O nouă lucrare realizată de Banksy a apărut în centrul Londrei. Artistul a publicat un video pe pagina sa de instagram în care arată cum a instalat sculptura în mijlocul nopții. Este vorba despre statuia unui bărbat pornit într-un marș, al cărui chip este acoperit de un steag – o imagine sugestivă pentru vremurile pe care le trăim, în care ultranaționalismul s-a răspândit în ultimii ani în întreaga lume, iar sub pretextul patriotismului și prin fenomenul fake-news mase de oameni au devenit atât de manipulate încât nu mai pot vedea realitatea.

Sculptura a fost instalată în Piațeta Waterloo din zona Westminster, în apropierea statuii lui Winston Churchil, a lui Edward VII și Florence Nightingale, informează The Guardian.

Cunoscut în general pentru graffitiurile sale, Banksy nu se află la prima sculptură realizată. În 2004 aceasta a instalat tot în Londra o reinterpretare comică a sculpturii lui Auguste Rodin – Le Panseur (Gânditorul), sub numele The Drinker. În 2019, The Drinker a ajuns să coste la licitație 1 milion de lire sterline, dar a fost retrasă în ultimul moment pentru că ar fi fost furată de la proprietarul de drept.

Momentan nu se știe ce vor face autoritățile cu sculptura lui Banksy, instalată ilegal, dar valoroasă din punct de vedere artistic. Purtătorul de cuvânt al Consiliului Local al Westminster a declarat pentru BBC: “În timp ce facem primii pași pentru a proteja această statuie, ea rămâne momentan la dispoziția publicului, pentru a se bucura de ea.”

***

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The post Bărbatul orbit de steag, sculptură instalată de Banksy în mijlocul Londrei appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

Cea mai importantă retrospectivă dedicată lui Dan Perjovschi, unul dintre cei mai influenți artiști contemporani români, s-a deschis aseară la Muzeul Corneliu Miklosi din Timișoara și poate fi văzută până pe 26 octombrie 2025.

Expoziția aduce împreună o practică artistică complexă care înglobează ultimele 4 decenii ale activității artistului, de la desen, performance, acțiuni civice, proteste, publicațiile și instalațiile efemere, configurând o frescă a României și a lumii din ultimii 40 de ani. De la ironia directă a desenelor, la implicarea socială și la prezența sa constantă în spațiul public, Dan Perjovschi a construit un limbaj vizual unic, în care arta devine și comentariu, și instrument critic.

„Cariera mea e un roller coaster prin bienale, proteste, ziare, muzee și spații independente. Desenele mele sunt editoriale vizuale, păstrează ceva din Revoluție. Alb-negru ca presa liberă de la începutul anilor ’90. Practica mea e ca apa: mă infiltrez peste tot, nu fac ierarhii – cel mai mare muzeu din lume și cel mai mic artist-run-space sunt la fel de importante. Am libertatea și deci toată responsabilitatea.” — Dan Perjovschi

Recunoscut pe scena internațională, Dan Perjovschi a expus la MoMA New York, Tate Modern Londra, Centre Pompidou Paris, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Documenta Kassel, Bienala de la Veneția, Bienala de la Sydney, Bienala de la Istanbul și Manifesta, iar lucrările sale fac parte din colecții publice majore.

„Nu fac doodles sau cartoon. Pentru mine arta este eminamente politică. Rolul meu nu e estetic, ci social. Publicul își descoperă propriile gânduri în desenele mele. Vorbesc în numele celor mulți, îi critic pe cei puternici. Rolul meu e să găsesc și să comunic adevărul. Simplu, direct, cu un pic de umor.” — Dan Perjovschi

Expoziția de la Timișoara este prima retrospectivă de asemenea amploare organizată în România și este curatoriată de Dana Sarmeș, Magda Radu, Mihaela Tilincă, Monica Dănilă și Simona Constantin, fiecare explorând o dimensiune esențială a practicii artistului: desen, performance, artă civică și educație, acțiuni de conștientizare și protest, publicații și cărți de artist.

Vernisajul va avea loc pe 3 septembrie, ora 18:30, și va fi urmat de un tur ghidat cu Dan Perjovschi și Monica Dănilă – una dintre curatoarele expoziției, iar seara se va încheia cu un moment relaxat dejazz, drinks & afterparty.

Pe toată durata expoziției, publicul va avea acces gratuit la tururi ghidate zilnice, ateliere pentru copii și familii, artist talks și dialoguri cu personalități din artă și societatea civilă, dar și performance live – artistul va lucra în spațiu pe întreaga perioadă a expoziției.

Program de vizitare:

3 septembrie – 26 octombrie 2025
Marți – duminică, 12:00–20:00 (luni închis)
Intrarea este liberă.

Mai multe detalii: accontrasens.ro/dan-perjovschi-romania
Facebook & Instagram: Asociația Culturală Contrasens

Expoziția „DAN PERJOVSCHI. ROMÂNIA — O retrospectivă 1985–2025” este un proiect produs de Asociația Culturală Contrasens, finanțat de Municipiul Timișoara prin Centrul de Proiecte și co-finanțat de AFCN.

Citește și:

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The post Cea mai mare retrospectivă Dan Perjovschi poate fi văzută la Timișoara până pe 26 octombrie 2025 appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

The name Gigi Căciuleanu is synonymous with contemporary dance, both in Romania and worldwide. Alongside his teacher, Miriam Răducanu, he built forms of expression through movement at a time when Romanians lacked freedom. He then amazed huge names in dance, such as the Soviet ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and the German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch.

He founded the first National Center for Contemporary Dance in France in Rennes and led the Santiago de Chile National Ballet.

He has lived in Paris for 50 years but has also left his mark on contemporary dance in Romania, both before and after the Revolution.

I met him in the French capital, in the Montmartre district where he lives, and I discovered fascinating stories, from his departure from Romania and periods of financial insecurity, where he ate only jam on dry bread for three months, to career-defining encounters with Pierre Cardin, Astor Piazzolla, Jean Michel Jarre, and Maya Plisetskaya.

***

In June 1940, when Romania was ordered to cede Bessarabia as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Gigi Căciuleanu’s grandparents and parents caught the last train to Bucharest.

“My grandmother didn’t take any jewelry, nothing; she only took the Bible and a cactus. If I were to write all my memoirs, I would title it The Bible and the Cactus. She had the Bible since 1900; she would read from it when we were children and she cherished it very much. The way my grandmother read to us made the Bible seem like an adventure book.

We all lived in the basement of a house on Eremia Grigorescu Street, and I was lucky to grow up between the two gardens, Icoanei and Ioanid. In my day, Ioanid was called Pușkin Park. We used to swim in the pond there.”

Gigi Căciuleanu first came into contact with dance when he was only 4 years old. It happened at a ballet school on Frumoasă Street in Bucharest, near George Enescu’s house.

“If you were to look through the keyhole into Alice’s Wonderland, you would see something. You know it’s Wonderland, but you don’t know exactly what it’s like. Dance is not just dance; it’s a necessity. It’s a visceral necessity, just as poetry is a necessity. And for me, poetry and dance and drawing lines are very connected.

My mother took me to ballet for two reasons: one – I was terribly mischievous, and two – my mother would have wanted to be a ballerina, but it was not considered appropriate at the time in our family for a girl to be a ballerina; ballerinas were considered unserious. Unable to be a ballerina, my mother became a botanist. She was very in love with plants. A plant is a dance. It is a line that develops, blooms, has a story. A blade of grass also has extraordinary strength; it comes out of the asphalt without any problem. Put me under the asphalt to see if I can get out. No! I don’t know how the blade of grass makes its way through.

Dance fascinated me in the sense that it hit me on the head; I was very scared because there were all kinds of young ladies who knew much more than I did. I was 4 years old; what does a child know at 4? I started to cry, and a blond, beautiful, very intelligent teacher, Nuți Dona, took me in her arms, and I asked her to marry me. Haha. Then she started training me.

She said: ‘Forget the figures and look: I’m here with you, you’re in an empty lot, you’re playing with a ball, you break a window, the neighbor whose window you broke comes out and scolds you, you answer him, and you are between the ball and the one who scolds you. You dance however you want.’ I don’t know what I danced for her, but I really liked the idea. That was freedom.”

He then continued to go to the dance school, and the meeting that was to decisively mark his artistic path was with the dancer and choreographer Miriam Răducanu.

“Miriam became our teacher when I entered the second cycle, which means at 14 years old. And suddenly, some subjects were added, one of which was called The Actor’s Art. I really liked it; at one point, I wanted to quit dance and become an actor, I realized I could do more things as an actor, and I really liked the idea.

She gave us dance classes, but it was not allowed to say “modern dance”; jazz was frowned upon as modern music. She told us: ‘Look, you are allowed to improvise, but not chaotically, but with some very precise tasks, just like jazz musicians do, she already pronounced the word jazz, which was taboo. Or like very talented musicians do in a Mozart symphony; they have a moment of freedom where they deviate from the written symphony and are allowed to add some nuances that are their own. I want to work on these nuances with you, in which you have the right to be free, but going through the experience of improvising with some very precise tasks.’

With Miriam, I realized that dance and the art of acting do not exclude each other but blend very well. She was the first dance-actor I met.

Together, the two created the famous late-night shows, which took place at the Țăndărică Theater in Bucharest in the late ’60s. The Nocturnes combined music, dance, poetry, and acting, and the interdisciplinary construction was something revolutionary at the time.

“She worked a lot with the theater, with Gina Patrichi, with Virgil Ogășanu. Virgil Ogășanu was part of the first Nocturne we did. He performed a monologue from Gogol’s The Government Inspector, which he had worked on with Andrei Șerban.

