Padiglione Romania

Romanian Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale

New Gallery of the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research

Preview

May 10th – 12th, 2017

Opening

May 11th, 5.15 p.m., Romanian Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale

May 12th, 7.00 p.m., New Gallery of the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research

Exhibition

May 13th – November 26th, 2017

Geta Brătescu – Apparitions will represent Romania at the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition will take place both in the Romanian Pavilion in Giardini della Biennale and the New Gallery of the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research in Venice and will be open to the public from May 13th to November 26th, 2017.

Geta Brătescu’s participation in Biennale Arte 2017 brings together works representative of all the stages of her artistic trajectory – many of them shown for the first time –, demonstrating the ease with which she employs a multitude of artistic media. The exhibition Apparitions is conceived through the lens of thematic clusters, including the most recent phase in her artistic practice, in an attempt to provide a mirror of her studio space, understood both as a physical space and a meta-artistic entity. The physical and mental spaces of the studio blend together in a complex assemblage, and so do the literary texts with their visual conceptualisations, the feminine mythologies with the process of self-investigation, personal memory with cultural memory and imagination. “Memory is apparition; an epiphany, like art”, states the artist.

In the current context, Geta Brătescu’s presence at Biennale Arte 2017 is aimed at communicating art’s capacity to invent narratives that transcend the gloomy climate of the contemporary world, by means of an artistic reflection that highlights the transformative strength of femininity as the consummate embodiment of a “nomadic subject”. Geta Brătescu’s art finds itself in full consonance with the return to materiality, to the power of the artistic imagination, to art’s power to give shape. Her artistic practice resonates with the current debates about the role of art as a space that points to reality’s sore spots, but also as a means of instituting a specific language capable of generating new forms of subjectivity. [see full curatorial text]

Curator: Magda Radu

Project Manager: Corina Bucea

Assistant Curator: Diana Ursan

Communication: Cătălin Năstăsoiu, Oana Hodade, Cristina Curcan

Design: Raymond Bobar

Website: Dan Burzo

Photography: Ștefan Sava

[see full team]

Commissioner: Attila Kim

RCI Representative: Cristian Alexandru Damian

Special thanks:

Ștefan Sava, Marian Ivan, Mihai Pop / Fundația Plan B, Tiberiu Bucșa, Alexandra Croitoru

Special thanks to the institutions and collections which are lending works for the exhibition Geta Brătescu – Apparitions: The National Museum of Art of Romania, MNAC Bucharest / The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Romania, Vehbi Koç Foundation Contemporary Art Collection, Istanbul.