Claudia:

The two of us have talked about Holding Pattern quite a lot during the last two months. Only today did I realize that I’ve never asked you how you came to photograph an airport, its landscape. Perhaps you can tell us a bit about your initial thoughts and intentions and how they changed as you took the photos and edited them for publication. 

Mihai:

I visited the airport for the first time in late 2016, right before leaving Romania to study in Leipzig. At that time, the runway had been finished for two years, and all the other buildings, the access road and the whole infrastructure necessary for a functional airport were on pause for various reasons. The paradox of this unfinished construction triggered my fascination for the place. Once I reached the airport I quickly realized I wasn’t that interested in the runway as much as in the surrounding landscape. This changing/stagnating landscape spoke a lot of certain economic, political, industrial, and even ideological aspects at that time, given that the Ghimbav-Brașov International Airport was the first airport built from scratch in Romania in the last 50 years.

Holding Pattern was in fact the project I applied with for a Master’s at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig. Knowing I would have two years to create the project, I traveled home repeatedly between 2017 and 2019 to observe how the landscape had changed. From the very beginning I knew that I wanted to produce an artist’s book and that the images would be black-and-white in vertical format. By deciding to use black-and-white film, I could reduce the subjects to their shapes while also playing with the idea of atemporality and space perception. As for the vertical format, I wanted to isolate certain situations in order to showcase the portrait of a defragmenting landscape – the opposite of a regular landscape format picture, which shows rather a wide, general view. 

In the process of selecting and editing the photos for publication, together with Alin Cincă, we managed to exit the logic of singular images and to extend their qualities into a spread format. The two associated images challenge the viewer to make their own connections and perhaps come up with a third image on their own. This decision made the editing process active and participatory. Now, three years after producing this book, I still discover new things.

Claudia:

I know you were in Leipzig to do your Master’s. I can empathize quite well with such a period, that feeling of studying abroad, through my own experiences. I was intrigued when you told me that the people at the school labeled your project as “personal work.” On the one hand the subject seems to me VERY impersonal, but, indeed, the way you took the photos from the periphery as well as, perhaps, your aesthetic choice of subjects and the formalism of insignificant things induce a state of nostalgia… or “ostalgia,” as westerners call it. Is it about “longing,” Heimweh, ostalgia, or a contemplative and critical search for such a place?

Mihai:

I never felt a close connection to any specific place. I’ve always been drawn to non-places, because I also grew up in a post-industrial environment. Production Areas, one of my first projects, was about the demolition of former industrial spaces in Brașov and their conversion into shopping malls. Both airports and shopping malls are places without any local background and they are focused on redefining and restructuring the public. They are transitional places with no features of their own. Still, they are at the center of discussions about globalization and the reshaping of public life.

During that time I had more feelings of Heimweh than of nostalgia. I only understood the connotations of the word ostalgia later. I am aware that this term, as a view from the West, could perpetuate westerners’ view of the East as an exotic society covered in modern ruins – the word exotic is used here in its original meaning, foreign. Thus, Holding Pattern is not about nostalgia, but about the beauty of a place suspended in time.

When I first arrived at the airport, I realized I was in a field and had almost no subjects to photograph. Then I was overcome by a state of waiting, which forced me to slow down and look around carefully. This feeling of waiting and questioning of the airport’s construction, which was in an uncertain situation at the time, also corresponded to my personal state of mind, which I only understood long after finishing the project.

Claudia:

You spoke a bit in the past about your interest in things in the process of becoming, in transition, not with a view to their end but rather as moments in themselves. Many of your works have to do with things or places “in suspension,” left unfinished or overlooked. I was wondering if this interest also finds its motivation in the object, the physical space, in the temporal, or rather temporary, aspect. I was reading about how we people are a “product” of the times we live in, how we can’t detach ourselves from or exit our historical context. Perhaps your central themes or your chosen subjects are also part of this broader context?

Mihai:

Besides my personal interests and research, which relate both to conceptualizing a project and to how to present it in an exhibition, I am interested in creating works that will endure in time. As an artist, I don’t think you have to produce too many works. It is more relevant to create works that will “stay alive,” and depart from the logic of trends. Certainly, my interest in these subjects stems from my childhood in Brașov and that postindustrial context I mentioned. Looking back on it, all my projects with this transitory component are autobiographical in nature.

Claudia:

What makes a photo successful in your view? How do you, as a photographer, negotiate the viewer’s expectations, the satisfaction generated by an image, or the wish for instant gratification and that of reflective aesthetics?

Mihai:

A successful photo manages to always challenge you. Furthermore, a successful photo can exist alone without the artist’s presence. While taking photos I never think of the potential viewer. I only think about the audience when I install the work in the exhibition space. The installation nature of my works comes to meet the viewer and suggest certain readings. The reflective aesthetics of a work viewed by an audience must resonate both with the work’s essence and with your experience within the exhibition space. The most important exhibitions which I’ve visited and have stuck with me are those from which I left with a certain mood. A mood intensified by the installations and the atmosphere of the space. A mood that, in fact, went beyond the works’ physical form.

Mihai:

How do you see the relation between the essence of a work and how the work is displayed in an exhibition? Do you think that a good work still needs the physical experience conveyed through the exhibition’s design? Is working with the space a relevant aspect for ⅔ Gallery’s practice and the relation with the artists?

Claudia:

I strongly believe that the role of solo shows is to contextualize their works. Exhibitions complement the artistic discourse and create a platform for learning about art practice. A singular work might be good, even exceptional, but encountering it outside an exhibition context and its discourse is just one part of a whole. It might be the case that the medium of photography, in its history directly linked to the real, in the sense of being an index, could demand seeing the entire “picture” (the investigation or the concept displayed as a series) more than other media. I will give a simple example: a photo of Marilyn Monroe is merely a photo of a beautiful woman if you don’t know who Marilyn Monroe was. Works in themselves do of course have their own lives outside the gallery space. Beauty lies in the fact that each of us relates to images differently. As for the physical experience, yes, I do think it’s quite important, maybe less for photography than for other media. In any case, without physicality and reality understood in the traditional sense, one can lose sight of the scale. Moreover, you lack the materiality of surfaces, textures, tonalities, and so on. Speaking of the exhibition design and curation at ⅔ Gallery, some interests are inherent because they are my own personal ones, and so they are reflected in the exhibition design and display. Referring to your last question, “working with the space” feels important to me, as does the way we relate to images, including photography, outside personal tastes and interests. The ways we read and navigate the everyday world, but also how we relate to photography as it changes. Many of the exhibitions at ⅔ try to reference this change. As for my relation to other artists, or the selection of works, I don’t want it to become a defining element for the space.

This year, one of your works was exhibited at the Museum of Recent Art, a wallpaper that was very immersive given its size. At CAV — Multimedia you exhibited photos printed on styrofoam plates that dictated both the sizes and the non-rectangular framing. Before the opening we talked about how the exhibition at ⅔ would be the easiest to set up for both of us, which was more or less the case. I would like to talk a bit about your corpus of works in general, or, more specifically, how you think Holding Pattern fits in with your other works.