In its second year running, the insertion the visual arts platform_PAV an associated structure within Sibiu’s International Theatre Festival (FITS), continues to function as a space without a space, a semi-nomad entity, a body without organs (Artaud 1947; Deleuze & Guattari 1972, 1980), an occasion and an invitation to become active and come together. It brings together interventions from invited artists, as well as giving the opportunity to some of Sibiu’s permanent art installations and spaces to reappear back into the public sphere, structures which exist and infuse into the city all year-round. PAV brings together local and non-local voices, be they artists, cultural producers, museum and artist-run spaces, all the way to non-conventional spaces pertaining to the consumerist culture, creating infiltrations into the capitalist machine (Deleuze & Guattari, ibid.; Negri, 1989; Hardt & Negri, 2000).

 

The deliberate decentralization of the exhibition venues has a double function. On one hand, decentralization is an effect of the local contemporary art cartography, with a few strong artist- and curator-led initiatives, but with still timid support from authorities and private institutions – therefore one of PAV’s intentions is to plead for a coming-together. On the other hand, it responds to a curatorial model attuned to a post-structuralist approach choosing rhizomatic, non-hierarchical exhibition displays which insert into museum (CNM ASTRA) and artist-run spaces (arta.nonstop), alongside printing distribution in various festival venues, and commercial venues par excellence (Promenada Mall). To this curatorial impulse, three other permanent associated structures respond, from semi-public artworks (the outer wall of the Radu Stanca National Theatre) to interventions in public institutions (The ASTRA County Library) and to artist-run commercial galleries (@Dragostespace).

 

The artists invited in the four exhibitions explore some of the most pertinent contemporary questions, relating to unrest, displacement, the commodification of urban societies, climate change and ecological emergencies, but also explorative of human need for magical, ludic and the supernatural. Complementary rather than antithetic, these different positionings (Vygotsky, 1978; Davies & Harré, 1990; Harré, 2006; Van Langenhove, 2021) highlight the complexity of human interaction with that which surrounds it, and with other aspects of social life, lived experience in relation to the unknown, and ultimately, obliteration. Iulian Bisericaru’s exhibition May we reconstruct what has been lost, is an exercise in deconstruction and re-contextualization. A recently commissioned monumental work of art in the form of a start/finish gate for Sibiu’s International Marathon, one of the city’s most popular sports events, is englobed in a site-specific installation in Promenada Mall, a popular commercial venue. From a place of ritualistic passage, of experience and transformation in the heart of the city (a collaboration between Iulian Bisericaru and artistic designer Cristina Kiru), the symbolic poARTa MIS has been dismantled and parts of it converted into a sculptural installation in various places throughout the city’s shopping mall. Although in a different form, the work’s apparent luxurious colourscape underpins some criticality regarding to current ecological disasters, irreversible climate changes and ultimately the destruction of our world, unless immediate drastic action is taken. This conceptual cynicism is nevertheless balanced by the serenity of the brushstroke and the colour palette, evoking fragments of a lost Paradise, a vanished terrace from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, ‘wonders’ which we are at risk of losing entirely in the battle with climate change.

The ASTRA Open-air Museum is hosting the exhibition Spații Limitrofe [Marginal Spaces], an ongoing series by Ulrike Ettinger. Made in the silkscreen printing technique (serigraphy), the ‘base’ of the works is an emblematic image similar to the painting România Revoluționară [Revolutionary Romania] by the XIX c. Romanian painter C. D. Rosenthal, used as cover for the poem Cântarea României by Alecu Russo. Ettinger is rigorously tracing the image’s transformation, all the way to publications on visual culture pertaining to the communist universe: the image of the Romanian blouse – which is chosen by the artist from the publication Folklore and Decorative Art [Artă Populară și Decorativă, published by Meridiane in 1981, published with the occasion of the National Festival of Socialist Education and Culture Cântarea României 1978-79] –  is in fact a Fehldruck, a misprint resulted from a technological error which would render the page (or in some cases the entire publication) unusable, paper scrap. Upon this image Ettinger draws scenes, ‘emotional landscapes’ from her own family histories, narratives of unrest, migration, deportation, exile and even imprisonment; Ettinger herself has emigrated from Romania to Germany in the 1980s. The works drift away from the stereotypical romanticised family histories, replaced here with emblematic scenes from the artist’s childhood, portraits, instances of the ‘emancipated’ woman, urban landscapes and regional maps. The works are complemented by four pencil drawings and a touching, sometimes even painful text, dedicated to the memory of her father and grandmother.

