Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová
80:20, 2011
Mural on the facade of the Romanian Pavilion
Variable dimensions
Courtesy the artists
The mural intervention 80:20, created especially for the event, comments the missions, structure and potency of Venice Biennale as an institution. The artists confront 80% of the reasons to be in the Biennale with 20% of why not to be there. They speak for themselves as artists, as women, as easterners, but are also tackling the conscience of a decadent art world. The realities of the art world are subjected to the ‘Paretto Principle’ - the law of the “vital few” according to which about 20% of the effect are responsible for about 80% of the causes. In the artists’ own words: “The equilibrium of the universe lies in the paradox that most things in life are not distributed evenly and the “just” balance of things, the 50:50 ratio does not exist. We try to trace this asymmetry in our lives and balance various aspects of how we live, think and act.” The work 80:20 embraces this dissension as part of the inner conflict that defines the position of the artist in society today.
Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová
Try again. Fail again. Fail better, 2011
Video-installation with HD video projection
Courtesy the artists and Christine König Galerie, Vienna
The new video Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better uses a universal symbol of protest, a raised fist - a form emblematic of the workers’ and the Communist revolution that is reactivated as a revolutionary image. As an impressive fist-shaped balloon that dominates and drags along the people who are trying to navigate it, it reveals its nature as a fixed ideology that, despite the airy promise of its new and lighter form, takes on a life of its own, different from the hopes and beliefs that were initially invested on it. The question the artists seem to raise here is how to free revolution and protest from their own representations, from their ideologically reified and commercially fetishized image. This video shows one possible strategy for dealing with this problem of image: it is in the materialization of the image, in its making into a quasi-living object.
Ion Grigorescu
Ame (Fragment), 1977
Super 8mm film transferred on DVD
1’ 55’’
Courtesy the artist
The film Ame (“soul” in French) shows a first part entitled "Anima first", a fragment when the artist appears as a wild creature to be sacrificed, blood flows, the heart bleeds, one who sacrificed himself as a placenta from which he seeks exit.
Ion Grigorescu
Eu in atelier (I in the studio), 1976
Digital print, mounted on aluminium
100 x 300 cm
Courtesy the artist and Artra Gallery Milano
Eu in atelier is a self-portrait, a panoramic black & white photograph (usually used in landscapes), with a long time exposure that gives the opportunity to the artist to pose in several places. It remembers "Voyage autour de ma chambre" by Xavier de Maistre (imprisoned at the Forteresse de Fenestrelle for six weeks). As most of the artworks in the exhibition, it focuses on Grigorescu, as an individual, and refers to his attitude during the communist regime when the confinement was the rule and the state of his mind.
Ion Grigorescu
Hamlet, 1998
Digital print mounted on aluminium
240 x 150 cm
Courtesy the artist
Hamlet is a photograph, which replicates the performance of the same name. The artist, holding his own head made of clay, is standing in front of a curtain, on which appears a scene of "Resurrection". The meditation on human destiny and the dark perplexity of the events of this world is thus associated with the curtain that he considers as a leitmotif of the drama. Curtains, he says, hide the past, or even the future.
Ion Grigorescu
Covorul (Carpet), 2008
Video transferred on DVD
1’ 4’’
Courtesy the artist
The film Covorul shows the relationship between Ion Grigorescu and the rug, with its magical, mysterious memorandum, and its multitude of inspirations and influences. While the artist faces this symbolic object of worship and prostration, a real happening occurs through the intervention of a dog as a sign of pure life, not overrated by religion, neither with art or aesthetics.
Ion Grigorescu
Iesirea in strada (Manifestation on the street), 2011
Video animation, projected on a white sofa, 9’
90 x 220 x 120 cm
Courtesy the artist
The film Iesirea in strada is a call to life, and liberty, and it turns around the idea of demonstration. The artwork is projected onto a couch, on which Ion Grigorescu imagines a person lying and watching the film of his own history. It begins with images of Romania’s National Day, 40 years ago when people went forced to show their membership scheme and finishes with people of good will, during the Revolution of winter 1989-1990.
Ion Grigorescu
Gatul (Autoportret cu Tuthankamon), Throat (Self portrait with Tutankhamen), 1975
Digital print mounted on aluminium
100 x 83 cm
Courtesy the artist and the P.J.van Sluijs collection, Amsterdam
Gatul (Autoportret cu Tuthankamon) comes with the funerary mask of the famous young pharaoh superimposed on the elongated and mannerist neck of his self-portrait. Ion Grigorescu is paying homage to body art and the valorisation of one’s body.
Ion Grigorescu
Zugravitul (Whitewash), 1976
Digital print on fabric
350 x 240 cm
Courtesy the artist
White wash is a self-portrait from the “Work” series, compiling “Wall Painting” from 1975 to more recent works. Perched on a table, the artist is trying to paint but what stands out most is the backlight bulb. Rather than the product of an artistic action, it is a recording of useful actions. The artist establishes a distance between Art (i.e. the Above) and the Work (i.e. the Below), between the useful and the futile - the Work being his first and foremost contribution to society and to his attempt to earn his place in it.
Ion Grigorescu
Yoga, 2011
Digital video
2’05’’
Courtesy the artist and Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin / Lujbjana
The video catches the artist practicing yoga, in his hotel room, in London. This action comes from the need to change the center of gravity, because yoga is meant as a separation from the earthly: the man withdraws into oneself, laying the jug upside down, losing the leading position of the head. Everything is lost, the idea of consciousness, of rationality. Head down, the body becomes an object. In the same time, it comes with a release. Always living in a standing position needs sometime a change, an anti-virus, by placing his head to the ground and rationality as well.
Ion Grigorescu
Start, 2010
Digital video
11’47’’
Courtesy the artist and Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin / Lujbjana
In his youth, the artist was a decathlon champion. The video recalls the action of a sprint start, though the age of the athlete brings up to delay the movements. This time, it is not the stadium but a wasteland that is the arena of the performance. The film symbolizes a journey of inner growth and development but as a reenactment. It emphasizes the idea of beginning - of the starting point and then leaving without effect, followed by the return and cancellation. The artist refers to the 32 Buddhist signs that ordinary people cannot see them. Buddha is one that will end life - sorrows of life cycles, will be wise in the first place.
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