Padiglione Romania

53a Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte - La Biennale di Venezia

The Seductiveness of the Interval

Stefan Constantinescu, Andrea Faciu, Ciprian Muresan

7 June - 22 November 2009

curator: Alina Serban
exhibition design by studioBASAR
Pavilion Opening:
Friday, 5 June 2009 at 5.30 pm
Giardini di Castello

http://www.seductiveness-of-interval.ro

At the 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2009, the Romanian Pavilion features works by artists Stefan Constantinescu, Andrea Faciu and Ciprian Muresan. The three artistic positions will be conceptually united within a site-specific installation conceived by the studioBASAR architectural group as a theatre set.

Artists possessing the experience of exile, of the shift in political regimes, social transitions, Stefan Constantinescu, Andrea Faciu and Ciprian Muresan relate in their work to the theatricalisation of social practices, the encrypted "dramaturgy" of the public realm, and the complex order of individual destiny.

Stefan Constantinescu was born in 1968 in Bucharest and now lives in Stockholm, Sweden, and Bucharest, Romania. His works "Troleibuzul 92" and "Passagen" are focused on events, situations and everyday occurrences – which confront personal destiny with historical dystopias, expressed either in the form of anthropological documentary or fictional film with neo- realist features. Putting onto the stage what is personal, intimate, subjective, Stefan Constantinescu confers upon his films the status of investigations into themes such as solitude, alienation and social violence.

Andrea Faciu was born in 1977 in Bucharest and lives in Munich, Germany. In "EXUBERANTIA suspended," the artist is the director of a screenplay in which the viewer escapes into a detemporalised space of reverie. Reflecting on the reciprocity between stage and spectator, between the instrumental and the aesthetic, between the object of dreaming and the dreamer, Andrea Faciu proposes the traversal of an experience in which the instantaneity of the relationship between subject and world is dominant.

Ciprian Muresan was born in 1977 in Dej and lives in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. His works "Auto-da-Fe" and "Dog Luv" operate with different modalities of transposing literary texts into images. The artist does not pursue fidelity to the text or narrative re-construction, but rather the staging of sophisticated visual sequences, in order to punctuate versions of the real, obsessively inter-related with the imaginary. The subtle tension released by the subjective re-transcription of texts offers the spectator a projection of fragments of a world in transformation, in which aspects of security, control and individual choice are brought to the fore.

Dwelling upon the still open severance between the artist's vision and the viewer's expectations, between what the artist places on stage as a "scenario" and what the viewer progressively discovers in time, The Seductiveness of the Interval proposes a reflection upon the conditions whereby the exhibition space is transformed into a space of self-reflection by means of the gaze.

Organisers:
The exhibition at the Romanian Pavilion is financed by the Romanian Ministry of Culture, Religious Affairs and National Heritage and has received the support of IASPIS, ORION Electrics Romania, Peill Stiftung, Leopold Hoesch Museum Dueren, Botanisher Garten Munchen Nymphenburg, Murfatlar, Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research of Venice and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania.

Publication:
The publication, edited by curator Alina Serban and art critic Mirela Duculescu, brings together essays by the following cultural theorists, scholars and curators from the field of art: Mieke Bal, Roann Barris, Adina Bradeanu, Hanneke Grootenboer, Erika Fisher-Lichte, Catrin Lundqvist, Dan Lungu, Angelika Nollert, Andrei State, Saviana Stanescu, Katalin Timar, Ovidiu Tichindeleanu, Adnan Yildiz.

The publication has been produced in partnership with the Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm and the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research of Venice.

For more information please contact:
livia.pancu@seductiveness-of-interval.ro