Many of the dances I did with Miriam came out of improvisation. Before the Nocturnes, we danced a lot in people’s homes. Whoever had a bigger living room would welcome us. People would sit on chairs as if at a theater.

How was this freedom possible in that regime where Romanians lacked precisely freedom?

“Romanians are Romanians; jokes saved us. Don’t forget that we are in a country of jokes, even if some people would turn you in for this. We always laughed at many things, and Romanians have always been very Latin. No matter how much they try to restrain us, we remain Latin.

Inspired by Brâncuși, Miriam had at one point created a dance called Flight; it was very static, only on an oscillation, the body only had some inclinations. And she was criticized by her colleagues at the opera, who said, ‘What kind of flight is that; in flight, you flap your arms.’ And I went to her and said: ‘Madam, you should know that I am very upset by what people are saying about your dance.’

And she told me: ‘You ask them where the feathers are on Brâncuși’s Bird. Don’t argue with them; just present artistic arguments.’ Miriam is very different from me. Miriam polished her dances, just as Brâncuși polished his sculptures. And I was very much about the immediate moment; I could change a dance in three seconds. During the Nocturnes, I always said that she was the pretzel, and I was dancing, sneaking through the holes of the pretzel.”

When the Nocturnes, theater plays, concerts, and opera shows ended, young people from Bucharest who were interested in the courageous side of art would gather at Preoteasa, the Students’ Cultural Center. There, great Romanian artists would give free rein to their imagination and improvise in a captivating way for the audience.

“We improvised crazily; all kinds of jazz musicians would come, the Berindei brothers, Jancy Korossy, Johnny Raducanu. It was a dialogue where I didn’t care about the way they played and what that was called in music, and they didn’t care what the movement we were doing was called. The audience would come like crazy for this. A lot of young people would come,” Gigi Căciuleanu now recalls.

Alongside Miriam Răducanu, Gigi Căciuleanu participated in the first international festivals. When the Bulandra Theater, with Liviu Ciulei as director, presented Hamlet at the Edinburgh Festival, Gigi Căciuleanu was dancing in the festival’s underground: “one day, we saw Marin Sorescu and Ion Caramitru come in and join us, in a good way, and they created a moment within our show. It was spontaneous and fit perfectly.”

Poetry, painting, and dance have always had echoes in Gigi Căciuleanu’s dance. He fell in love with the paintings of Kandinsky and Aivazovsky, which gave him the courage not to impose barriers on himself, to build forms in continuous motion, without a contour.

“What is choreography? It is a combination of movements that you invent. You invent the movements and their combination. I make a big distinction between a choreographer and an arranger. It’s like in music; there are people who invent things and others who arrange them. A lot of choreographers call themselves choreographers without being choreographers. They take things from here and there and glue them together.”

Gigi Căciuleanu left Romania in 1973 and settled in France, after a journey through Russia, Germany, Greece, and Belgium, refusing an invitation to move to America.

His meeting with the great German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch gave him the confidence that he could start over in a new world.

“After leaving the country so many times with Miriam, I told myself I couldn’t wait for visas for who knows how long. I was convinced I had something to say, and I couldn’t say it at the opera, where I had to do what I was told. I didn’t want to go to Moscow, but Miriam told me, ‘Go, boy, to the Russians, and learn the trade!'”

And did you go to the Bolshoi Theater?

“Yes, I stayed for one season, but that was enough for me; it was an extraordinary technical apprenticeship. It was classical, academic dance, but with more freedom. I had three extraordinary teachers; if a double jump was done, we would do a triple. I absolutely loved this technical challenge. And we had the opportunity to sneak in to the soloists, we would open the door and slip in. Maya Plisetskaya, Ekaterina Maximova, Vladimir Vasiliev were there; you couldn’t even touch them.”

He was not interested in staying in Moscow and continued to see the world through international competitions, along with his dance partner, Ruxandra Racoviță.

“We won the only contemporary choreography competition in Germany at that time. I won once, I returned to Romania, and Ruxandra told me: ‘Căciu, let’s do another competition, so we can get out again, so the world can see us.’

And we did a Romanian Bolero, the two of us with a third acting character, Dan Mastacan, who had some acting passages, and Raluca Ianegic, who presented a kind of flamenco, a symbol of death, as I was reading a lot of Lorca at the time. That dance piece won first prize a second time. It had never happened before that the same people would win in a competition two years in a row.

Pina Bausch had been the laureate of the same competition a few years earlier. I said that if I won the prize a second time, I would stay there. Dan Mastacan left for Paris immediately and had an extraordinary career in the world of film.

I stayed in Germany because Pina invited me to join her company. She was the director of the Essen School of Arts. She proposed that I work on choreographies with the people she had, her students, some of whom would later become very well known. Susanne Linke was there.

I had the extraordinary chance to work with those people; I created ten pieces with them. And those productions went on tour. Pina combined them with her pieces and my pieces. So I had moments when I wasn’t dancing and I would watch what she was doing, and she did the same.

That’s when I saw what a great dancer Pina was, and every time I went and said: ‘Pina, you are a divine dancer,’ even though she was like an animal, a combination of Salvador Dalí’s dinosaur and a giraffe in flames.

In the meantime, I convinced Ruxandra to return to Germany, and we left with her for Greece. We bought two boat tickets, without having anything to eat.”

The projects in Greece did not materialize, so Ruxandra Racoviță returned to Romania, but Gigi stayed for another 3 months in Greece, on the island of Hydra near Athens, where a Romanian woman they had met owned a house.

“In 40-degree heat, I ate nothing but dry biscotte with orange marmalade for three months, which Mrs. Ralu Manu had in the house, as she was on vacation. I literally exterminated that cupboard of biscotte—some slices of dry bread. And I would spread a little marmalade on it to make it last. Since then, I can’t stand to see biscotte; I can’t…”

He finally managed to get to Paris, a city that continues to captivate him today, after 50 years.

“When I arrived in Paris in June-July, the last thing on my mind was America. I even slept on benches by the Seine many times; it was possible back then, it’s not like now. Dan Mastacan had left to make a film in Germany, and I had nowhere to stay. But I said that I wasn’t leaving here.”

Now he met us in the Montmartre district, near the Sacre Coeur church, where he lives. He is 78 years old, and dance, cats, and poetry are now his main interests. He perfectly remembers the adventure of settling in France, without any source of income, trying to work at a cabaret while having just requested political asylum.

Ruxandra Racoviță joined him in this madness, and the great American ballerina Rosella Hightower, director of the Nancy Theater, gave them a chance: “she told us she had only one position for a dancer, but she would cut it in half, and we would split the salary. That’s how we got to Nancy, where later, she gave me the direction of the ballet there. Dan Mastacan was my assistant. And Ruxandra was a star dancer.

I stayed there for 5 years. From that company of 30 people, I selected 10 with whom I worked at night, and we then went on tour through France. Unpaid, that’s what we wanted. That’s how the French Ministry of Culture got to know us. And, at one point, I said, ‘God, I really want to do only this; I’m not interested in doing those ballets anymore, which, in fact, I didn’t even know how to do.’

The Ministry of Culture offered me Rennes or Montpellier. I wanted Rennes because it’s closer to Paris. I always gravitate towards Paris. I love Paris, no matter what it’s like. I got to Rennes and stayed there for 15 years. That’s where I founded the first National Center for Contemporary Dance.”

Through the actor Dan Mastacan, who had become the assistant to the famous designer and cultural figure Pierre Cardin, Gigi Căciuleanu received a proposal from Cardin to go on a world tour.

“I was on tour with a show in London, and Pierre Cardin came into the theater and saw me. He said he wanted me. I came by bus and showed Pierre Cardin what we were working on clandestinely at night in Nancy, and he said: ‘I’ll take you with this show.’ And that’s how he gave us tours all over the world: Japan, China, the United States, and a lot in South America.”

Pierre Cardin also connected him with one of the greatest Soviet ballerinas in history, Maya Plisetskaya, whom the young Gigi had only secretly watched at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.

“Pierre Cardin calls me and says: ‘Don’t you want to meet Maya Plisetskaya? I’d like to introduce you to her and have her see you dance.’ And I said, ‘Of course, I’ll take the train immediately.’ I go, I arrive at the theater in Paris, and I dance to Ray Charles’s music. Maya likes it very much; she even wrote in her diary ‘I met a brilliant Romanian.’ She says: ‘Don’t you want to teach me some movements?’ I say: ‘Madam, these movements are not learned in three seconds behind a door.’

Years passed since then, and Pierre Cardin called me again: ‘I absolutely want to make a gift show for Maya, and I thought of you.’ Among the proposed titles, I chose The Madwoman of Chaillot; it seemed to fit my personality and hers the most. We were going to put on the show at his theater, Espace Cardin, in the heart of Paris; for me, it was a huge deal. And I said, ‘But how?’ And he said: ‘Maya will come to Rennes, and you will work there.’ And Maya came.

I was late at the station. Rennes is towards the ocean, 80 km from the ocean, so there were many seagulls.

I arrive at the station, the platforms were empty, like in the paintings of Delvaux (n.r. Belgian surrealist painter Paul Delvaux), who drew stations with traffic lights, where there are some naked ladies.

‘Maya, please forgive me, I had rehearsals, let me help you with your luggage.’ She was silent, nothing, she just stood there with her braids in the wind. Then she says: ‘I know how it is. But please show me the movements you have thought of for me.’

