Beyond the Concept Frontier
2017
The exhibition ‘Beyond the Concept Frontier’ investigates an episode of conceptualism from 1969-75 via the connective networks and exchanges of ideas that brought together a nucleus of artists originally from Romania. The incentive for such a historical investigation arose from the Situation and Concept exhibition held in May 1974 at the Orizont Galleries in Bucharest.
Beyond the Concept Frontier aims to widen the spectrum of implications generated by revisiting the original exhibition. In the vocabulary of the current exhibition, the artworks combine with rich auxiliary materials: letters, documentary photographs, sketches, posters, and this accumulation of “traces” allows a partial reconstruction of a collective mood and working climate in which vitality of ideas and the desire to experiment dominated the conversation about art.
This approach also allows a filigree evocation of multiple exhibitions, both large and small, held both in Romania and abroad, in both institutional and non-institutional settings, all of them relevant to the directions explored: the 1971 Paris Biennale; exhibitions at the Galeria Nouă in Bucharest; exhibitions created by Paul Neagu at the Gallery of Generative Art housed in his private flat in London, converted into an independent contemporary art space; actions staged at the Sigi Kraus Gallery in London and the Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh; and exhibitions held in a private flat in Bucharest. With regard to these exhibitions (presented via their photographic documentation) hierarchical considerations are less important; what is interesting, apart from the precious information they convey, is the fact that they signal the existence of a matrix made up of inter-human relations, networks of communication, and also conditionalities, which make the works and lives of the artists become more deeply anchored in the contexts that generated them.
text Magda Radu
Location: ArtEncounters, Timisoara, RO
Client: salonul de proiecte
Status: finished
Area: 1000sqm
Team: Kalliopi Dimou, Sorin Istudor
Curator: Magda Radu
Photos courtesy of ‘Salonul de Proiecte’
Status: finished
Area: 1000sqm
Team: Kalliopi Dimou, Sorin Istudor
Curator: Magda Radu
Photos courtesy of ‘Salonul de Proiecte’