I wandered lonely as a cloud

25 Nov – 3 Feb '23

Exhibition views

Organizer

META Spatiu Association

Venue

META Spatiu Gallery

Bulevardul Mihai Viteazu nr. 1,

Timisoara, Romania

Featured Artists

Robert Andacs, Mathias Bar, Josepha Blanchet, Taisia Corbut, George Crîngașu, Norbert Filep, Ada Muntean

Curated by

Mirela Stoeac-Vlăduți & Ada Muntean

About the Exhibition

The bliss of solitude. The state of being alone is oftentimes associated with anguish, isolation, exile. What if we shift our contemporary perspectives and try to imagine a rather positive image of loneliness, in a post-romantic vision of the world?

It is, of course, difficult to have an escapist view on nature, when our world is threatened every day by ecological disasters; yet there are other means available. And the present exhibition explores this possibility – the one of internalizing “nature”, as an epitome for all things, not man-made. Inner and outer nature sublimely collide in the artworks exhibited and wandering, lightly, between these two instances offers a particular pleasure to be experienced. This comes no to reinforce the myth of the artist – as a secluded, close to madness individual – but rather to contradict it. The artists operate through direct observation and participation and layer both visual and conceptual knowledge, by being able to recreate experiences through memory and perception.

The exhibition’s title hints at this equanimity, rejecting the stigma normally associated with being alone and in a state of burden. In solitude, there is also the opportunity to think, recollect and dream.The viewer is confronted not with a self-imposed solitude, but to a temporal and special inner density of emotional intimacy, gathered in different dispositions and aesthetic laminations. Inspired by a poem written by the romantic poet William Wordsworth, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” is an open invitation to contemplation and introspection on our relation to both our inner and outer world(s).

As the German painter Caspar David Friedrich said: “The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also omit to paint that which he sees before him.” It is not that art denies the existence of an independent, objective reality: rather, it is that such reality can only be described through the subjective experience of the individual: the world is only known to us through our imaginative responses to it, and artists, with their heightened receptiveness to feelings, are best placed to reveal it.

The intimate scale of the different mediums – from painting, to drawing, video and 3-D printed objects – determines the concentrated intensity of the compositions, with a controlled energy of spirit. Content to be in secret seclusion, the reposed figures and instances in the works appear at peace and mark the transition into a resolutely optimistic future – one in which to flourish and grow.

No matter how hard we try to eliminate forms of suffering from our existence, it has become essential to the progress of the human species and, moreover, in the forms of artistic expression. Visual art presents itself as an extension and at the same time as a reflection on the ontological and social changes of humanity, developing provocative approaches to humanity, about human nature, about the world they constantly build and destroy, in order to reconfigure it. (Mirela Stoeac-Vlăduți, Ada Muntean)

Robert Andacs

Robert Andacs's pictorial compositions are frames of fragmented reality, deconstructed and reconstructed through the filter of subtle observation that starts from an inner process. The type of image that the artist explores is characterized by an atmosphere that is both contemplative and meditative, “freezing” in a metaphysical manner organic, vegetal elements – present in everyday life. The paintings are silent evocations of elements precious in their simplicity and ephemerality.

Mathias Bar

Mathias Bar explores in graphic and pictorial compositions a fragmented figurative universe, where identity hypostases cannot be delimited with certainty, and the atmosphere charged with silence, mystery and solitude becomes a starting point in a dramatic narrative suggested to the viewer. Pictorial substance, whether emphasized by chiaroscuro or chromatic contrast, is put to work in the representation of bodily details that evoke the tragic in a subtle and subversive manner.

Josépha Blanchet

In the artist's works (video and digigraphy) the video/photo surface is, in fact, a deep pictorial image, built in intense layers that give three-dimensionality to the image and a deep perspective. Josepha presents these juxtapositions with self-awareness, using digital layers in the same way she uses them in painting, exploring and dispelling the fragile boundaries that separate painting from photography and video. Each spectral figurative scene is rich in both affective information and structural approach, yet lingers wistfully in ambiguity and aesthetic ambivalence.

Taisia Corbuț

Taisia Corbuț experiments around the expressiveness of line and the materiality of different supports, using as a symbol the human figure essentialized as a form and purged of anecdotal details. This appears in the form of characters devoid of gender or identity, who speak both of personal and collective vulnerabilities in relation to the unknown/uncertainty. The dialogue created between the sensitivity of the line and the harshness of the support underlines the ambivalence of being and its capacity for sublimation and transformation.

George Crîngașu

Part of the “SubSelf” series, the artist's works generally deal with the personal dynamics and interaction with the digital appendages that determine our every waking hour. Each one captures, more or less, one's own reflection in the device and a certain interaction with other users, and questions how this kind of flow can compose a “portrait” of the user.

Norbert Filep

Norbert Filep's artistic practice is conceptual, using drawing as a mechanism of abstraction. Whether he uses line or grid, specific to technical drawing, or straight text, imported from various art catalogues or magazines, his visual vocabulary is based on a concept in which information and its transmission are essential. Through accumulation and repetition, his work deconstructs, redefines and recontextualizes various processes concerning the creation and structuring of information.

Ada Muntean

Ada Muntean's graphic and photographic installation talks about identity, self-discovery, insecurities, existential paths – as coordinates in visual and conceptual projections of the self. The artist creates intimate drawings of her own palm lines – seen as solitary trails of existential “maps” of the past, present and future – conceived in relation to photographic fragments of her own body, which is in a constant state of change during the passage of time.