And the improvisation starts again, of course. You come huffing and puffing, sweating, because it’s the huge star right there and you’re late? And I start outlining it for her on that platform; I had absolutely nothing prepared, but, anyway, I had Miriam Răducanu’s training. I put on the tape with The Madwoman of Chaillot and danced for her. She didn’t say a word. She let me go through hell on that platform, I stopped at one point because I couldn’t go on, and she says: ‘Yes, I liked it. But I have one single request. Don’t you dare do it any other way than how you did it here.’

Were you able to reproduce it then?

“The hell I was! No, but it didn’t even matter anymore. She didn’t want to see what I had. She wanted to see that my joints would hold up, because otherwise, she could have gotten on the next train and left.

We did the show at the Bolshoi, we did it in Japan. When we arrived at the Bolshoi, it was exactly the day the Russian White House was burning; the government building was on fire, everything was closing on the streets at 9, and Yeltsin gave an extraordinary dispensation so that Maya’s show could be performed at 4.”

In 1993, he founded the Gigi Căciuleanu company in Paris, with Dan Mastacan and Ruxandra Racoviță. At the same time, he returned to Romanian soil as a guest and contributed to the growth of new generations of Romanian dancers.

“Vava Ștefănescu, Răzvan Mazilu, Ștefan Lupu, Arcadie Rusu, Ioana Marchidan, Lari Georgescu – they all were part of my company, and now they are all something.

First and foremost, I taught them that they had to be themselves. That no matter how strict the choreography is, and I work very strictly on choreography, the choreographies are written precisely so that from this writing you can burst out when you want to. But you must have a thought-out foundation. Take a Mozart symphony. Yehudi Menuhin’s genius is not seen because he is interpreting something else, but because he plays it the way he plays it. To be free to be who you are—that is the great art.

To be ‘authentic,’ I was even called ‘Mr. Authentic,’ because I used the word often.

The choreography of the sea is written. There are physical laws. You don’t play with them. But look at the sea; you can stand all day long and you don’t get tired of looking at it. Or the fire in the fireplace. And yet, there are very clear physical laws that direct those things. That would be choreography.

What does Romania mean to you?

I don’t make a distinction between Romania and France. If I stayed in Paris, it’s because it looked a lot like Romania. It seemed to me that I had come home.

But what were the similarities?

There is a certain freedom of thought. There were also our connections with France, Cioran, Ionesco, Enescu. And it seemed like a terribly natural connection, and I spoke French from a very young age.

Romanians are very French, in fact, and the French are very Romanian. There are differences because we had different destinies.”

This article is part of the “France Week” series, an initiative by Cultura la dubă supported by BNP Paribas. So far, within this project, Cultura la dubă has presented the stories of 22 Romanian artists and cultural figures based in France.

The post Gigi Căciuleanu, a life dedicated to dance: “Dance is not just dance. It’s a visceral necessity.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

Born in Bucharest in 1964, Sophie Negropontes left Romania when she was just 12 years old. Today, she owns one of the most important art galleries in central Paris—Galerie Negropontes. Last year, she expanded with a new location in Venice.

She is the granddaughter of General Eremia Grigorescu, a hero of the Romanian army at Mărășești and Oituz, after whom a street in Bucharest’s Icoanei neighborhood is named. She is also the granddaughter of Elena Negropontes, a descendant of the famous Greek merchant family Negropontes. Her father was Dan Eremia Grigorescu, one of the most important Romanian photographers, active in Romania and abroad from the 1950s to 1989, and a correspondent for Radio Free Europe.

Her relatives were abused and terrorized by the Securitate (communist secret police), and her family had to start over from scratch in France after 1974.

“My life is a story about luck, and my journey after leaving Romania is a miracle,” says Sophie Negropontes in an extensive interview with Cultura la dubă.

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A few years ago, we discovered Galerie Negropontes in Paris while seeing an exhibition by the Romanian artist Mircea Cantor. That’s how we learned the gallery’s owner was of Romanian origin, and we were curious to know more about her story.

It was a national holiday in France in June when Sophie Negropontes opened the doors of her gallery for the Cultura la dubă report. The gallery owner, whose space is located right between the Louvre and the Pinault Collection, greeted us with a smile, speaking perfect Romanian.

“How did you manage to preserve your Romanian so well?

I always spoke and still speak Romanian with my mother,” she told us.

She introduces herself as half-Romanian, half-Greek, with French culture. She feels a strong connection to her Romanian roots thanks to her parents, who were both Romanian, but her childhood memories in Bucharest are mostly tied to the trauma her family endured during the communist era.

There was a feeling of fear, a lack of freedom, an inability to trust. I know we used to listen to Radio Free Europe, and I was little, going to school, when my dad told me: ‘Even if someone shakes your hand, you must not say that we listen to Radio Free Europe.’

My godfather was deported to Siberia for nine years, my grandfather spent ten years in prison because he was a judge before. The entire family was at least beaten by the Securitate,” Sophie Negropontes begins her story.

Her father, the photographer Dan Eremia Grigorescu, a friend of Mihail Sadoveanu, published a series of photo albums during the communist period that later won international awards in Washington and Leipzig. Thanks to his art, foreigners were able to discover fragments of Romania: Voroneț, Folk Art from Northern Moldavia, the Danube Delta, and Brâncuși’s works in our country.

He also produced television reports for “Teleenciclopedia.” He visited and photographed major European cities, bringing back unique images from a world inaccessible to ordinary people in Romania.

“He managed to leave for a few months to make some TV shows and albums. He made an album about Rome, one about Paris, and one about Venice. My dad used these albums to show another side of France and Rome. He brought them to Romania at a time when everything was closed off, and people didn’t know what was happening in Paris. At one point, he was caught on the street and they cut his beard with a knife because you weren’t allowed to wear a beard in Romania.”

In 1974, the photographer and his wife left Romania for good, and Sophie, who was ten years old at the time, remained in her grandmother’s care. Two years later, she also managed to leave the country with the help of the Greek government.

At that time, there were some economic ties between Romania and Greece, and the Negropontes family was quite well known in Greece. We requested to leave for a two-week trip to Greece. I left with a small suitcase, and then I arrived in Paris, where my parents were waiting for me. I got there at the end of August, and by September 15th, I was in school.

Did you know the language?

A little, very little. Not enough for it to be easy, in any case.

And how did your parents integrate? Did your father continue to work as a photographer?

Dad worked very little in photography and started working for Radio Free Europe as a journalist.

I remember at the time I had a lot of friends who told me that what happened with Ceaușescu was not dignified, that it wasn’t worthy of a democracy.

But after 45 years of communism, how could Romania know what a democracy looked like? Two generations of people had no information about democracy, not even the culture or education for it. How could they know what democracy was like?”

Did you ever think of returning after the Revolution?

I wanted to go with great enthusiasm on the first medical aid trucks. But I was 24, and my parents were very stressed to see me leave for a world where no one knew exactly what was happening. Plus, it wasn’t possible because my dad was very ill. He died shortly after, in 1990.

Sophie Negropontes has a degree in economics, but she inherited her father’s interest in art.

“At an age when young people tend to go to shopping malls, I would go to museums. That’s how I was raised by my parents.

I went to business school, and right after, I went to Hong Kong, where I worked for a French perfume company. I came back because my father was very sick and I worked for a textile group. Then, I was a partner in a web company, a search engine for websites. I handled the commercial launch. I’ve always done commercial launches or product launches; I’ve always worked with creative people.”

She opened her gallery in 2012 and inaugurated it with an exhibition dedicated to her father.

It was a crazy moment when I said to myself that I wanted to be in a field that I truly love and do what I know how to do, which is product launches. The first exhibition was with my father’s photographs—portraits he took in ’68—and a design piece.

Then I started working with a French designer. Everything was born from the photo album Brâncuși. That’s how the idea came to create sculptural, architectural furniture—unique pieces, limited series, or made-to-order.

How did you manage to promote the gallery in a market where there were already so many other galleries? How does someone new succeed?

By working a lot. With a lot of hard work and a lot of luck. I had zero network and zero contacts. Things happened organically. One relationship led to another. Maybe there was a big order that allowed us to finance a new collection, which was successful, which allowed us to be at a professional fair, then a second professional fair, and so on.

When I created the gallery 13 years ago, gallerists at the time would just wait. At a fair, you would just wait. People would come, say they were interested in these things, and nothing would happen right away.

I don’t know how to work like that. I would follow up, call people back, reconnect, schedule meetings, and from that, the business was born.

Did you know from the beginning when you opened the gallery what kind of art you wanted to promote here? Were you interested in anything specific?

The art I love most wasn’t actually the art I promote. I love 15th- and 16th-century Dutch and German painting, the Renaissance, and Surrealism. I had a very academic education and I continue to do very academic visits.

But I have an interest and a curiosity for many things. Some artists are very interesting, not because I like everything they do, but because their journey and their explorations are interesting.

What catches your attention in an artist that makes you decide to promote them?

The pieces and their quality, of course. What they want to say with them, hoping it’s not too obscure. I’m convinced that a piece can stand on its own. If it’s accompanied by two pages of text to read, that’s a bonus. A piece can be bought, placed in a living room, in a bedroom, and so on. But there are some contemporary pieces that only exist through their discourse.

If it’s a railing made from a piece of aluminum and it’s explained over four pages that it represents the boundary between life and death, paradise and hell… okay, but what do you do with that railing? Do you put it in the middle of your living room?

So, for me, there is a part of contemporary art that doesn’t convince me.

At her gallery, Sophie Negropontes promotes creators of luxury decorative pieces that combine artistic flair with high-quality, original materials. She also works with photographers, sculptors, and, more recently, jewelry designers. Among the artists she collaborates with are the Italian Gianluca Pacchioni, the Romanian Mircea Cantor, and the French couple Martine and Jacki Perrin. The gallery is located on Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Paris, at the end of which the Cartier Foundation is now being built.

