— too bold, too big, to far: Unrealized artworks become visible. Artists from all over connect.
While mobility is restricted, borders and distances are clearly perceptible and existential uncertainties
are omnipresent, more artistic works than ever remain in the state of planning. Whether it fails due to
lack of time, space or money or accompanies your artistic work for years as bold dream — we are looking
for your projects, which have not (yet) made it beyond their state as an idea, concept, draft or prototype.
With this exhibition we want to open up a space and visibility in terms of concepts, sketches, drafts, plans
and photographs. These papers will be presented at the art space BLECH. in Halle, Germany.
At the same time, despite current challenges and immobility, this format allows to present
and bring international artists together. Since many things cannot take place on location and in person,
there will be an online programm additional to the exhibtion. For an exchange and encounters, the
participating artists and their work will be presented and discussed on a digital platform.
— too bold, too big, to far: Unrealized artworks become visible. Artists from all over connect.
While mobility is restricted, borders and distances are clearly perceptible and existential uncertainties
are omnipresent, more artistic works than ever remain in the state of planning. Whether it fails due to
lack of time, space or money or accompanies your artistic work for years as bold dream — we are looking
for your projects, which have not (yet) made it beyond their state as an idea, concept, draft or prototype.
With this exhibition we want to open up a space and visibility in terms of concepts, sketches, drafts, plans
and photographs. These papers will be presented at the art space BLECH. in Halle, Germany.
At the same time, despite current challenges and immobility, this format allows to present
and bring international artists together. Since many things cannot take place on location and in person,
there will be an online programm additional to the exhibtion. For an exchange and encounters, the
participating artists and their work will be presented and discussed on a digital platform.
Andreea Medar + Malina Ionescu
ABOUT
Mălina Ionescu
b 1978 Bucharest, Romania. Visual artist, curator, PhD in Museum Studies, currently head of Education at MNAC Bucharest - The National Contemporary Art Museum of Romania. Lives and Works in Bucharest.
Andreea Medar
Andreea Medar (born in 1990) is a Romanian visual artist. Trained as a painter, she is currently interested in objects and environments, sculptures, media installations and video. Her images rewrite her own, personal imagery in an always surprising and paradoxically very direct alphabet which associates contrasting elements and constructs encrypted images not easily or fully open to the viewer. Lives and works in Târgu-Jiu and Timișoara.
We asked ...
How has the situation of the last months changed your artistic work?
The situation of the last months has changed the direction of our art. The first project in this direction took place during the imposed isolation period and took place entirely on the Facebook.
“᎒ᚗ~ㆨ꒿ ꕇ꒿ʭᦔ꒿ continues one of the major themes in the previous common projects, in fact the very first one: the secret alphabet. This time the code (which in earlier artworks has either recovered the secret letters of child play or reflected the location of land art interventions) was adapted for the online with the help of an IT specialist. The message is coded even more as many computers or phones fail to recognize some or even all of the letters and symbols of the various fonts the alphabet borrowed from. The project continues a private dialogue between the two artists, in both content and themes and communication of the artworks. The works themselves have marked a shift in the artists relationship with the online media, a step further the more familiar posting of an offline artwork, as the photos, interventions on the window glass or around the house (as it coincided with the #stayathome period, and subsequently resulted in a series of reactions to the restrictions) videos, stencils, drawings, embroideries and digital images are all brought together by the unifying specificity of the social media, with its own rythm, type of reaction and response. The artworks – posts and events - influence each other in a dialogue of converging, overlapping or coinciding themes, at the same time ironic, playful, critic and nostalgic. The comments and reactions of the other participants are, as the alphabet is known to the artists only, part of an experiment exploring the way the online relationships are structured in this specific context and its impact on notions such as belonging, community, participation and artistic process. One of the main themes has been the reality of the physical / virtual spaces and places of the artistic interventions or social interactions. Home, which lately has had to mean just one fixed location, virtually has known no limitations, allowing for the projection, evocation and invocation of places belonging to different spatial or even temporal planes. If the artworks from the beginning of the project responded directly to the home confinement by maintain the conventions of the interior, and most importantly the obvious relationship with the window and window view – these common places of the art world during the pandemic, the later ones gradually open towards the environments of the outside nature, city or gallery.
This first chapter of the project, which took place entirely on the Facebook, will be concluded in an online event whose reality will be entirely coherent with the whole project, with the artworks and their contexts.
Unless otherwise indicated, all rights for all texts and photos are reserved by the artist/author/photographer.