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Centre for Visual Introspection news

Publication Release 2015

Of Puppets and Humans aims to reflect in the margins of the dialogic convergence between theatre and art in the artistic practice of Ciprian Muresan, a practice constituted both as a speculative form of understanding the world and as a means of humanising the real. Inviting the reader to examine a selection of four works conceived by the artist between 2009 and 2015 and setting out from a (subjective) “rewriting” of a number of dramatic texts, this publication puts forward, through the contributions of its guest authors, a possible interpretation of Muresan’s fascination for the “aesthetics of the human”.	Ciprian Muresan: Of Puppets and Humans Edited by: Alina SerbanContributions by: Marius Babias, Gianina Carbunariu, Florence Derieux, Miklós Erhardt, Alexandru Polgár, Iulia Popovici, Saviana Stanescu, Alina Serban, Silke Wittig Romana/ Engleza, 20x27cm, 272 pages, hardcover Design: Esra Oezen Published by: Asociatia pepluspatru, 2015 ISBN 978-973-0-20231-1 Supported by: UniCredit Bank, AFCN

This book provides a first critical survey of the extraordinary situation held by the Romanian Black Sea Coast project in the architectural practice of the 1960s and 70s. The assemblage of essays and photographs guides the reader through a trans-disciplinary analysis of the modernity of the Romanian seaside, examining in a methodical and nuanced way the distinctive character of the development plan. Bringing into play new theoretical perspectives and documents in order to renegotiate the numerous and complex dimensions of leisure architecture, the term representation becomes this anthology’s “vanishing point.” The publication includes a selection of photographs from the archives of Arhitectura magazine and AGERPRES and a photographic reportage taken during 2013—2014 by the artist Nicu Ilfoveanu.	Enchanting Views Romanian Black Sea Tourism Planning and Architecture of the 1960s and ’70s Edited by: Alina SerbanAssociate editors: Kalliopi Dimou, Sorin Istudor Contributions by: T. Elvan Altan, Irina Bancescu, Elke Beyer, Adina Bradeanu, Anke Hagemann, Claude Karnoouh, Olga Kazakova, Juliana Maxim, Carmen Popescu, Magda Predescu, Adelina Stefan, Irina Tulbure, Ana Maria Zahariade Romana/ Engleza, 23x22 cm, 264 pages, hardcover Design: Radu Manelici Published by: Asociatia pepluspatru, 2015 ISBN 978-973-0-18345-0 Supported by: Romanian Chamber of Architects from the architectural stamp funds, ERSTE Foundation, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Union of Architects of Romania – the Image Archive of Arhitectura magazine, AGERPRES.
Publication Release 2014

Ioana Nemes (Bucharest, 1979–New York, 2011) is recognized as one of the remarkably figures of the new generation of Romanian contemporary artists. This publication offers a first overview upon the long-term projects and the singular exhibitions Nemes has produced during her brief but extraordinary career. Fascinated with time, language and non-linear narrativity, Ioana Nemes’s practice sets off from an ongoing and unconstrained process of self-evaluation. On the slippery edge between art and life, the Monthly Evaluations project, realized in different formats and mediums, marks the artist’s willingness to expose her subjective experiences, dialogues and confrontations with her own context and condition. Both the strenght and the fragility of Ioana Nemes’s artistic environment contrasts with the precise, almost chirurgical, survey upon her daily moods, desires and life situations on which she based her enigmatic scenarios in form of written statements. In her attempt to level the distance between fiction and reality, between staging and spontaneous reaction, the artist’s recurrent self-evaluation gives to the spectator access to the intimate artistic process.	Nemes’s work has been exhibited internationally in museums and contemporary art centers such as Art in General, New York (2011), Secession, Vienna (2010), Istanbul Biennial (2009), Smart Project Space, Amsterdam (2009), U-Turn, Copenhagen (2008), Prague Biennial (2007), Bucharest Biennial (2006), Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2006). Nemes was awarded with Future of Europe Art, Gallery Zeitgenössische fur Kunst, Leipzig in 2007. Ioana Nemes. Artist Book Edited by: Alina Serban& Stefania Ferchedau Contributions by: Apparatus 22, Courtenay Finn, Ion Grigorescu, Andrea Codrington Lippke, Ciprian Muresan, Ioana Nemes, Lívia Páldi, Magda Radu, Alina Serban, Attila Tordai-S, adrian urmanov Romana/ Engleza, 20x28 cm, 256 pages, softcover Design: Radu Manelici Copublished by: Asociatia pepluspatru, Spector Books, AFCN, Unicredit Tiriac Bank ISBN 978-3-944669-87-8 November 2014
Publications Release 2013
The Studio is dedicated to Romanian artist Geta Bratescu, one of the most remarkable personalities of the Eastern European postwar avant-garde. The main part of the publication comprises visual materials and texts written by the artist that span several decades of her activity, outlining the exceptional manner in which she has appropriated the lesson of modernism and interrelated it with conceptual challenges. Bratescu focuses on the artistic process, advancing a multidisciplinary approach by using various media: film, happening, tapestry, engraving, collage, objects, and text. The book comes as a result of long-term research conducted in the artist’s archive. It contains theoretical contributions that track the multilayered dialectics of Bratescu’s work: from the remarkable conceptualization of the act of drawing to the crucial role advocated by the studio, from the preoccupation with self-representation and seriality to the subtle diffusion of theatricality in her work.	The Man with a Single Camera provides an extraordinary overview of Ion Grigorescu’s body of work since the late 1960s until today. Regarded as one of the key protagonists of Eastern European conceptualism, the Romanian artist advocates a radical convergence between the organic and spiritual, an uninhibited immersion of life into art. The concept of “reality” is at the heart of Grigorescu’s work. His ritualized actions and intimate performances, his films and photographs, and his paintings and writings allow, in a unique and antitraditional manner, existential concerns to proliferate. This book is a result of long-term research conducted in the artist’s archive. It brings together a complete selection of source materials and theoretical contributions, which grasp the complexity of the social and political surroundings in which Grigorescu has worked, and provides an extended insight into the particularity of his artistic strategies.