“I am very directly involved in the artistic selection and the relationships with the artists, which is, in a way, the particularity of the gallery. I work with a relatively small number of artists. Many galleries of the same size work with 50 artists; I work with 15. So I dedicate time to each one.

Then, I need to get along with them. That is a fundamental thing. On a human level, not just an artistic one. On a human level, first and foremost.

You mentioned that not all contemporary art convinces you. Can you explain who and how the value of an artist is determined? How does an artist become sought after by collectors or exhibited in major galleries and museums?

In contemporary art, it’s also about marketing. For example, I once saw a South American painter at Art Basel whose painting was selling for one million euros. A year before, it was at 200,000, and a year before that, it was at 15,000. So something happened that made that work popular or made it picked up by a very, very well-known gallery, and the artist’s reputation grew through the gallery’s name.

It’s a pretty complicated world. An artist’s rating is set at auction houses. When you put a piece up for auction, it either sells or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t sell, that’s pretty bad. At the auction house, they always set a low starting value to give it room to grow. It can sell for a lower price than the gallery price. Or an artist’s piece can sell for 2,000 euros at auction, while in the gallery, the same artist has another piece for 30,000 euros. But they have nothing to do with each other. The artist’s rating, however, for the collector, is at 2,000 euros.

Because I have some artists who work exceptionally in glass, for example, to build their reputation, I didn’t put them up for auction. Instead, I worked with several museums, and they have pieces exhibited in multiple museums. This doesn’t give a commercial value, but a cultural value.

And how did you manage to convince the museums to exhibit or buy them?

With a lot of hard work and thanks to them, because they are very good artists in a specific niche, the glass pieces.

But do museums have dedicated people who visit galleries to discover artists?

Nobody visits anymore because they don’t have the budgets. So I have to go to them.”

Last year, Sophie Negropontes also opened an exhibition space in Venice on the Grand Canal as part of the Masieri Foundation.

“It’s a collaboration with the university that runs this foundation, and we restored the place, which is an old brick facade, while the entire interior of the building was done by Carlo Scarpa, one of the most famous Italian architects.

Why did you want to expand to Venice?

“Because I was doing a lot of fairs—three or four a year, first in Paris, London, New York, then I stopped doing London and Paris, and did New York, Miami, and Los Angeles last year, plus Saint Moritz in Switzerland.

I believe that in Venice, people talk about art much more than anywhere else for a long period of the year. The Biennale lasts for nine months. At a fair, art is talked about for four or five days.

I was doing shorter exhibitions here in Paris, and I decided to do exhibitions that would last longer, four months, perhaps with more depth, giving people time to come and talk. In Venice, I have an exhibition on three levels for a year.

What are the challenges for a gallerist in Paris? What kind of difficulties do you encounter?

Paris is more of an image than a market. For me, it’s not the best market. We do very well in the American market, which is now becoming a huge challenge due to taxes.

France is not the biggest buyer. The French are much more classic. I always say that we should consult history and we will find out everything. The best museums were, before the revolution, in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg, or in the USA. Why? Because the people who had money then invested in their contemporary artists. And now, these are the most famous artists, and those museums have the largest collections. The Russian collections or the American collections have the most pieces.

The French are more cautious, more classic. And the people who go to Venice are art lovers, they have more time, they like music, they like opera, architecture—they are more oriented towards that.”

While in major countries around the world, contemporary art is a mature market where hundreds of millions of euros circulate, in Romania, contemporary art museums and galleries are still an undeveloped field. Neither public institutions nor most Romanian business people have yet understood the cultural and financial potential of the creative industries. This is also the reason why Sophie Negropontes has not been very involved in the Romanian market.

“I did a major exhibition in 2017 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest with my dad’s photos from the Brâncuși book, which were first exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1982. But I don’t have this image of returning to Romania.

However, the market, which is not completely mature for art objects or art furniture, could be ready for artist-designed jewelry. I believe that one way to maintain a connection with Romania is through what I do.

Last year, I was offered to open a gallery; a space was made available to me. But when you open a gallery, you have to say something about it. For example, Venice was, first and foremost, a choice to create dialogues between pieces and the location, between people. It was something more intellectual and artistic. And then, business-wise, it’s going well.

In Romania, I don’t know the people there well enough. I have some relationships with decorators, but the pieces I present are more difficult to understand. The furniture we have is special, exceptional.

What kind of people buy such works?

In America, they are people who, of course, have enough money. They are accompanied by decorators. And I get along very well with a lot of decorators because I always work in a very reliable way: things arrive on time and are of high quality.

For example, if someone sees a piece they like, they send the decorator to see it. They discuss its quality and where they could put it in the house. It’s a very natural dialogue.

Does the same thing happen in France?

In France, most decorators want to produce things themselves; they are more like designers.

Extremely passionate about what she does, Sophie Negropontes says she feels happy every time she enters the gallery, even if she no longer has much free time.

“Since last year, I’ve been working about six to seven days a week because I work here until Wednesday or Thursday, and then I go to Venice and work until Saturday or Sunday. It’s a very intense schedule.”

She spends her vacation in Greece but returns to Romania for professional events and would like to get to know the contemporary jewelry market in our country.

“When I think of Romania, I always have a nostalgic feeling for the scent of blooming linden trees in Bucharest. It’s the first thing that comes to my mind.

The people in Romania are extraordinary because they are extremely cultured and educated, in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the term ‘education.’ But there’s a kind of slightly pedantic intellectualism, disconnected from a pragmatic side, without which nothing works.

“Would you be interested in running a museum?”

Perhaps that, yes, I would.”

This article is part of the “France Week” series, an initiative by Cultura la dubă supported by BNP Paribas. So far, within this project, Cultura la dubă has presented the stories of 22 Romanian artists and cultural figures based in France.

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Desenele realizate pentru Saut Hermès sunt vizibile acum pe străzile din Paris și în toate materialele de promovare a evenimentului.

Cantor este la o doua colaborare specială cu o celebră casă, după ce în 2023 el a redesenat celebra geantă Lady Dior cu motive tradiționale românești.

Mircea Cantor s-a născut la Oradea și este stabilit la Paris de 26 de ani. Cultura la dubă l-a vizitat în capitala Franței și v-a spus povestea sa pe larg, AICI.

Mircea Cantor este singurul artist român premiat cu două dintre cele mai importante premii acordate artiștilor contemporani – Premiul Marcel Duchamp (2011) și Premiul Ricard (2004). Lucrările sale se regăsesc în marile galerii și muzee de artă: MoMa, Centre Pompidou, The Philadeplhia Museum of Art sau Museo National Reina Sofia.

***știre în curs de actualizare

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The post Mircea Cantor, colaborare de excepție cu Hermès. Artistul român a desenat vizualurile competiției de hipism Saut Hermès 2025 appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

Modelul semnat de Mircea Cantor poartă numele Grădina Raiului/ Jardin du Paradis și este inspirat de o haină românească, găsită în regiunea din România în care s-a născut bunica sa. De asemenea, pe geantă au fost suprapuse împletituri din piele, care trimit la motivul frânghiei, folosit des de artist în lucrările sale.

Pentru realizarea genții, Cantor a lucrat îndeaproape cu artizanii casei Dior, care au produs 100 de exemplare. Pe mânere a fost inscripționat proverbul românesc “Fă rai din ce ai”, tradus în engleză și franceză.

Anul acesta, 12 artiști din toată lumea fac parte din campania “Dior Lady Art”: Mircea Cantor, Jeffrey Gibson, Ha Chong-Hyun, Lee Kun-Yong, Mariko Mori, Ludovic Nkoth, Hilary Pecis, Xu Zhen, Zadie Xa, Michaela Yearwood-Dan and Gilbert & George.

Geanta Lady Dior a devenit simbolul casei Dior, după ce a fost creată la începutul anilor 90 de directorul de creație de atunci, Gianfranco Ferré. Lady Diana a contribuit semnificativ la popularizarea acestei creații, fiind cunoscută drept geanta sa preferată. În semn de recunoștință, Dior a redenumit în acea perioadă geanta, sub titlul “Princesse”.

Un simplu exemplar al genții costă aproximativ 6000 de euro.

Mircea Cantor este unul dintre cei mai apreciați artiști români la nivel internațional. Întrebat deseori dacă este român sau francez, Cantor oferă mereu același răspuns: „Mircea Cantor este născut în România și trăiește pe Pământ.”

Se ferește de etichetele privind naționalitatea, într-o lume a globalizării pe care el o amprentează cu artă universală, fie că vorbim despre sculptură, desen, video, amprente sau instalații.

Nu se sfiește, însă, să spună că e din România, ba chiar și-a impregnat multe dintre lucrări cu iubirea pentru rădăcinile sale. Mircea Cantor s-a născut la Oradea este stabilit la Paris de 24 de ani. Cultura la dubă l-a vizitat în capitala Franței și v-a spus povestea sa pe larg, AICI.

Recent, o lucrare a sa a fost inclusă în expoziția permanentă la sediul UNESCO din Paris.

The post Mircea Cantor a fost invitat să redeseneze celebra geantă Lady Dior pentru o ediție exclusivistă appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

RO Version

Ami Barak is an important figure in the world of contemporary art. Few know that he is, originally, from Romania.

For 6 years He was in charge of the department dedicated to the Art of the City of Paris and coordinated the first editions of Parisian White Nights.

He is a contemporary art curator and an ex college professor, in a permanent search to discover new talented artists, the one who binds ideas and artistic concepts in the form of an exhibit. 

