Bombastic Fantastic Plain Vanilla
dal 12/6/2011 al 14/7/2011
Segnalato da
12/6/2011
Bombastic Fantastic Plain Vanilla
amt_project (old location), Bratislava
The body of Radu Comsa's work balances a dialogue between the idea of background in the history of cinema and the notion of 'Tondo', connected to Renaissance painting in Italy. Artist and curator Vlad Nanca documents urbanity through his photographs, installations and performances. Aline Cautis (New York, 1975) is building a narrative that includes the fluctuations, insecurities, and failures inherently important to her artistic practice.
Radu Comşa’s voyage through the perplexity of basing an abstraction on an abstract thought
mixed up scénographie by Musique et Mise en Scéne, a curatorial counterfeit originated in the Caribbean
showcasing contextual inserts by Vlad Nancă and Aline Cautis
Any time there is a surface there is a surface subsurface and every time there is a suggestion there is a suggestion an addubitation and every time there is silence there is silence absence and every time that is languid there is that there then and not oftener, not always then, not particular, tender and changing and external inner and central and surrounded disclosed and singular and simple and the same and the surface and the circle square and the shine and the succor and the white black and the same and the better worse and the red blue and the same and the centre periphery and the yellow and the tender tough and the better, and altogether.
[Gertrude Stein. Tender Buttons, 1914. FOOD]
[Musique et Mise en Scéne, 2011]
painting diagram
visionary
of meaning
of invisible
divagations, extractions, and objects of the mind
the study of visual rhetoric
blah, blah, blah
canons
arrangement
emphasis
kaleidoscope
light blue and the same red with purple
Radu Comşa (Romania, 1975) is interested in introspective voyeurism. The body of work balances a dialogue between the idea of background in the history of cinema and the notion of “Tondo,” connected to Renaissance painting in Italy. After a prolific period in which he experimented with video, installation, performance and collage, Comşa decided to consecrate himself to painting. In that phase of his career, the medium became a tool which embodied his sometimes dangerous curiosity, perfectly illustrated in a cartoon animation by fellow artist and studio mate Ciprian Mureşan, who imagined Radu Comşa as a bear eating garbage from a trash can.
“Eating trash” is indeed a perfect metaphor for Comşa’s practice. The artist is aware of the risks he runs and yet, at the same time, his work is not even imbued with the exploitation that marked the work of Kippenberger and his successors. His latest works deal with the dissolution of form, and with abstraction seen as an amalgamation of parts and leftovers, playing on the idea of the art object concretely existing as a 'shape of thing' incorporating divagations, extractions, and traces of the mind. The artist has appeared in group shows at the National Gallery in Pristina, Espace Tajan in Paris, Plan B in Cluj and Lucie Fontaine in Milan. He participated in Prague Biennale 3 and 4.
Artist and sometimes curator, Vlad Nancă (Romania, 1979) studied photography and video at the University of Arts in Bucharest. Drawing on the environment and influenced by life in Bucharest, he documents urbanity through his photographs, installations and performances. He is the founder of Bukres blog and is actively involved in Bucharest’s art scene, hosting ‘home galleries’ (2020 home gallery, Apartamentul 17) and curating exhibitions (“Wait…” in 2006, “Back to the future,” in 2007, at Galeria Nouă, Bucharest) to encourage and support local artists by offering a platform to show their work. His varying personal projects employ different mediums, as well as diverse social and cultural symbols, often including word-play, to evoke nostalgia, reference Romania’s recent past and challenge the current cultural climate. Nancă’s work was shown at Museion in Bolzano, Casino Luxembourg, Prague Biennale 3, at Raster gallery in Warsaw, and at Futura gallery in Prague.
Exploring the formal and stylistic language of painting, akin to youtube video mashups, Aline Cautis (New York, 1975) is building a narrative that includes the fluctuations, insecurities, and failures inherently important to her artistic practice. Operating as language, her paintings attempt to move forward, add, subtract, move back, gesture, articulate and confuse all, reach out, reach in, make sense of contradiction and navigate across practices. The artist contrasts gestural and emotive painting marks with formal geometric shapes, as means to create a seeming lack of visual cohesion, pitting contrasting painterly languages against each other, within a single painting. Her interest in this strategy is the creation of a visual disturbance in the viewers, where they are forced to consider the possibility of contradictory belief systems co-existing not necessarily in harmony. Recent exhibitions include Prague Biennial 5, Mayerei gallery in Karlsruhe, Devening Projects + Editions, and Roots & Culture in Chicago.
Exhibiting:
Radu Comsa
Vlad Nanca
Aline Cautis
Image: Radu Comsa, DIVAGATIONS, EXTRACTIONS (series), 2011
Opening: Monday June 13, 2011 - h 6pm
amt_project
Bastova, 1 - Bratislava
by appointment: wednesday - friday, 1 - 4 pm