In the heart of the city, the independent artist space arta.nonstop has been transformed into a space of social examination, where a few dozen photographs form the exhibition KNOW-WHY. Dérives in the Urban Landscape. Gloria Luca presents us some results of her artistic research, here illustrated as a critical reflection deriving from two key components of knowledge: know-why (attune to conceptual knowledge) and know-how (procedural or performative knowledge). The tradition of the landscape as a representation model which invites passive contemplation, is replaced here by – sometimes absurd or unaesthetic – snapshots or dérives (tributary methodologically to the Situationist International Group), captured by the artist with the mobile phone during short trips on foot in various neighbourhoods of her hometown Madrid. Even though the human body is absent, its presence is always suggested in the utility of the objects or architecture represented in the photographs: a car junkyard, stores, skyscrapers, construction sites, mural painting, or graffiti. For Luca, in the contemporary urban ecosystem, public art has been replaced by commodified symbols of mass consumerism and social inequality, typical of postcolonial societies which are failing to maintain a prosperous cultural life. Collating these images to the walls of arta.nonstop transforms the space into a kind of newspaper of social imagery (a different take than Dan Perjovschi’s nearby Horizontal Newspaper, yet visually codifying in somewhat similar ways).

In the printed magazine Nina’s Sightings, Adina Mocanu explores the ambiguous fascination for the magical, divine, more-than-human or the supernatural, which have played an important role throughout human existence. Her ongoing series Being Nina, started in 2019, comprise 14 video chapters where the artist becomes Nina Kulagina, a Cold War Russian housewife-turned national emblem, whose life has been used by the Soviet regime as proof of an alleged national superiority. Aside from illustrating situations in which Nina makes use of her paranormal abilities, blurring the lines between historical research and fiction, each chapter presents an evolution in the portrayal of this character, and an enhancement of powers, as Mocanu is gradually inhabiting her enigmatic alter-ego; in the culminating point, Nina meets Adina after the fall of the Iron Curtain, a young girl living in Southern Romania. The magazine Nina’s Sightings borrows from the printed tradition popular in Romania during the 1990s, while various witnesses (also Mocanu’s alter-egos) report strange occurrences implicating Nina and her growing powers. Beyond the detective work required to trace the protagonist’s steps, and beyond savoring different narratives, the stories also shed light on the atmosphere present within different Romanian social strata during the last 30 years of post-communism.

The three associated spaces, Dan Perjovschi’s Horizontal Newspaper, Lia Perjovschi’s Telescopic Space of Knowledge and Dan Raul Pintea’s @Dragostespace expand on the definition of an exhibition, each of them functioning as a permanent space embroidered in the local cultural architecture. Visible on one of Sibiu’s most circulated boulevards stands the Horizontal Newspaper by Dan Perjovschi, a 30-meter-long installation on the wall of Radu Stanca’s National Theatre, which has been for every year since 2010 a ‘canvas’ where the artist skilfully delivers snippets of local and global actualities; a combination of text and image, so specific of Perjovschi’s interventions, offers year after year a rigorous and well-researched retrospective of the most impactful socio-political events, which are shaping the world we live in. Nearby, Lia Perjovschi’s Telescopic Space of Knowledge, another public space installation transforms the last floor of the ASTRA County Library into an encyclopaedia of objects, a collection of ideas, pieces of information, in short an ever-expanding palace of knowledge, where visitors can explore and critically engage with some of the most pertinent ideas that transform the thinking of our times from every sphere of society. The installation comprises ‘crayons, balloons, books, images, measuring tapes, ideas, umbrellas, key chains, bags, globes, encyclopaedias, maps’, curated by the artist into departments: Today’s knowledge, Earth, Body, Art, Culture, Universe, Science. On the parallel street, the artist-run @Dragostespace is a 5 m2 commercial space with a street front, where Dan-Raul Pintea has opened a shop selling his own artwork and products which centre around his main concept Dragoste [love] and hand-made paper created in-house, symbolic, in his eyes, of his passion for art, of the personal journey, and struggles he faced while navigating the contemporary art world. The choice of the word Dragoste is consistent with an attempt to spread messages through objects, in the most universal way possible.

