𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐄𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐡𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 “𝐆𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐬. 𝟏𝟎 𝐭𝐢𝐩𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐜 𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐧,” 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐚 𝐁𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐮, 𝐀𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐚̂𝐭𝐮, 𝐋𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐚 𝐂𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢, 𝐏𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐮, 𝐆𝐰𝐞𝐧 (𝐄𝐦𝐦𝐚 𝐁𝐚̆𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐮), 𝐂𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐚 𝐌𝐚̆𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐞, 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐏𝐨𝐩𝐚̆𝐢𝐥𝐚̆, 𝐕𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐚 𝐒𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐯𝐧𝐢𝐜, 𝐈𝐨𝐚𝐧𝐚 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐚 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐎𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐮 𝐓𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫, 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝟐𝟖, 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝟏𝟖:𝟎𝟎, 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧’𝐬 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐁𝐝. 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐈𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐮 𝟒𝟔𝐂 (𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐚 𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐎, 𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐫 𝟏), 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐬̦𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐚.
Curated by Ami Barak, the exhibition brings together 10 artists who are part of a new generation. It aims to highlight different ways of creating and emphasizing topics of concern without overly politicizing them. Each featured artist is like a gardener concerned with encouraging natural life, artistic biodiversity, varying “habitats” and regularly amending the soil of the work so that it presents itself as sustainable as possible.
The exhibition is conceived as a belt drive, an active, accelerating, dynamic device that addresses both the public (bringing something new to their attention) and the artists (ensuring that visibility is not just a formality but a challenge that questions their work). Regarding the selection of artists, singularity is a criterion, especially since the structuring of the art world and its training courses tends to standardize practices.
🗓️ The exhibition can be visited from Tuesday to Saturday between 12:00 and 18:00, also offering a guided tour every Saturday from 17:00.
→ March 28, 18:00: Opening in the presence of the artists and Ami Barak, the exhibition’s curator;
→ March 29, 18:00: “Meet the Artists” special event, in the presence of the artists and Ami Barak;
Entry is free. Thank you, and we look forward to your joining us!
Alexandra Boaru (b. 1997, Timișoara) lives and works in Bucharest. In 2019, she graduated from the University of Portsmouth, Department of Photography, and continued her master’s studies at the National University of Arts Bucharest, Department of Photography and Dynamic Image, graduating in 2022. She is a multimedia artist whose practice challenges the concept of “human” ” and its impact on the outside, others, or herself. One of the main themes seen in her work is exploring the boundaries between being human and becoming something else. Her approach can often be described as poetic, influenced by the literary genre of speculative fiction or magical realism and 1970s conceptualism. Recent solo exhibitions include “On being human and other speculative beings. A parable of becoming” (Galeria Posibilă, Bucharest 2022) and “The sun is eating with a thousand mouths” (META Spațiu, Timișoara, 2023).
Adrian Câtu is an artist whose practice revolves around documentary and conceptual photography, as well as video. With a background in IT, Adrian graduated in 2014 with a master’s degree in anthropology and, from there, followed a career as a commercial and documentary photographer. His works have been published in National Geographic, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Interested in the documentary area, Adrian is a compelling and dedicated storyteller, and his long-term projects cover coal mining, floods, human trafficking, and refugees. His 2020 portrait of a child surviving heart surgery earned him a Picture of the Year Intl Award of Excellence. In 2021, Adrian completed a PhD in cultural anthropology, exploring human-animal relationships in Burkina Faso. In recent years, he has gradually moved from documentary to conceptual, exploring unconventional ways of telling stories, such as multispectral imaging.
Lorena Cocioni (b. 1995) lives and works in Bucharest. She received an MA from the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In her practice, she often uses the body senses and the ritual component of everyday actions, such as washing, combing hair, (un)dressing and taking care of the body. From the use of delicate pink hues, feathers, toiletry soaps to glass and metal shapes, she brings together different materials alongside her ceramics. She plays with them creating apparently fragile, yet very consistent works that resemble an almost ancient past, as well as a blurred future.
Pavel Grosu (b. 1991, Republic of Moldova) lives and works in Cluj Napoca. In his practice, he uses digital collages to build carefully thought-out compositional structures that will later transform into paintings. His works keep changing, passing from version to version, undergoing transformations, changing through juxtapositions, cuts, multiple manipulations, reformulations, and deviations from the original form until they reach a unitary digital collage. Pavel Grosu’s approach to painting is characterized by the primacy of the figurative, the preference for rather vague historical and social references, but emphasizing the technical quality of the works, seen primarily and most importantly, as aesthetic objects. He studied painting at the Faculty of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, following the bachelor’s and master’s courses. His works are part of various exhibitions, solo or group, organized both in the big cities of Romania and Moldova (Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, Arad, Chisinau) and abroad (Italy, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, America).
