Editor: Diana Marincu
Technical editor & translation:
Bertha Savu
Text authors:
Bogdan Ghiu
Diana Marincu
Mihnea Mircan
Kasia Redzisz
Maria Rus Bojan
Graphic design: Larisa Sitar
Languages: Romanian / English
Publication date: October 2021
Publisher: Art Encounters
Format: Paperback | 157 pages
ISBN: 978-606-93957-1-4
Dimensions: H: 30 cm | L: 20 cm
Anatomies of desire, metamorphoses of the image Nr.1
Editors: Mica Gherghescu and Diana Marincu
Texts by Mica Gherghescu and Catherine Hansen
Invited artists: Adrian Ghenie, Lea Rasovszky and Gheorghe Rasovszky
Typescript: D. Trost
Language: Romanian / English / French
Publication date: 2020
Publisher: Art Encounters
Format: Paperback | 56 pages
ISBN: 978-606-93957-5-2
Dimensions: H: 28 cm | L: 21 cm
The exhibition and publication have benefited from the trust and involvement of many contributors and supporters. Our gratitude goes to the National Museum of Modern Art-Center Pompidou, its director Bernard Blistène, as well as his team: Brigitte Léal, Raphaële Bianchi, Christian Briend, Florian Ebner, Jonas Storsve, Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov, Didier Schulmann, Nathalie Cissé, Sennen Codjo, Noëlle Albert-Loisel, Manon Sarda, Carole Hubert, Jean-Gabriel Massardier and Robin Lety.
We would like to thank Ovidiu Șandor, Alexandru Solomon, Catherine Hansen, Lea and Gheorghe Rasovszky, Adrian Ghenie, Mihai Pop, Harry Jancovici and Ami Barak for their active involvement.
This publication was made possible through the support of the Timișoara Municipality, the Timișoara Local Council, the Culture House of the Municipality of Timișoara, the Timișoara – European Capital of Culture Association and the French Institute in Timișoara.
Întâlniri cu arta / Susretanje umetnosti / Maladimata la artasa / Találkozások a művészettel / Kunstbegegnungen / Art Encounters
Art Encounters Biennial Catalogue 2019
Curators: Maria Lind & Anca Rujoiu
Editor: Ana Toma
Authors: Maria Lind, Anca Rujoiu
Invited authors: Boris Buden, Marius Cornea, Daria Ghiu, Andrea Phillips
Language: Romanian / English
Publication date: 2019
Publisher: Art Encounters
Format: Paperback | 329 pages
ISBN: 978-606-93957-6-9
Dimensions: H: 30 cm | L: 20 cm
This reader is part of the 2019 Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara, documenting its year-long programme, centered on the idea of contemporary art as a form of understanding which, along with science, politics, literature, and philosophy, helps us tackle the complexity of life today. In addition to texts on the artworks, the publication encompasses conversations with the participants and essays by Andrea Phillips, Boris Buden and Daria Ghiu, elaborating on the thematic of “winds” that blew through the biennial. The introduction by curators Maria Lind and Anca Rujoiu outlines their curatorial approach and the ”winds” of this biennial bringing forward different thoughts and ideas: borders and translation, self-organisation, the work of the hand, and the limits of visibility and invisibility.
Viața – mod de întrebuințare / Life a User’s Manual
Art Encounters Biennial Catalogue 2017
Curators: Ami Barak & Diana Marincu
Editor: Ana Toma
Authors: Ami Barak, Diana Marincu
Invited authors: Mara Ambrožič, Bogdan Ghiu, Flavia Goian
Language: Romanian / English
Publication date: 2017
Publisher: Art Encounters
Format: Paperback | 264 pages
ISBN: 978-606-93957-8-3
Dimensions: H: 30 cm | L: 20 cm
For the second edition of the Art Encounters Biennial, the curators Ami Barak and Diana Marincu aimed to investigate and chronicle fragments of everyday reality, as reflected in artistic explorations, both present and past. The exhibitions tracked the ways the contemporary artists face the immediate reality that has become increasingly unstable. Inspired by the novel of Georges Perec La vie mode d’emploi [Life a User’s Manual], which gave the title of the main theme of the event, the biennial presented fragments, characters and situations, daily and life stories.