Geta Bratescu. The Studio Edited by: Alina Serban Contributions by: Anca Arghir, Geta Bratescu, Silvia Eiblmayr, Adrian Guta, Magda Radu, Alina Serban, Magdalena Ziolkowska Romana/ Engleza, 21x27 cm, 352 pages, hardcover Design: Arnold Estefan Copublished by: Asociatia pepluspatru, Sternberg Press, ERSTE Foundation, Kontakt. Art Collection ISBN 978-3-95679-016-4 November 2013	Ion Grigorescu. The Man with a Single Camera Edited by: Alina Serban Contributions by: Maria Alina Asavei, Nuno Faria, Ion Grigorescu, Anders Kreuger, Ileana Pintilie, Alina Serban, Klara Kemp-Welch Romana/ Engleza, 21x27 cm, 362 pages, hardcover Design: Catalin Rulea Copublished by: Asociatia pepluspatru, Sternberg Press, ERSTE Foundation, Kontakt. Art Collection ISBN 978-3-95679-015-7 November 2013
Contribution to: Festival of Independents - INexactly THIS - Kunstvlaai 2012 Can we re-imagine the notion of the “art institution” today? Does "over-institutionalization” have any sense within the overall structure of global society? can we activate outside of it? How can one re-invent the role of institutional players within the broader social framework in order to institute other norms, values, tools, procedures and methods than those considered by society? Which tactics can be adopted by us against the current economic and social injustice in order to generate change? Is it possible to reframe the notion of critique? Centre for Visual Introspection questions the potential of the art institution to re-invent itself anew by re-thinking the methods and strategies of work ponting towards existing frameworks within the social sphere and daily life activities. The investigation tends to involve operating models, rather than possibilities for exchange and interferences with the living.[more]

Contribution to La Triennale 2012: On the Imaginary Potential of the Art Institution What defines an art institution nowadays? What are its ideal conditions? The current post-institutional realities have transformed the meaning and purpose of the art institution. As a mediator between the symbolic and the real, the art institution is structured by a productive antagonism, one reflected in the desire of the institution to perform outside the field of art, to intensify its social potential by advancing new forms of critique and debate, and to escape the heteronomy of contemporary social and economical architecture: its hierarchies and canonization. Starting from Cornelius Castoriadis’s assertion that the institution is both imaginary (“fictive”) and functional (“the function the institution fulfils in society given the circumstances, by its role in the overall economy of social life”), and as such aspires to autonomy, the Centre for Visual Introspection has approached the fundamental reality of the art institution by creating “a game.” This game reflects, in theatrical and introspective manner, on the material and immaterial resources of an art institution, on the instability and stability of roles, practices and rules settled between the institutional players in order to generate a model/ structure/typology that is open for imaginary. The game also extends Castoriadis’s argument, asking how one might imagine the role of institutional players within a broader social framework, in order to institute other norms, values, tools, procedures and methods than those considered by society. A map of the imaginary institution can be collected from the Palais de Tokyo, indicating seven locations in Paris. The locations can be regarded as footnotes to CVI practice, a mixed of imaginary and real-life situations which force the viewers to escape the predictable and incites for a re-reading of art institution potential. [more]