1:1 curated by Mihaela Varzari, PRESS RELEASE, atelier 35, Bucharest (5 Sep - 5 Oct 2013)

Press Release

1:1

Opening: Thursday, 5 September 2013, 6 PM

Ziad Antar (Lebanon/France) 

Liliana Basarab (Romania)

Heath Bunting (U.K.)

Victor Man (Romania/Germany)

Deimantas Narkevičius (Lithuania) 

Tanja Ostojić (Serbia/Germany)

Curated by Mihaela Varzari

for exhibition imagines pls follow: http://atelier35.eu/group-show-1-1/

Still from Tokyo Tonight by Ziad Antar, 2003
Courtesy the artist

In his book Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1889), Lewis Carroll described an impossible map. In this fantasy, a professor explains how his country´s cartographers were experimenting with ever larger maps until they finally made one with a scale of a mile to a mile. “It has never been spread out, yet”, he says. “The farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So now we use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.”

   The art project 1:1 brings together six international contemporary artists whose works exploit the concept of ‘mapping’. This concept becomes here a tool for (re)defining subjectivity (in)formed by and through complex bio-political forces. Physical borders start taking the shape of mental borders and representation comes into sharp focus. 

   Through the selected works, the project discuses the European Union´s intransigent attitude during negotiations with future member states and the reverberations of their subsequent integration. Namely the economic dictatorship that followed.Therefore the project points towards the impact that Europe, this increasingly powerful united nations territory, bears globally. 1:1 addresses the complex relationship to memory, citizenship and identity in a confrontational and deliberately evasive way. Its point of departure is the constant pulling between wanting and needing of the newly affiliated territories to European Union.

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   In his documentary Disappearance of a Tribe (2005) Deimantas Narkevičius, investigates the remnants of a culture in the context of Lithuania´s integration and unmasks the uncritical acceptance of new standards. The title is charged with meaning, where we are not witnessing the disappearance of a family but rather that of a tribe. From an anthropological perspective, the concept of tribe implies a unique culture and lifestyle, as well as values and rituals common to its members. 

Liliana Basarab proceeds as an anthropologist but in different geographical locations of Europe and US considering people’s fantasies, self-indulgence or otherness in the documentation of her series monuments-for-concepts.com. This series is a result of a series of four residencies during 2007 and 2010. Addressing the foundation of public monument, which in Romania, replaced the history of the revolution, her work opens up dialogue, as opposed to what happens to all monuments, which to hastily conclude debates and perversely take over the task of remembrance.

   Ziad Antar’s enigmatic and multi-layered work, Tokyo Tonight, deals with global power structure. Through the voices of three shepherds, the word “Tokyo” is uttered three times as a mantra – a mantra can be distinguished as that which has a personal meaning but none to the outside world. According to Samuel Huntington, the failure to understand one another has been located in the clash of civilization, which stands as a false problematization. In other words, issues of inequality, exploitation and injustice are instead perceived as issues of intolerance.^[1] Within the same vein, Tanja Ostojc’s Untitled / After Courbet (L´origine du monde, 46 x 55 cm), 2004 goes beyond the reverberations of the recent history of Europe, namely the EU integration, and takes a firm stance in the face of Art History, asking implicitly (and explicitly) “for whom and by whom has it been written?“. As the result of the media scandal in Austria (December 2005) the artwork was censored. Due to the increasing demand for the image on behalf of lay audience, the artist produced a small edition of posters. The show presents one of these reproductions of the original image.

   In The Status Project (2011) Bunting analyses the relation between soil and national identity, through a series of computer generated maps, in a militant project, which attracted the EU’s attention. He challenges the privileged status attributed to the work of art and disregards such notions as the separation of the aesthetic from the rest of human life and prioritizes information and action. Victor Man and Heath Bunting address the notion of nationalism in the age of global citizenship but employ totally different aesthetics. With the sculpture Untitled (Coats) (2007), Man has the inserted the Romanian national flag into the lining of 3 coats that hang benignly on a coat hanger. The oblique presentation of the symbol might suggest a surreptitious and perhaps guilty embrace of national identity, this is transfigured as something private though inextricably tied to a collective experience.

1 S. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity,  (Simon & Schcester, 2001), p. 86

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Workshops and events: 

Workshop, Survival Skills with the artist Heath Bunting

7 September 2013, 10 AM – 6PM, Băneasa Forest, Bucharest

Heath Bunting invites you to take part in his workshop Survival Skills in the forest Băneasa, outside Bucharest. The workshop is aimed at anyone who wants to spend the day in the artist’s company and learn about edible plants, building tree houses or hunting.

Performance, The Shoe Maker with the artist Liliana Basarab

5 September, 2013, 7 PM, during the project’s opening, Atelier 35, Șelari 13, Bucharest
Liliana Basarab invites the participants to the opening to wear three pairs of sandals with entangled back straps. This workshop represents the translation of the artist’s older ceramic based sculpture, titled Family Relationships, 2008 into a performative intervention.