He was born in Bistrița Năsăud, was raised in Baia Mare and studied Art History in Bucharest. In 1974 he was leaving from under the Ceaușescu regime and starting a new life.

“My leaving happened miraculously. Nobody thought that it would happen so quickly. In those days, when you submitted a request to go abroad, it took years. And most didn’t even get to leave. I left after 3 weeks. Only after it happened did I find out how it was possible.

Ceaușescu was waiting for Nixon’s visit that year and an American Democrat senator wrote an amendment in the Senate, through which The Clause of Favoured Nations, which Ceaușescu wanted, was conditioned by the opening of emigrations.

And Ceaușescu, as a sign of so called good will, opened the gates for three months, a period in which tens of thousands of Romanians migrated.”

He perfectly remembers the day when he submitted the departure documents. It was the 15th of may.

“All my close ones called me suicidal, they said that they’ll send me to factories or the army, that they will harass me and I will miss everything. My mother cried for a week. In fact, I thought they were right, I felt that I was doing something suicidal.”

The approval came exactly one month later, on the 15th of june. The pretext was that I was visiting some relatives in Israel. I had never seen those relatives. They were a sister and a brother of my father, who had left in 1945 with a ship from Constanța, ended up in Cyprus, were locked up in a camp, then another camp in Palestine.”

With a chemist father, from Piatra Neamț, his mother a bank clerk from Târgu Neamț, Ami Barak has been attracted to art even as a child, without any artistically inclined models in the family. Some art albums fell in his hands and he discovered another world apart from the grey, industrial one in which he was living.

“I saw art history as a refuge from a world where everything was fake. Fake was a five year plan.”

He got to Tel Aviv, where he did two years of master’s degree and had his first exhibits. And in 1982 he left for Paris, where we met him today. 

“It was hard, but not very hard, because I came with a scholarship for a doctorate in Sorbona. I had also been accepted into Columbia and Toronto Universities, but they didn’t offer me a scholarship. So I chose the French.

When I came here, I was seen as an Israeli although I wasn’t one, I was Romanian.

In fact, I have the exact profile of a wandering jew even now.

Even if I have Romanian origins and have kept professional connections with Romania, I don’t have Romanian feelings. The same with Israel. In 1998 I felt like a French person for the simple fact that when France had won the World Cup, I was excited and very happy.”

As he studied more and got in direct contact with the world of art, doing an internship at The Museum of Modern Art in Paris, he became more and more interested in contemporary art. 

“For me even leaving Romania was a thing of the here and now, of contemporaneity. One of my desires in art was to be interested in what is happening today and less about what has happened in the past.”

There weren’t any art historians interested about the present back then. It was frowned upon. Actually, this craft of a curator who is interested in the history of the present, this is a new craft. It was born in may 1969.

There was an exhibit in Bern, Switzerland, curated by a strong figure, Harald Szeemann. The exhibit was called When Attitudes become form. It is considered the event that gave birth to this profession.

There was a concept at it’s basis, and the curator was the one who had the ideas and requested artists whose works were an illustration of that concept.

In the world of museums, exhibits were about historical phenomena, for example, the Dutch scene of the 17th century, or artistic figures seen chronologically – the youth years, mature years. The exhibit phenomenon was not seen as a gathering of ideas.”

“The curator is mindful of what the artist is doing, interprets it and understands the work of an artist and others, that together form a tendency, a movement. This is square one. Then he sets up an event, an exhibit, a festival, etc.”

In 1992 he ran for an institutional position and became the director of a contemporary art museum in Montpellier, in the south of France. 

He was there for 9 years and left for Paris when he received the proposal to organise the events celebrating 20 years of the French efforts to buy contemporary art with public funding.

“I organised 14 exhibits in all of France with works from the collection. The event was called Trésor Public and I worked tirelessly for these exhibits.

After that I was scouted by a recruitment office and that is how I ended up in the Paris City Hall and handled every art project in public space, but also the Contemporary Art Municipal Fund. ”

He curated the first edition of Paris White Nights, an event that would open the doors of contemporary art to the public.

“In the first years of my career I had 100 people to an opening and I thought that was amazing.

At first, in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, and even ‘90s, contemporary art was something confidential. We were used to there being a few people, a sort of closed circuit, we didn’t expect a lot.”

-How do you explain the world’s interest in contemporary art?

In the early 2000’s there was a generational shift. Children that were taken by their parents to museums have become adults. At the same time, there was a democratisation of art.

It’s a complex answer to this question, I have even made some studies with sociologists.

It’s true that contemporary art has passed from a confidentiality phase to a mass phenomenon. 

My bet at the time with The White Night was that we would have 20.000 visitors in one night, which would have been huge. The Museum of Modern Art in Paris was rounding up about 20.000 visitors to an exhibit in two months at that time. So it was a bad bet, I was certain that I was about to lose a bottle of champagne.

The shock was that on that night, RATP had a million riders during the night rides. At the spot, it was full of people. 

Today, at an opening, first of all, you can’t get in. Then, even the privileged ones queue for two hours. Thousands of people come to an opening. 

At the Tokyo Palace there is a one kilometer queue.

It’s an interesting phenomenon. The Louis Vuitton Foundation, that has mainstream exhibits, had an event with masterpieces from Russian museums, a phenomenal exhibit with over 200 masterpieces one next to the other – Monet, Gaugin, Van Gopgh, Pissaro, etc. At that exhibit, the audience was white. They had over 1 million visitors, I’ve seen it a few times and they were all white. 

Go now to the Warhol – Basquiat exhibit, also made by Louis Vuitton. Most of the visitors come from the outskirts. The audience is mixed. Sure, Basquiat was african-american, but it’s a contemporary art exhibit.

So contemporary art has also changed the social profile of the audience and its openness. That also explains the growing interest on an international level.

Then, the actual event part had a part in it, the fact that there are performances, installations, a sort of involvement of the audience in the art.

There is also the fashion aspect. 

There is a market, before there wasn’t one, contemporary art didn’t have any value on the market.

As of the ‘90s, contemporary art started to have a much higher market value than some classical works. Adi Ghenie is worth more than a Rubens or a Rembrandt. It’s super-interesting.

It’s also cool to be seen at these kind of events. I know people who save for a half of year to buy a Louis Vuitton jacket or a Pharell Williams thing.”

When he speaks about the world of contemporary art, Ami Barak shows a big smile, he is passionate and full of humour. To understand better the phenomenon behind some of the artworks to which the public reaction is “I could have done that”, the curator explains what is considered relevant in art and what the difference is between an artist whose works are sold for tens of millions at auctions and others whose works are exhibited in museums, but don’t sell as well.

“Up until a certain point, there is no connection between artistic value and market value. Museums buy a work based on a series of criteria, and market value doesn’t play any part.

Museums consider to what extent a work is ahead of its time, in a historical context. How does it represent an important contribution to a historical unfolding. It’s important that it is unique, it is special.

The market, because it didn’t exist, was formed by the first collectors who learned from artists and from those gallery owners who went head first in promoting contemporary art. These gallery owners taught the collector, who didn’t know anything.

Then the first generation of contemporary art collectors was formed, who were going to exhibits, fairs and started to know what they wanted.

“After that there came the collectors from the world of finance, fashion and advertising, people with a lot of money. And it’s typical for people with money, to them it’s important what they like, they don’t worry if the market value is equivalent to the artistic value. And the more expensive it is, the more they are prepared to pay more. As with Michael Jordan shoes. ”

I had an incredible experience regarding market value, that totally changed my perspective as to why people pay so much money for something I don’t think is worth so much.

I was in Seoul and I went to an auction with a Coreean colleague. THe auction was not selling works of art, but boulders, rocks. When I say boulders, I’m not exaggerating. There were rocks, of different dimensions, smaller, bigger. THere were some things that I found extremely ordinary. The highlight was a small boulder of about 10 kg, that looked like it was from the street.

• How high do you think the auction went?
• Tens of thousands of euros?
• 3 million dollars. Then I realised that what is being spent on and how much is being spent is a completely different planet.

Then, regarding contemporary art, is it fair to say that an artist can be ranked high at auctions, but not as visible in great museums or galleries?

It’s frequent. But it’s works the other way around. If it’s seen by a museum, at some point it will intersect with the market.”

Even in our times, although contemporary art is a worldwide phenomenon of wide interest, it continues to spawn strong controversy and amazement sometimes. And it is normal that it does, we learn from the vastly experienced curator.

History will give us clear answers and help us understand the present, how we got, for example, from Renaissance art to NFT’s. In 2021, the artist Beeple became the third most expensive artist living, after his work, “Everydays: The first 5000 days”, a digital collage made out of 5000 illustrations, sold at an auction as an NFT for 69 million dollars.

“In 1913, a French artist called Marcel DUchamp, decided that a work of art can be an object that was not made by the artist. The first ready-made object was a chair on which he put a bicycle wheel. So the artist didn’t create the object, he chose it.

Duchamp gave a definition “who is an artist? The one who makes the art. And what is art? It is what the artist makes.” It’s tautology. Why do I mention this?

In 1913, the roads split. The field of definition of art changed. When you speak about Leonardo and Duchamp, you don’t speak about the same artistic field. It’s clear that you can’t be understood.

If a granny says that this is not art, she is right, you can’t even argue with her.”

She knows that art can be one way, we know that it can also be in another way.

In contemporary art we have painting, sculpture, but we also have ready-made, installations, artificial intelligence, multimedia.

And another thing happened when photography was invented. Something that can be multiplied infinitely has no market value. And we come today to the digital world. To give it a market value, the NFT was created. It becomes, then, unique. The non-fungible token is just for you. But a photograph without it being an NFT, can be multiplied infinitely.