Facing the inextricable incoherence of life, the artists look for solutions and propose ways of understanding by the means of questions, metaphors, and symbols, that make us realize that, as the Fluxus artist Robert Filiou put it, “Art is what makes life more interesting than art”. Together, the different planes on which what we call everyday life evolves form a palimpsest of information, emotions, and actions processed by the artists. The diversity of these narrations resides in the various manners of adapting, personalizing, and confronting the norms – imposed or self-imposed – of the public and private life.
Art Encounters 2017 took place in Timișoara and Arad between 30 September – 5 November 2017. The event attempted to become a dynamic apparatus that would enable the contemporary visual culture and the Romanian art scene to highlight the challenges and the weak points, but also the aspirations and the strongholds on which the future of contemporary art builds itself at an accelerated pace. The polyphony of the presented voices and artistic discourses acted as stimuli for the negotiation of a common ground for meeting and dialogue between various institutions and independent initiatives from Romania, playing an important part in building relevant working models for the local artistic and social context. At a regional level, Art Encounters 2017 intended to foster a dialogue with the Serbian and Hungarian art scene and to start a debate over the problems faced by the independent initiatives and the existing institutions, the discontinuities of the recent history and the construction of the present artistic system.
Ghid de artă. Introducere în arta contemporană românească
Author: Maria Orosan-Telea
Language: Romanian
Publication date: 2017
Publisher: Interart Triade Foundation and Art Encounters
Format: Paperback | 141 pages
ISBN: 978-606-93957-9-0
Dimensions: H: 19 cm | L: 13 cm
This contemporary art guide begins with defining contemporary art and covers everything from representative Romanian artists of this time to explaining the ways in which art can be perceived and understood. In this way, a timeline of the Romanian contemporary art is presented from a biennial’s perspective and explained in the form of a brief and coherent course.
Anturaju’ and Other Stories
Author: Călin Dan
Language: Romanian
Publication date: 2016
Publisher: Art Encounters
Format: Paperback | 56 pages
ISBN: 200-000-07050-2-6
Dimensions: H: 21 cm | L: 14.5 cm
Călin Dan has been invited by the Office of Netherland’s Chief Architect in 2005 to coordinate a pilot-project of artistic education in a maximum-security prison in Romania. The project was developed between 2006 – 2008, resulting in a show: Carne/Cane. The City is Ours, performed by a group of inmates at Odeon Theatre in Bucharest. The interviews made in the initial phase of the project have been presented in the Anturaju’ and Other Stories exhibition (National Museum of Contemporary Art – MNAC Bucharest, 2010), together with the movie Wings for Dogs, inspired by the same context.
The book was published for the first edition of Timișoara Art Encounters Biennial – TAE (October 2015), along with a mono-screen presentation of Anturaju’ interviews, as part of an exhibition curated by Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher.
Aparență și esență / Appearance and Essence
Art Encounters Biennial Catalogue 2015
Curators: Nathalie Hoyos & Rainald Schumacher
Authors: Nathalie Hoyos, Rainald Schumacher
Invited authors: Cătălin Gheorghe, Erwin Kessler, Diana Marincu
Language: Romanian / English
Publication date: 2015
Publisher: Art Encounters
Format: Paperback | 170 pages
ISBN: 978-606-93957-2-1
Dimensions: H: 30 cm | L: 20 cm
The first edition of the Art Encounters Biennial focused on artists belonging to the Romanian culture, linked to it either by their birthplace, language, or artistic references – artists who live and work in Romania or elsewhere. The curators Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher adopted an archaeological point of view, using an outsider approach to search for essential denominators, but also to try to highlight the immanent content. Appearance & Essence were the curatorial landmarks for mapping the Romanian artistic scene. It was not the curators’ intention to find some hidden national identity, more rather the cultural differences, the individual nuances distinguishable in the global discourse.