Text by Iris Ordean

Initiator: Dan Perjovschi

Curator: Iris Ordean

Assistant curator: Cristina Kiru

Social media manager: Alin Ștefănescu

Dan Perjovschi (RO)

The Horizontal Newspaper

heatrical Edition

Associated Space – Teatrul Național Radu Stanca, Bvd. Corneliu Coposu nr. 2

24h 

Artist talk  - 25.06, 18:00, Zidul exterior, TNRS

Goria Luca and Dan Perjovschi at the Wall. About the Album and the Project: The Horizontal Newspaper 2010-2023

Romania

1h

Dan Perjovschi (RO) 

The Magnet Sky 

Magnet installation 

Associated Space – Teatrul Național Radu Stanca, Bvd. Corneliu Coposu nr. 2

24h

Lia Perjovschi, The Telescopic Space of Knowledge / Mixed media and lecture room installation

Associated Space - Biblioteca ASTRA, Strada George Barițiu nr. 5, et. 5 1/2

Monday-Sunday 08:00 - 20:00

Ulrike Ettinger (DE)

BOUNDARY SPACES. SILKSCREEN PRINTING, (2023)

Muzeul Civilizației Populare Tradiționale „ASTRA” din Sibiu, Strada Pădurea Dumbrava nr. 16, Pădurea Dumbrava 16

Monday-Sunday 08:00-20:00

Artist talk / Creative workshop/ Saturday 24.06, 12:00-16:00.

Iulian Bisericaru (RO) 

MAY WE RECONSTRUCT WHAT HAS BEEN LOST

Promenada Mall, Strada Lector, (et. 1, opposite the Zara Store)

Monday-Sunday 10:00-22:00

Artist talk: 24.06. ora 18:00

Adina Mocanu (DE) 

NINAS SIGHTINGS - 2023

Magazine, 36 pag., 297 x 210 mm, limited edition

Artist talk: 23.06, 18:00, Kulturzentrum

Gloria Luca (ES)

KNOW - WHY. ADRIFT IN THE URBAN LANDSCAPE,

arta.nonstop, Str. Tribunei nr. 13

24h. 

Artist talk: 25.06, 16:30.

Dan Raul Pintea (RO)

THE LOVE GALLERY, ANONIMOUS ARTISTS, 

Associated Space - Strada Andrei Șaguna 5

Artist tour Friday 23.06, 17:00.

the visual arts platform (PAV) initiative has found a fertile locus at the intersection of two international events: Kassel’s documenta15 contemporary art exhibition and the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (FITS). Taking place in Sibiu, a city that pendulates between a conservatory approach and a reintegration / redefinition of multiculturalism, the visual arts platform aims to illustrate specifically this complex dynamic, which has inherent echoes in the local contemporary art scene. PAV brings together artists and associative entities working locally, as well as creative voices from the rest of Romania and from Germany - the plurality of different points of view is after all the core concept of this first edition.

The meeting point of these three vectors is the artist Dan Perjovschi, who divides his time between Sibiu and various locations around the world. A participant of this year's edition of the documentary15 as well as FITS, Dan Perjovschi works with curator Iris Ordean and together they bring different voices to this first edition of PAV.

platforma de arte vizuale PAV is produced by Dan Perjovschi & Documenta15, FITS and the German Cultural Center Sibiu. Many thanks to all institutions and artists involved.