Gwen/Emma Bădulescu (b. 2001, Pitesti, RO) lives and works in Bucharest. In her practice, she is interested in everything around the concepts that define the notions of brutalism, grimness, power, violence, religion, pleasure, death, or magic and how to transform the actions of a damaged character into an absurd scene. During her studies at the National University of Arts, within the painting department, she experimented with different plastic modes, from painting to installations and from ceramics to soft (textile) sculpture, using a language that focuses on the human need for isolation and transformation. In 2022, she had her first solo show, “Float Through an Endless Dream”.
Catinca Malaimare (b. 1996, Bucharest) lives and works in London. He completed his post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2022. Performing alongside anthropomorphized technologies, Malaimare creates choreographies manifesting our intimate relationship with photographic instruments and the screens on which they project our appearance. Through poetic and spiritual gestures, Malaimare facilitates fleeting, ephemeral moments that acknowledge our codependence with technology. Recent solo exhibitions include Final Hot Desert; Brooke Bennington; Zabludowicz Collection, London (2023); Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, Bucharest (2022); and group exhibitions at Guts Projects, curated by Kollective Collective, London; Kunsthaus NRW, together with IKOB Museum for Contemporary Art, Aachen; and at the 20th Pančevo Art Biennale, Serbia (2022).
Lucian Popăilă (b. 1991, Baia Mare) lives and works in Cluj-Napoca. He graduated from the BA and MA programs at the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca. The fascination for codification has an obvious route in his art, starting with a preoccupation for the fresco and finishing with the method of mapping the sign titles (sometimes imposed by the hastiness required by the technique), which he sees as effective for the development of a visual idiom as the case of imagination or the photographic model. The concept of the image through the medium is similar to the sequential strategy of some minimalists, mentioning that Popăilă uses it as a research tool and not as an aesthetic option. That being said, the conveyed expression, in his case, is a method, not a style, involving progressions, permutations, rotations, inversions, and modular repetitions, all aiming to highlight the evolution of visual information units. The corpus of a series is a Gestalt, a more comprehensive semantic whole than the sum of its parts because “in mass” things stand out more easily (and quickly), acquiring an ideational meaning. Selected exhibitions: “Siccum,” solo show, Sector 1 Gallery, București (RO); “Some Plants and a Tale,” solo show; Doris Ghetta Gallery, Ortisei (IT), “Chasm,” solo show; Mogoșoaia Palace, Bucharest (RO).
Victoria Sadovnic (b. 1997, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova) lives and works in Cluj-Napoca. He graduated in Painting from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, where he had several Erasmus mobilities, which offered her an exchange of experience in Milan and Berlin. Working in specific mediums such as pastel and oil, she explores the tangibility of Painting in an age-oriented virtual reality. In the artist’s works, the landscape overcomes its mimetic condition, being depicted as filtered, dissected, revalued, decomposed, and recomposed. Victoria Sadovnic’s compositions can transform moods and induce introspection through a certain chromaticism. His curiosity about the specific character of a particular place or motif becomes essential in an authentic act of creation, suggesting the state of nature through a few poetic gestures. Thus, her works depict a meditative character, which prompts self-reflection.
Ioana Stanca (b. 1987) lives and works in Bucharest. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Rome, Italy, and at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. Her works are intimate maps, mapping a geography in continuous transformation. These movements are reflected in sliding between different techniques of working with textiles: embroidery, collage, soft sculpture, installation, or performance. Ioana Stanca’s images follow a particular, intimate way of relating to the studio space with various associations, textures, and situations. Images of anthropomorphic scissors, female bodies, or bobbins are recurrent in her work, questioning sexuality and alienation. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Rome, Italy, and at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. Ioana was an artist in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris through the Brâncusi Scholarship, offered by the Romanian Cultural Institute (2023), and is also the beneficiary of the Brătianu Scholarship provided by the Romanian Ministry of Culture (2020). Ioana was a guest artist in residence at AIR Futura, Karlin Studios in Prague (2018), and at the Staycation Bucharest Symposium organized by Catinca Tăbăcaru Gallery, Sandwich Gallery, and CTG Collective (2020), and was presented in numerous exhibitions in the country and abroad.
Ovidiu Toader (b. 1991, Brașov, RO) lives and works in Bucharest. He is interested in exploring individual and collective memory, using various forms of recollection of personal or historical experiences. In his artistic practice, he uses assemblage as a method of juxtaposing found, collected, and sometimes recycled objects collected from his travels, the space he lives in, his grandparents’ house, or his workshop.
→ The exhibition is organized by the Art Encounters Foundation and is co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN), with Volvo AutoCardo, the Polytechnic University of Timișoara and Cramele Recaș as partners.
**The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.
Graphic Design: Studio Shentzu