And the speculative character raises the market value.”

While contemporary art events all over the world are evolving along with technology, public museums in Romania look like in the 19th century, says Ami Barak, former president of the International Association of Contemporary Art Curators. In the Romanian language, the word curator has not even been included in the dictionaries.

Ami Barak was part of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest’s board for 9 years, but in the last years, he has only worked with the private sector.

This year he is curating several events in Timișoara, European Capital of Culture, an exhibit in Cluj and is closely following the artistic scene in Romania.

“The first museum in Romania that functions on a model of modern art museum is MARe. In Romania, private centres, unconventional spaces, they work very coherently.”

His time is split between work, exhibits and travel, and in Paris he enjoys concerts conducted by Cristian Măcelaru, musical director at the French National Orchestra, regarded by the French as a superstar.

He is the father of two, his daughter following his passion for contemporary art, while his son, film school graduate, has become a butcher.

He lives in the heart of Paris, close to Place de la Bastille, where he met us, at the end of a work day, in which he had met several young artists.

One of them asked him what should he do to be noticed. Ami Barak answered this:

“When I go to an exhibit, I immediately know that this work belongs to this one. How do I know? Because I have seen before and it is a specific thing of the artist, a signature, a style. It’s him and nobody else. That is what I told him: Make it so that when I walk in to an exhibit and see one of your works, I will know iti is yours. It doesn’t mean that you will be rich, but that you will have your place in the history of your time.

Van Gogh only sold one work in his lifetime, he died a poor man and today he holds records. For a work to be valuable, at first it has no value. Picasso said the same thing. The idea of speculation only works this way.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

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“Dacă eu te duc pe tine într-un peisaj clișeic, plajă, apus, răsărit de soare, prima ta reacție vine din lumea veche – „mamă, ce mișto e!”. A doua, scoți telefonul, vrei să prinzi chestia aia. Te oprești din a contempla, te concentrezi pe poză. După care apare frustrarea „nu a ieșit. Poți să-mi faci, te rog, alta?”. Așa vedem noi acum. Așa ne uităm la artă, la oameni. Ceva ne blochează și suntem asaltați de un stream de emoții. Avem o anxietate în a privi tot.

Am senzația că tehnologia pe care am dezvoltat-o este ceea ce am vrut dintotdeauna. Cred că asta am vrut tot timpul, să nu mai privim realitatea.

Că o să ne-o luăm, că o să fie rău, asta nu știu. Specia umană e mult mai impredictibilă decât credem noi.

Eu vreau să pictez schimbarea, nu să o înțeleg.”

Îmbrăcat în negru, bătând frecvent din picior, dar zâmbind, având în față microfoane ale televiziunilor și reportofoane, precum și 100 de oameni în public, Adrian Ghenie, la rândul său anxios, ca noi toți după 3 ani de pandemie, răspunde cu calm într-un dialog menit să dizolve vălul de mister care l-a înconjurat în ultimii 10 ani și să îl arate mai aproape de adevăr.

Este probabil cel mai mediatizat nume al unui artist vizual român în viață, după ce picturile sale au atins vânzări record, de zeci de milioane de euro, la cele mai mari case de licitații din lume.

În realitate, preocupările sale sunt departe de lumea materială. Frământarea de a transpune imaterialul în pictură, de a surprinde în arta sa noua realitate pe care o trăim, este ceea ce îl face să continue. Și nu îi e ușor.

Însăși schimbarea suferită de umanitate, pe care vrea să o picteze, își pune amprenta și asupra sa.

“Dacă ar trebui să definesc “acum”, aș zice că e imposibilitatea de a fi singur. Am impresia că trăim într-o zonă gri. Când ești singur, ai senzația că e un multiplu care vine spre tine, sub forma informației. Când ești în public, ai sentimentul că ești singur.”

“În mijlocul epocii informației și a tehnologiei, începem să ne simțim singuri. Mă interesează cum se reflectă asta în practica artiștilor, cum o schimbă.

Eu, de exemplu, când intru în atelier am senzația că nu sunt singur. Și ca să îmi induc senzația singurătății bune, aia care te ajută să gândești, îmi pun teatru radiofonic, voci din copilărie. (n.r. vocea lui Victor Rebengiuc în Inimă de câine).

Pentru toți artiștii cred că e un ingredient esențial, câtă singurătate pot duce, de câtă singurătate au nevoie.”

“Nu îmi imaginez că arta se poate face fără singurătate.”

“Și dat fiind că tehnologia influențează exact chestia asta, cred că arta va fi influențată enorm. Dacă va fi bine sau rău, asta nu pot să zic.”

Locuiește la Berlin și a expus în galerii și muzee de prestigiu, precum Muzeul Ermitaj din Sankt Petersburg, Tate Liverpool, Villa Medici sau Centrul de Artă Contemporană din Malaga, iar acum a venit la Timișoara, Capitală Culturală Europeană în 2023, cu prima expoziție personală din România, după 14 ani.

The Impossible Body/ Corpul imposibil, curatoriată de Diana Marincu și organizată de Art Encounters, înseamnă o serie nouă de lucrări, desene și picturi, realizate de Ghenie în 2023 pentru acest eveniment și arătate în premieră. Artistul născut la Baia Mare transpune de această dată preocuparea sa legată de schimbarea pe care umanitatea a suferit-o în relație cu tehnologia, mai ales în perioada pandemiei.

“În toată istoria noi nu am avut alt limbaj corporal decât propria fizicalitate, oamenii se trezeau dimineață, mergeau la lucru, săpau pământul, făceau sex, etc. În artă găsim limbaje corporale foarte specifice. Astăzi e o altă viziune.

Noi nu mai avem o reprezentare vizuală care să definească clar psihologia epocii, în schimb, avem un limbaj corporal de facto. Și chestia asta mă fascinează, că în timpul vieții mele am putut să asist la nașterea unui limbaj corporal uman, de la noi putere făcut. Practic, ce avem toți – un gadget în mână care creează un soi de postură.

Eu aș defini acest limbaj corporal prin pasivitate anxioasă. Telefonul nu e un instrument. Instrumentul participă la fizicalitate. O greblă îți induce o postură, mașina de scris la fel.”

“Telefonul te pune într-un soi de suspans, te face pasiv. Stai pentru că urmează să sugi de acolo o infomație care după aia îți va defini o stare.”

“În prima fază te paralizează, îți induce o pasivitate, după care devii anxios, fericit, furios, etc. Pasivitatea asta va fi cu noi de acum încolo, nu e ceva care să dispară, indiferent de gadgeturile care vor apărea.

Părerea mea este că transformarea asta e ireversibilă. Nu știu dacă e bună sau rea, asta nici nu mă interesează. E un fapt, o mutație. Mă interesează să îi găsesc o reprezentare în pictură.”

Lucrările expuse la Timișoara ne arată nu doar corpuri umane grotești, vii, dar în stadiu de descompunere, ci și ura care se revarsă tastând în fața unui laptop, ură pe care am remarcat-o cu toții în ultimii ani, pe social media.

Încă din 2008, Ghenie încearcă să stea departe de lumea virtuală, cea a pozelor din vacanțe, a corpurilor perfecte sau a agresivității în limbaj. La scurt timp după ce și-a creat contul de facebook, l-a și abandonat.

„Aveam impresia că lumea se îmbarcă într-un soi de caravană, iar eu nu o să particip la asta. De la zi la zi simt că e mai departe de mine. Eu deschid telefonul ca să citesc știri sau ca să dau un telefon. Cred că o să fiu din ce în ce mai pe dinafară până în punctul în care nu o să mai văd caravana asta.

Mă fascinează, culmea, efectele pe care le produce.”

“Dacă ar fi să mai vină o pandemie și ar fi liniște, să am un an fără niciun deadline, în care să pictez ce vreau, cred că m-aș preocupa de o singură chestie. Aș încerca să pictez pe o dimensiune mare un telefon mobil. Fiindcă are o textură imposibilă.”

“Ca pictor, te uiți la un obiect și te gândești cum traduc, cum amestec culorile ca să iasă coș cu flori, măr, etc. Dar telefonul aproape că nu are traducere, are un luciu abstract, e o suprafață goală care e încărcată psihologic, nu material. Sau o telecomandă. Sunt texturi pe care creierul le vede, dar nu le poate traduce. Eu n-aș ști să pictez un telefon. Decât așa, figurativ, dar nu ar fi textura aia.

De exemplu, merele lui Cézanne. Te uiți la merele lui Cézanne și vezi că nu sunt mere. Trece dincolo, înțelege mărul ăla ca pe o realitate psihologică, poate să îl încarce cu aia.”

“Practic, asta fac artiștii. Găsesc forme pe care reușesc să le traducă. Le iau din natură, din viața de zi cu zi, le traduc artistic și le încarcă.”

“Eu nu aș ști cum să le încarc. Aș putea să le reprezint, dar nu aș ști să le încarc psihologic.

Și mă uit în jurul meu, sunt din ce în ce mai multe astfel de obiecte pe care creierul nostru nu le poate încărca. Nu sunt niște unelte, ci niște porți prin care trece o informație și aia e încărcată psihologic.

Și eu, pentru că nu știu să pictez un telefon, am pictat o mână cu un telefon. Pentru că mâna este o textură pe care știu să o traduc pictural și pe care pot să o încarc psihologic. Prin extensie, speram că și telefonul sau telecomandă capătă încărcătură, dar singure, telefonul și telecomanda, nu știu să le pictez. Asta m-ar incinta.”