1. Dan Perjovschi, The Horizontal Newspaper

The Documenta Edition 2022-2023

Teatru Național Radu Stanca

2. Dan Perjovschi, The Magnet Sky 

Magnet installation 

Teatru Național Radu Stanca 

3. Lia Perjovschi, The Telescopic Space of Knowledge

Mixed media and lecture room installation

Biblioteca ASTRA, Strada George Barițiu 5

4. Ioana Sisea, From here to here

It will melt completely in four thousand seven hundred eighty one washes 

installation, soap, metal 

Promenada Mall, 1-3A Lector Str.

5. Johannes Vogl, Walze 

steel, shoes, textile | sculpture

Promenada Mall, 1-3A Lector Str.

6. Ana Dumitrescu

Argentic - Analog Photo Exhibition

Trio  - film projection, documentary, directed by Ana Dumitrescu, produced by Jonathan Boissay, with Gheorghe Costache, Sorina Costache and Vioară, 1h22min, 2021

Guests at the projection: Ana Dumitrescu, Jonathan Boissay, Gheorghe Costache,  Sorina Costache 

CineGold, Promenada Mall, 1-3A Lector Str.

7. Anamaria Șut, Les lèvres rouges

mixed media, installation in-situ 

Promenada Mall, 1-3A Lector Str.

8. Asociația Simultan, Simultan Media Archives. Curated Selections

coordonator program / program coordinator: Maria Orosan Telea, Lector universitar Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara - Facultatea de Arte și Design

studenți / students: Gavril Pop, Loredana Ilie, Marina Paladi, Isabella Madarász, Cătălin Beldean

ULBS, Facultatea de Litere si Arte, Bulevardul Victoriei 5-7

9. Winael Baldus, acoustic concert with voice and guitar

Promenada Mall, 1-3A Lector Str.

10. Asociația ALEG Sibiu

Eveniment cu voluntarii asociației ALEG și cu participarea publicului. 

Promenada Mall, 1-3A Lector Str.

Special Conference 

Filarmonica de Stat Sibiu, Sala Mică

11. Centrul Cultural Arab Sibiu

Special Conference

Filarmonica de Stat Sibiu, Sala Mică

12. arta.nonstop, Model Under Construction

Flaviu Cacoveanu, Cătălina Nistor, Miruna Radovici. Curator: Georgia Țidorescu, 

Strada Tribunei 13. 

13.Alexandra Coroi & Bogdan Dumitrescu, Imagined bodies

multi-channel video installation 

Filarmonica de Stat Sibiu

14. Lavinia Crețu, Resource

print 3D, print 2D, installation in-situ 

Filarmonica de Stat Sibiu 

15. Ștefan Radu Crețu, Everything hybrid

metal, paint, electric components 

Filarmonica de Stat Sibiu

16. Sorina Tomulețiu, Bessarabia

installation in-situ, the recreation of the artist’s studio 

Kulturzentrum Hermannstadt, Strada Timotei Popovici 9

17. Capital Cultural, text in digital space and in print (Revista Capital Cultural).

18.Adriana Chiruță, Piece (Peace) for women and pollinating insects, We all cry the same way, The Kiss 

an ecofeminist reminder with 3 video works and an introduction

Biserica Evanghelică and Filarmonica de Stat

19. Casandra Vidrighin, Wild Instinct

video, installation in-situ in the Zoo

Grădina Zoologică Sibiu, 142 Calea Dumbrăvii Str.

20. Adina Mocanu, Breathing Eyes

In-situ installation

Muzeul Civilizației Populare Tradiționale „ASTRA” din Sibiu, 16 Pădurea Dumbrava 

21. Dan Raul Pintea, Dragoste Gallery, anonymous artists

 5 Andrei Saguna Str., appointement at 0728205248

22.Conferință specială/Special conference

Filarmonica de Stat, Sala Mică

Artist Roundtable the visual arts platform

Centrul Cultural Arab Sibiu, Thinking of the Other: Stereotypes of the Otherness

Asociația ALEG Sibiu, I too can do it 

3h

 

23.Opening Event PAV

The Telescopic Space of Knowledge 

Biblioteca ASTRA, 5 George Barițiu Str.