WHAT WE DESTROY AND CELEBRATE AT THE SAME TIME

What We Destroy and Celebrate at the Same Time

December 13, 2012 – February 3, 2013

Artists: Apparatus 22, Tatiana Fiodorova, Monotremu, Raluca Popa, Sorin Popescu, Soyons Impossibles, Iulia Toma

Salonul de Proiecte
Calea Mosilor 62-68, 2nd floor, Bucharest, Romania
info: salonuldeproiecte.ro


Last season, Salonul de Proiecte acted as a catalyst for the production of local contemporary art, encouraging young artists to formulate proposals that materialised in two group exhibitions presenting works specially produced on the occasion of these events. As a continuation of this approach, a second Open Call has been launched, and this exhibition presents the selection made by artist Aurelia Mihai.

One feature worth underlining in connection with this exhibition – and also one which is a symptom of the status of the contemporary artist, who more often than not chooses collaboration, joint actions and engagement in the name of causes that go beyond singular, individual practice/motivation – is the presence of collective work. The artists metabolise aspects of reality, elements drawn from the current context in a series of works that cannot be grouped according to any other principle than that of diversity. At a moment when pressures of various kinds might condition certain choices, might dictate predictable subjects and approaches, easily anticipated and assimilated at the level of the symbolic and commercial system of contemporary art, the artists present here act idiosyncratically, they autonomously configure their own subjectivity, creating their own niches within the continuum of a reality marked by crisis. A common thread may nonetheless be detected in their attempt to hijack various formats, mental reflexes, and social habits, by alternating them and constructing unpredictable meanings.


Apparatus 22 – “Fitting not (Room Two)”

Produced in neon, a phrase encircles the oval mirror in the red velvet fitting room. Signaling feelings divorced from the body, the straightforward text about failures of shopping as therapy highly preached by numerous lifestyle magazines and personal advisers is glaring.

No matter how beautiful clothing is, or how alluring its promises, there are moments when shopping loses any power of overcoming emotional decay or painful crises.

Room Two is part of the “Fitting not” series of three installations unveiling moments of truth which could surface from the cracks of the blueprint-of-enhanced-reality that is the fitting room of a fashion store. The capsule-like fitting rooms resemble the escapist settings of luxury shopping. The other two capsules from the series deal with over-and-under use of language for a particular rendering of the future in fashion and with hypnotizing strategies of seduction employed by the fashion and beauty industries.

The first cabin, "Fitting not (Room One)", installation with sound in loop (10:24 min) was presented in the "YELLOW, ETHICAL, SEXY, SELF-EXPLANATORY, EDIBLE, ALIVE, INDUSTRIAL AND LOOKING TO THE FUTURE" exhibition at Akademie Solitude, Stuttgart, November - December, 2012.

***

Apparatus 22 – “Fitting not (Room Two)”

Installation 2012 / 160 x 235 cm / Financially supported by Salonul de Proiecte, Akademie Schloss Solitude and KILOBASE BUCHAREST

Images credits: Stefan Sava for Apparatus 22 – “Fitting not (Room Two) 1, 2 and 3 / Apparatus 22 for Apparatus 22 – “Fitting not (Room One)” detail a and detail b