Feature Film Screening, Why Mickey Rourke?

23 September, atelier 35, Șelari 13, Bucharest

The choice for showing these two films comes from the influence they had on the generation which was in its teens or early adulthood in 1989 and was marked by the characters played by American actor, Mickey Rourke.

91/2 Weeks, directed by Adriane Lyne, USA, 1986, 1h 34 min, starring Mickey Rourke & Kim Basinger;

The Wilde Orchid, directed by Zalman King, USA, 1989, 1h 47 min, starring Mickey Rourke, Jacqueline Bisset & Carre Otis.

Finissage

Presentation of the project’s on-line publication.

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Supported by Atelier 35, Bucharest

This project was realized without any financial help and we would like to thank the invited artists and Plan B Gallery in Berlin for their generosity.

The point of departure for this project is based on Mihaela Varzari's MA Dissertation in History in Art, Between Wanting and Needing, Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe, supervised by the Prof Dr Lanfranco Aceti, 2008, Birkbeck College, London.

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Artists' bios
Ziad Antar

*1978, Paris/Beirut

Solo/group:

Here, Elsewhere, La Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseilles, FR(2013);

Expired, Selma Feriani Gallery, London, UK(2011);

Suspended Space, Pompidou Centre, Paris, FR(2011);

Terres de Pomme de Terre, Almine Rech Gallery, Paris, FR(2009);

The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, the New Museum, New York, USA (2009)

Liliana Basarab

*1979, Bucharest

Solo/group:

LUCK /Do I feel lucky? Do ya, punk?’, Glosna Gallery, Poznan, PL(2012);

Truth/s, APARTE gallery, Iași, RO(2011);

Truth/s, DVAC, Dayton Visual Art Centre, Dayton, Ohio, USA(2011);

Accidents, mutation and mistakes, MORA gallery , Bucharest, RO(2010);

Fight!, Vector gallery, Iași, RO (with Costel Chirilă)(2006)

Heath Bunting

*1966, Bristol

Solo/group:

The Status Project & The Netopticon, furtherfield art space, London, UK(2012);

HEATH BUNTING: STATUS PROJECT, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2012);

Disclosing The Invisible: Jill Magid and Heath Bunting, SKOR & Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL (2001);

Visitors Guide to London, Documenta 10, Kassel, DE (1997);

The Status Project, Transmediale, Berlin, DE (2011)

Deimantas Narkevičius

*1964, Vilnius

Solo/group:

Da Capo, Marino Marini Museo, Florence, IT(2013) Marino Marini Museo, Florence, IT(2013);

Performing Histories(1), MOMA, NY, USA (2012-2013);

A Tang of Lomo Film, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin, DE (2012); Architektur und Film, Blue Box, The Head, Sprengel Museum, Hannover, DE(2011);

Restricted Sensation, gb agency, Paris, FR (2011);

BFI, Southbank Gallery, British Film Festival,BFI, London UK (2010)

Victor Man

*1974, Berlin/Cluj

Solo:

In un altro aprile, Villa Medici, Rome, IT(2013);

The White Shadow of His Talent, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, USA(2012);

Mudam Luxembourg, Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, LU(2012);

Lazarus Protocol, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, SCT(2011);

If Mind Were All There Was, The Hayward, London, UK(2009)

Tanja Ostojić

*1974, Berlin

Solo/group:

Three/Free postcards, Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana, SI(2012);

Call the Witness, Venice Biennale, Venice, IT(2011);

Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA (2007);

I’ll Be Your Angel, Venice Biennale, Venice, IT(2001);

Personal Space, Manifesta 2, Musée d`Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg, LU(1998)

Mihaela Varzari

*1978

Published Articles:

What Does It Mean To Be Sophisticated? Renzo Martens Meets Bernadette Corporation, in collaboration with Cristina Bogdan, ARTA magazine(2012);

… and the winner is… Truth/s - project by Liliana Basarab, 2011, U.S., ARTA magazine(2012);

Points of view on Jens Haaning’s performance, Bicycle Holiday in Poland, 1979, Public Preparation’s catalogue Crisis Special, organized by curator Rael Artel (2010);

Review on Vanessa Billy at Who Shapes What – an exhibition by Vanessa Billy, Limoncello Gallery, www.thisistomorrow.info(2010);

Congo meets the West in fantasy, The Double Club in London, a Carsten Höller project by Fondazione Prada, Compromise of a European Integration: Points of View (Periferic Biennial, art as gift, 2009) IDEA/arts+society, 2010;

The Compromise of a European Integration: Points of View (Periferic Biennial, art as gift, 2009) published with IDEA/arts+society, 2010;

Curated Projects:

No Spitting -community based project”, funded by Tower Hamlets Homes,London, UK,invited artists: Marcin Dudek(PL/BE), Kazimierz Jankowski(UK), Othello de Souza(UK), 2010