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5/6/2014

Nicu Ilfoveanu

Uqbar - projectspace, Berlin

Curated by Alina Şerban

In cooperation with the Romanian Cultural Institute Berlin uqbar presents Series. Multiples. Realisms., a solo exhibition by artist Nico Ilfoveanu, curated by Alina Şerban. The project was initially shown at the Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest in 2012 and is accompanied by a publication. For the exhibition at uqbar the artist brings together photography, text, slide projection and Super8 film.

An object of history, memory, symbol, but most often today, of geographical marking, the public forum monument is, in fact, a recipient of collective features, complexes and fascinations. The intimate correspondences established by it with the various configurations of the public sphere and of the place in which it is located are virtually creating a new history- one told by the monument in a different manner and to different people each and every time. The invisible meaning of such an artifact is turning it either into a space for mutual values to communicate and interact with each other, or into a space of resistance against the forms of colonizing and postulating a monolithic identity. As circumstantial agents, public monuments become territories tagged by the coexistence of various testimonies, traumas and daily realities.

Series. Multiples. Realisms. is focusing on the construction of a photographic series dealing with the public monuments created in memory of World War I in the rural environment. In the quiet landscape of the Romanian villages, a fragile profile of the soldiers as known heroes is captured, disclosing not only a mutual historical experience, but also a universe that formed the object of radical transformations in the last years. Apparently disconnected from their background, the lives of these lonely characters provide the passer-by with an incursion into a collective social practice. The layers of such practice are activating, beyond the daily resignation and oblivion, sui generisshapes in which the sphere of the national is represented, and the public discourse is interpreted.

Nicu Ilfoveanu’s approach is to destabilize the traditional rhetoric accompanying the narration of these monuments, while he proposes a working and reading alternative. There is a common denominator for these images, namely an intimate relationship with space, with the living territory of the village, which has become the instrument of collective projections. The affinity with this landscape is, for each community, strengthening the presence of certain rituals and histories which are subjectively constructing national identities. Last, but not least, Nicu Ilfoveanu’s project allows an observation of the mirage represented by commemoration, death and public representation horizons, following the perception of these monuments at the local level then, when they were built and now, in the present.

The photographer Nicu Ilfoveanu and the curator Alina Şerban will attend the opening of the exhibition.

Nicu Ilfoveanu is active in the field of photography, film, and photographic books. The artist is credited a particular position in Romanian contemporary photography. His recent activity includes solo shows at the Arsenal Gallery, Poznan (2013); The Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest (2012) and group shows as the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2013); 4th Fotofestival, Mannheim/Heidelberg/Ludwigshafen (2011).

Alina Şerban is an art historian and curator. The projects initiated by her share as a common ground a research-oriented practice. She recently edited publications on Romanian Neo-Avant-garde artists Ion Grigorescu and Geta Brătescu. In 2009 Şerban curated the Romanian Pavilion at the 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, later also shown at The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago. She is currently working on Vision of a Nation in collaboration with Fotogalleriet Oslo and Enchanting Views: Romanian Black Sea Tourism Planning and Architecture of the 1960s and ‘70s together with the architects Kalliopi Dimou & Sorin Istudor.

Opening June 6, 2014, 7 p.m.

uqbar
Schwedenstr. 16 - 13357 Berlin

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