Dincolo de realitățile care se schimbă de la o zi la alta, îl inspiră istoria și operele clasice. Unora încearcă să le găsească un corespondent în arta sa.

“Cred că gelozia este unul dintre motoarele esențiale ale unui artist. Te uiți la lucruri și unele te fac gelos. Ca atare, ai vrea o variantă personală. Dar nu gelozia în arta contemporană. Aia e cumva toxică.”

“De exemplu, mă uitam la un El Greco și erau două personaje care se uitau la o ceva aprins, fețele lor erau luminate de acel jar. Și mă gândeam că ar fi ca două personaje în beznă care se uită la telefon. Mi-a plăcut lucrarea, m-am gândit că aș putea să îi găsesc o variantă. Îmi place genul ăsta, să mut o chestie dintr-o parte în alta, mai ales că e cumva servită pe tavă. Dar cred că așa s-a făcut toată pictura într-un fel sau altul…”

Istoria recentă îl face, însă, să creadă că arta, indiferent de valoarea ei, a devenit vulnerabilă chiar până la o posibilă dispariție, în fața unor mișcări activiste de mediu precum Just Stop Oil. În 2022, două tinere activiste au aruncat cu supă de roșii în celebra lucrare Floarea Soarelui, de Van Gogh, la National Gallery din Londra.

“Dacă arta ar fi o religie, Van Gogh ar fi unul dintre mucenici, icoana stângii, artistul care n-a vândut nimic, s-a sinucis, genial, singur, exact ce iubim la nivel uman.

Dacă aruncau sucul de roșii pe un Rubens, am fi zis dă-l în mă-sa, că oricum reprezintă aristocrația. Dar faptul că au aruncat pe un Van Gogh spune cumva că nu vor mai exista sfinți pe viitor.”

“Epoca aia e terminată. Ce efect va avea asta asupra artei? Cred că unul major. Dar nu știu dacă o să vedem asta în următorii ani. Și cred că va apărea o generație de artiști care va avea ca unic criteriu, criteriul ecologic.

Noi avem senzația că dacă un lucru e frumos, o să scape, că trebuie protejat. Antichitatea era plină de chestii frumoase și n-a scăpat mai nimic.”

“Odată mutația produsă, nu avem nicio problemă să distrugem tot.”

“Să nu ne facem iluzii că legile patrimoniului și 500 de ani de educație vor ține arta în muzee ca acum.

Performance-ul celor de la Just Stop Oil pune ca un parpriz în față avertismentul că s-ar putea să urmeze o epocă de tipul ăla, în care vor face o listă cu lucruri care știm că sunt bune și de aia le vor distruge.”

Într-o lume fragilă, imprevizibilă, dependentă de tehnologie și anxioasă, Adrian Ghenie își găsește cu greu liniștea interioară. Se refugiază în locuri mai puțin cunoscute, puțin populate, care își păstrează autenticitatea.

„Încerc de multe ori să nu fac nimic și asta e o chestie destul de complicată. Am observat că în Berlin nu mai funcționează asta, îmi vine să fac ceva. Ca să mă relaxez, trebuie să nu fac nimic. Și atunci mă duc în tot felul de excursioare total nepitorești și încerc să nu fac nimic.”

“Am descoperit în ultimii 20 de ani valorea plictiselii – e mare lucru să ajungi în punctul ăla în care ești atât de plictisit încât ești creativ, ai curaj. Pare o banalitate, dar nu e ușor să mai ajungi acolo, să nu faci nimic fără să ai sentimentul de vinovăție că nu faci nimic.”

Revine constant în România fără să facă, însă, din asta, un eveniment. La Cluj, locul unde s-a școlit și dezvoltat în prima parte a carierei sale, odată cu Galeria Plan B, se regăsește din ce în ce mai puțin fiindcă noile cartiere apărute de pe o zi pe alta nu mai au nicio legătură cu orașul studenției sale. În schimb, i-a plăcut să descopere farmecul Deltei Dunării.

Acum, din mijlocul Capitalei Culturale Europene, apreciază tocmai partea încă neoccidentalizată.

“Mă raportez la România ca la o textură anume pe care am regăsit-o la Timișoara, o anumită eroziune, o lume încă nelocuită de materiale de construcții, acolo mă simt acasă, creierul meu se simte într-o zonă de confort fantastic. Dacă aia dispare, cred că aș avea o problemă.”

A ajuns la Berlin pentru că, oricât de banal ar suna, acolo l-a dus viața. Întâmplări simple și umane l-au făcut să rămână.

„Am fost invitat acolo de un revelion, mi-a plăcut la revelionul ăla foarte mult, mult mai mult decât revelioanele petrecute la Baia Mare și Cluj, după revelion am mai fost o dată, ală cu revelionul mi-a oferit un atelier mult mai mare decât am avut vreodată și încet încet am plecat, a fost un proces.

Mi se părea că era un loc în care puteai să fii cu adevărat anonim, ceea ce e fantastic.

E locul din lumea asta care oferă acest sentiment genuin. Te simți anonim în sensul sănătos al cuvântului.”

A reprezentat România la Bienala de la Veneția în 2015, când a renovat cu banii săi Pavilionul construit din fondurile lui Nicolae Iorga.

“Eu mă prezint ca artist român. Nu vă imaginați ce diasporă interesantă are România. Nu mă refer doar la cei care au plecat în ultimii 30 de ani.”

“De multe ori cei care locuiesc în România uită că există o a doua Românie afară și e foarte interesantă. E dincolo de clișee.”

“Am fost surprins de multe ori să dau peste oameni extrem de sofisticați, veniți din România. Afară e o Românie sofisticată care reduce mult din senzația asta că „am plecat din România.”

Dar ca să lămuresc povestea cu renovarea pavilionului, am făcut-o în primul rând pentru mine. Știți de ce? Când m-am dus acolo să verific pereții, mi-au spus că nu au mai fost refăcuți de 50 de ani, că bați un cui, pui o pictură grea și pică. Deci am refăcut pavilionul, în primul rând, ca să pot să-mi atârn lucrările.

O lucrare de 3 metri are 150 de kg cu ramă, nu ține cuiul în peretele făcut pe vremea lui Iorga. Asta nu are deloc o conotație patriotică, că am cheltuit bani și am salvat nu știu ce pavilion. Nu. Pur și simplu cădeau lucrările.”

Dacă în restul lumii vernisajele sale adună oameni interesați strict de artă contemporană, deschiderea expoziției sale la Timișoara a avut mai degrabă un caracter familial. S-a întâlnit cu foști colegi de liceu sau vecini, veniți să îl vadă, a stat la povești cu jurnaliștii sau cu oameni sosiți din diverse colțuri ale țării pentru a-l întâlni, a obține un autograf sau un selfie.

Dincolo de lucrările expuse, chiar și desfășurarea evenimentului confirmă credința sa, că umanitatea a suferit o modificare iremediabilă. Noi, simpli vizitatori sau jurnaliști, am văzut lucrările sale și prin ecranele telefoanelor, fiind irezistibilă tentația de a poza un tablou de Ghenie și a posta apoi pe social media. În mijlocul acestei lumi, artistul a rămas răbdător, sociabil și singur în același timp.  

Dintr-un generos respect față de entuziasmul publicului, a acceptat glumind toate solicitările de poze sau autografe, făcând cu zâmbetul pe buze ceva ce nu și-ar fi dorit, de fapt, să facă.

În definitiv, celebritatea nu are nicio legătură cu arta sa. Procesele emoționale și cognitive prin care trece atunci când pictează sunt departe de ideea de satisfacție sau bucurie. Ele se apropie mai degrabă de o luptă cu propriile frici.

“Cuvântul ăsta “bucurie”… eu nu înțeleg nimic din el. Nu știu la ce se referă.”

“Nu am reacția asta în atelier când pictez să zic “pfoai, ce bine a ieșit! Sunt bucuros”. Nu am avut-o niciodată. Nu știu cine o are. Am senzația că e un cuvânt care nu ar avea ce căuta într-o relație cu un artist.”

“Imaginează-ți un scriitor care e într-o depresie și termină un roman. Sunteți bucuros că ați terminat? Da. În ce constă bucuria? Păi, vreau să mă arunc de la etaj. Au fost artiști consacrați, de succes, care s-au sinucis. Pur și simplu cred că bucuria nu are nicio legătură cu zona asta.”

“De ce face lumea artă? Aici e o listă întreagă…nu e nici că se descarcă, nici că vrea să fie creativă, că se plictisește. E o complicățenie de ce face lumea artă, ce e artă. E ca la Google Maps. De sus pare simplu. Bagi zoom, te sperii cu cât mergi mai aproape.

Toată arta e un eșec cumva controlat. De aia pui a doua pensulă pentru că nu a ieșit prima. Eșecul primului gest duce la al doilea. Și de la un punct încolo speri că o să apară succesul. Dar vorbim strict de succesul acelei suprafețe, nu de succesul în sens social.

E o administrare a eșecului până când la un moment dat ai senzația unei victorii, dar strict în zona aia, nu are legătură cu percepția socială.”

Expoziția Corpul Imposibil poate fi văzută la Timișoara, la Pavilionul ISHO, până pe 18 iunie. Intrarea este liberă.

Dacă vrei să susții Cultura la dubă și jurnalismul cultural independent, poți redirecționa cei 3.5% din impozitul pe venit AICI.

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The post Umanitatea a suferit o mutație. Adrian Ghenie vrea să o picteze. “Transformarea e ireversibilă. Mă interesează să îi găsesc o reprezentare în pictură.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

Expoziția Corpul imposibil, organizată de Fundația Art Encounters, va fi deschisă începând cu 20 aprilie la Pavilionul ISHO din Timișoara.