Art Encounters 2015 concentrated therefore on a specific chapter of the multilayered narration of the contemporary art, spotlighting the Romanian art starting from the ‘60s to the present days and following some of its inherent stories. The history of visual art is revealed through the artworks of the past and the artistic life of the present. The artworks are manifestations of thought and reason, but also of the affective relationship with reality and the social environment. The history of art transforms these kinds of manifestations into language and theory, incorporating them into the historical context. Over the last ten years, the history of Western art has been going through a process of constant rewriting and recontextualizing. Its unilateral interpretation based on the logic of the Western Europe and North America evolution has been supplemented and altered by numerous parallel narrations coming from the multitude of cultural spheres. As an important part in the recent global approach of coexisting cultural narrations, the Eastern Europe is being rediscovered and reassessed, especially after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Photography in the Circulatory System: I started with painting and I have never moved away from it
Author: Ion Grigorescu
Language: English
Publication date: 2015
Publisher: Art Encounters
Format: Hardcover | 80 pages
ISBN: 978-606-93957-0-7
Dimensions: H: 15 cm | L: 42.5 cm
Photography in the Circulatory System is an artist book by Ion Grigorescu, based on the exhibition with the same title, curated by the artist and organised by Andreiana Mihail Gallery at City Business Centre Timișoara between November 2013 — January 2014. In the album, the reader will find a consistent thematic and historical selection of photographical works spanning from the ’70s.
“(…) The circulatory system processes 20 liters of blood per day through capillary filtration, which removes plasma while leaving the blood cells. Approximately 17 litres of the filtered plasma are reabsorbed directly into the blood vessels, while the remaining 3 litres remain in the interstitial fluid. The primary function of the lymphatic system is to provide a route by which these excess 3 litres per day can be returned to the blood. The same thing takes place in developing trays – the liquid that produces images gradually decreases, the contrast blurs, and the exposure time increases. The photographer is processing photography.” (2013)
Book concept, selection of photographs, texts and layout by Ion Grigorescu.
Exhibition organised and book published with the kind support of Ovidiu Șandor.
Supported by Art Encounters:
Square of Will in Square of Love – Texts, Notes, Drawings
Editor: Florin Flueraș
Author: Alina Popa
Language: English
Publication date: 2019
Publisher: PUNCH
Format: Pantone Black Softcover with flaps | 312 pages
ISBN: 978-606-94300-4-0
Dimensions: H: 16 cm | L: 11 cm
Square of Will in Square of Love gathers a selection of texts, notes and drawings by Alina Popa, edited by Florin Flueraș. Most texts are more poetic and more personal than Alina’s previously published writing, “…a mixture of styles, subjects and mediums – theory, poetry, drawings, diary notes, it is unclassifiable, as she liked it.” (Florin Flueraș)
https://p-u-n-c-h.ro/
Canal Grande: The Capital Pool and the Associated Public – Dan Mihălțianu
The Romanian Participation at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia – Unfinished Conversations on the Weight of Absence
Commissioner: Attila Kim
Curator: Cristian Nae
Language: English
Publication date: 2019
Publisher: IDEA Design & Print
ISBN: 978-606-8265-64-3
Dimensions: H: 17 cm | L: 13 cm
Dan Mihălțianu’s artistic discourse includes historical, political, social and cross-cultural aspects, using a variety of media and mediums, from photography, film and video, to installation, drawing or graphics. His project, Grand Canal: The Capital Pool and the Associated Public, is a reference to the current democratic system, examined through artistic practice and the involvement of the public, resulting in a decision to be made regarding the use of to the amount of capital raised by the end of the exhibition. The catalogue is a summary of this process that took place throughout the biennial, but also highlights the possible social and humanitarian beneficiaries of the project.
Ioana Nemeș
Artist book
Editor: Ștefania Ferchedău, Alina Șerban
Authors: Apparatus 22, Courtenay Finn, Ion Grigorescu, Andrea Codrington Lippke, Ciprian Mureșan, Ioana Nemeș, Livia Páldi, Magda Radu, Alina Șerban, Attila Tordai-S, Adrian Urmanov
Language: Romanian / English
Publication date: 2014
Publisher: Pepluspatru Association
Format: Paperback | 255 pages
ISBN: 978-3-944669-87-8
Dimensions: H: 20 cm | L: 13 cm
Ioana Nemeș (Bucharest, 1979 – New York, 2011) is recognized as one of the remarkable figures of the new generation of Romanian contemporary artists. This publication offers a first overview on the long-term projects and the singular exhibitions Ioana Nemeș has produced during her brief but extraordinary career. Fascinated with time, language and non-linear narrativity, Ioana’s practice sets off from an ongoing and unconstrained process of self-evaluation. On the slippery edge between art and life, The Monthly Evaluations project, presented in different formats and mediums, marks the artist’s willingness to expose her subjective experiences, dialogues and confrontations with her own context and condition.