Unfamiliar Approaches to Permeate the Urban Veil
In the summer of 2024, eleven artists (Albert Kaan, Dumitrița Răzlog, Emma Diaconița, Ioana Dumitrescu, Iulia Dana Băceanu, Mihai Costache, Mihai Rotaru, Rafael Stoica, Ramona Aristide, Teodora Rotaru, Vitaly Yankovy) gathered for the “Staging Disorder” workshop, conducted by Lina Ivanova and Alexander Rosenkranz, to explore and reflect on their own knowledge and ideas about Bucharest through a series of exercises articulating a sensorial experience. Participants were encouraged to use photography as an empowering instrument to push the boundaries of our perception in relation with urban space. With this idea in mind, each artist wandered the neighboring streets of 2/3 Galleria with the aim of gaining a new perspective of the already well-known surroundings.
The exhibition “Urban Echoes: Deconstructing Imagery of The City“, coordinated by Andrei Mateescu, reassembles the works of four artists who participated in said workshop, highlighting different lenses we can use to deconstruct and reimagine our understanding of the city. The works of Ioana Dumitrescu, Dumitrița Răzlog, Mihai Rotaru and Rafael Stoica come to life as extensions of the zines they developed during the workshop, unfolding as transcendent images surpassing the traditional ways of photography production.
Ioana Dumitrescu’s project, named “ways of seeing a blank image / or how to enter a spectrum and find nothing”, consists in a series of sixteen polaroids showing the full spectrum of light and darkness. The intention is to investigate how empty images develop and reach a point to exhibit matter and meaning. As a process-oriented artwork, the series acts as a game of hide and seek, where the photograph is stripped of meaning. The installation of the artwork, which includes small metal cassettes, concrete bricks, a luggage case and a wire fence reinforces the idea of findings that keep on moving away from you.
In her “They see me” project, Dumitrița Răzlog pushes the boundaries of technology to uncover overlooked details. The starting point is constituted by 4 polaroid photocopies with a girl holding a mirror (in actuality Lina Ivanova), who’s face we never see. Excessively zooming into the reflection of the mirror, the project unveils some of the finest details of the urban fabric. Its title seems to suggest a personification of the city living a paranoid moment. Rather than focusing on the character behind the mirror, we entered the intimacy of the urban spectacle. Building on the same ground, the presented assemblage consists in prints of the details found in the polaroids, placed on mirrors as a reminder of our “always in sight” condition.
Tackling temporary urban landscape, the “W.I.P.” installation of Mihai Rotaru seeks to bring the streets inside the space of the gallery. Originating from an exploration focused on the buildings holding an under construction or renovation status, the project pays attention to the liminal aspect of the city. Meshes, scaffoldings and construction gear pop up as transitory elements in the urban scenery making the artist ask himself if they can be considered as momentary art installations. Delving into the concealed, the project aims to pay attention to materials that seem out of place, reinforcing the fact that information is always underlying somewhere in-between.
Creating a ludic bridge between the stories we tell and the settings we set our eyes on, Rafael Stoica’s “Stumblin in” project acts as a testament to subjectivity and imagination. Developing new narrative explanations through haikus juxtaposed to urban compositions, the artwork proposes a playful under-covering of new meanings. Amplifying the ideas developed for the zine, the exhibited drawings, layered in RGB colors, visualize the experimental effects emerging from the junction between words and images. In similar manner, the pedestal covered in black plastic resembles one of the mundane details he focused on when photographing urban space.
The works are tied together by the red thread of the dichotomy between seen and hidden, reflecting the project’s underlying concept of expanded photography. Drawing from the philosophy of Flusser, the concept of expanded photography aims, as its name indicates, to stretch the photographic act beyond its conventional frame. In each work we encounter either a concealed presence or an unexpected revealing, redefining the horizon of our comprehension and challenging the meanings of already known urban scenes. As a result we are confronted with new ways of experiencing what we see, alternative narrative interpretations, and previously unheard meanings of the city.
– by Teodora Roșu