Pe 21 aprilie, de la ora 18:00, va avea loc un eveniment special Meet the Artist, care va include un tur ghidat realizat de Adrian Ghenie împreună cu Diana Marincu, curatoarea expoziției.

„În cadrul expoziției «Corpul imposibil» de la Timișoara, artistul ne va prezenta noi lucrări, inspirate de perioada pandemiei și de izolarea în spațiul domestic, când singura legătură cu «lumea» avea loc prin dispozitivele digitale. Aceste teme vorbesc despre relația complicată pe care omul modern o are astăzi cu tehnologia, cu social media, cu propriul corp și cu timpul.”

Diana Marincu, director artistic Fundația Art Encounters și curatoarea expoziției

Adrian Ghenie este unul dintre cei mai importanți artiști români contemporani. A expus în mari instituții de artă
ale lumii, printre care: Accademia di Francia a Roma – Villa Medici, Roma; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo (CAC) Málaga; Muzeul Ermitaj din Sankt Petersburg; Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Denver; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent; Muzeul Național de Artă Contemporană (MNAC), București; Tate Liverpool. În 2015 a reprezentat România la Bienala de Artă de la Veneția cu proiectul Darwin’s Room.

Expoziția poate fi vizitată în intervalul 20 aprilie – 18 iunie în incinta Pavilionului ISHO, între orele 12:00 – 18:00, de miercuri până duminică, accesul fiind gratuit.

The post Adrian Ghenie va avea prima expoziție personală în România, după 14 ani appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

RO

After the Revolution in 1989, most of Romanians tasted freedom for the first time. They burned photographs of Ceaușescu, got in line to vote, drank Coca-Cola or simply left.

What before 1989 was called fleeing, became a right to travel, and especially those who had the possibilities, chose other countries and never returned.

Dorin Crețu was engaged to a French woman and had been waiting for three years for the permission to get married and leave to France. He did not get it, the simple request arose suspicions of betrayal and interrogations, so the Revolution gave him a chance at a new life.

He has been living in Paris for 32 years, where he is an established painter and has recieved the support of the French state to develop hi passion for art, born during his childhood in Brașov.

Without being part of a family of artists, he lived, however, in an environment where art was appreciated. He felt attracted as a child to colors. He used to paint and make African masks, so his parents allowed him to go to The Plastic Arts High School.

He then went studied Plastic Arts in college in Bucharest and had a short career as a teacher.

“I was made a painting teacher somewhere in Moldova, at a school. Being somewhat restless, I left teaching and became a freelancer.”

What freelancing meant in communist Romania is hard to say. What is certain is that his choices did not give him a positive image in the party’s eyes and had to balance between his passion for painting and his citizen duties.

“It was somehow complicated, I had a scholarship and I had to do a three year probation.

I went to the Carpați Trust, that was handling the building of The People’s Palace and, because there weren’t any openings at painting restauration, I got transferred to sculpture.

I did my probation there, as a sculptor in stone.”

He also received from the Plastic Artists Union in Romania a workshop on Mendeleev street in Bucharest, and, in the evening, after work, he would go there to paint.

He left for Paris with a thirst to paint, alongside his French partner. Only, there, he didn’t have any support and had to start from nothing. He only had an art portfolio, with which he knocked on the doors of the French Ministry of Culture.

“I went through all those offices with photos of my works, begging them to look at my work. I came across an inspector who liked what he saw and showed me the way and the first steps that I had to do.

That’s how I signed up for scholarships, for the acquisition of works on The National Contemporary Arts Fund. And The French State bought one of my works, then I got a scholarship, then came exhibits and awards that didn’t mean only diplomas, but also an important financial support.”

More than this, he was in a contest organized by an artistic commission and received his first workshop, somewhere on the outskirts of Paris.

“Back then, Romania had another image.

After The Revolution, there was a positive attention on us, something honest coming from the French. We were a lot of artists who came to Paris and could benefit from the advantages.”

“Back then, Rromanians were welcomed and supported. Now Romania’s image isn’t that glorious. It is that of those playing in the metro, those giving rides with the bikes around the Eiffel Tower.”

But life wasn’t all good, even with the support from the French State. So he had to work in order to support himself.

“It is terribly nice to play artist, but it is difficult to live only out of art.”

“Having sculptor friends who were already working at the restoration of The Louvre, I remembered my years balancing between color and sculpting in Romania, and for 2 or 3 years I chiseled on the Louvre facade.

I was in the garden of the Pyramid and was chiseling, beyond decorations and geometrical shapes, I would work on the sculptures themselves. There were some characters that I sculpted in full.

I remember how the block was inserted. We would make a small hole in the degraded sculpture and they would add the stone block that you had to sculpt into that, in order to complete in the existing shape what was missing.

Teams of Romanians and French had finished restoring the segment and moved on to other ones, but I stopped and decided to give making a living out of painting another try.”

Even though at the time he was not happy having to work somewhere other than his workshop, he now proudly shows us the characters in the sculptures on the Louvre facade which he restored.

He lives in Northern Paris, on the Saint Martin Canal, in a duplex recieved from the French State. On one floor is the living space, and on the other, his workshop.

Even if it is not free, but at a 50% of the price of rent, the workshop that he won at the contest is still a privilege, given the immense competition in a cultural capital of the world, such as Paris.

“There are a lot of artists workshops in this area, some given by the city hall, some by the French Ministry of Culture, some private.

You come here with the energy and desire to show your work, you want to move mountains. What is harder is having continuity, because life in Paris is not cheap and you come across material problems.”

Dorin Crețu has sold, during his career, about 300 works and has had shows in Paris, Bucharest, London or Krakow.

In his works we can frequently find a floral motif, that welcomes us from the very entrance on his apartment in Paris.

On the walls there are framed pages of his mothers herbarium, from his house in Brașov.

“At first I was attracted to the idea of painting differently. And I came across a French artistic current – Supports/Surfaces.

And I saw that you can paint not only with oil on canvas. They would paint on petals, military bandages, they would cut wood. That way I managed to develop a technique that was appreciated. One of the works that I did then was bought by The National Contemporary Arts Fund.

I was an ancient stela on which I glued pieces of lace, over which I threw bitumen. And the lace and bitumen formed a sort of calligraphy that fit in perfectly with the stela shape.

At a certain point , from the excess of materials, I felt the need for a clean slate and to try to paint without materials.

Which is a sort of chemical experience, not an easy one.

I worked with some acrylic resins that allowed me to get those transparencies, those pictural reports, without which a painting cannot exist.

And I have developed, for some years now, having floral and vegetal motifs, this theme.

Even though I am now looking at another motif – the mountain – I always return to that floral shape. I can’t wait to go to camp (in Bistrița, Romania) and draw some trees, that will probably later feed me into making something on a larger scale, with the same floral theme.”

“The vegetal shape is a form of reflection on existence, a sort of fragility of life, but also vanity, it lives for a moment and then it dies.”

Meanwhile, he has become equally preoccupied with the mountain motif, without being able to identify the origin of this interest. He remembers, though, that in his teen years in Brașov, he had a passion for landscape photography and collected tens of mountain photographs.

“Artistic vision changes with time, it adds to itself, it grows. Of course I keep memories or something from the beginning.

I thought that the mountain motif has plenty of imagery that I can put it on canvas, I’m attracted to this solid shape that you can paint on the canvas, it’s like a solid solitary.”

Dorin Crețu is an artist representative to the ’80’s generation in Romania and has come back, for a few years, in Bucharest, where he got back his workshop on Mendeleev street, after 30 years. Also, The National Museum of Contemporary Art has bought two of his works.

“They were bought following an exhibition I had in Mogoșoaia. The director of MNAC from back then, Oroveanu, proposed the acquisition of two of my works, which filled me with joy.”

He travels to Bucharest almost monthly and is represented by AnnArt Gallery, along with renowned artists such as Sorin Ilfoveanu, Ștefan Câlția.

He is happy to remake an artistic connection with his home country and hopes to constantly earn the freedom to paint.

“I have an itch in my fingers, I love colors, I find personal pleasure in what I do.”

“It can be paper, canvas, a piece of wood or something else. But all these pleasures are being paid for in some way. An artist’s life is not easy, be it in Bucharest, or Paris.

To do what you like is an extraordinary luxury, and it must be paid for.”

For that, in Paris he sometimes works as an interior designer, collaborating with French architects, earning his living.

He is a French citizen, but has kept his Romanian citizenship.

“I speak French, but have not lost my Eastern accent, and I am immediately spotted. And I naturally say that I am Romanian, I live in Paris, I am a French Citizen, with Romanian origins.”

“But the status of an artist does not stop at borders. I want to believe that his vision is broader, pushed toward humanity.

Nowadays, any artist can get on a plane and go anywhere, see exhibits, visit new places, then come back. You don’t have to take important migration decisions anymore.”

“The artist of today is free to chose his place of creation. Art is like a fluid, a flux, it must move everywhere.”

Romanian or French, Dorin Crețu is an artist, a father and a person constantly fighting for his passion. He is grateful for the chance he got in 1990 and wishes that Romanians get the image that they had back then.

He bares the label of immigrant, and that motivates him to evolve.

“I fight the feeling of not belonging, and being suspended somewhere between Romania and France.”

“In the same time, there is the feeling of something that is not entirely yours, that you are a permanent spectator and never participate. There are moments when I feel that, and other times when I feel that Paris is mine.

On the other hand, the cultural barrier is not necessarily a bad thing. It pushes you to constantly show and be your best.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Dorin Crețu, Romanian-French painter in Paris: “It is a luxury to do what you like, and it somehow has to be paid.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.