A Mechanical Copy: The Blue Room @2pe3 gallery

November 29, 2022 by Sabina Suru Ehibitions, Installation, Photography, Residency Comments Off on A Mechanical Copy: The Blue Room @2pe3 gallery

On-site Residency – November 24- December 4, 2022
Solo exhibition – November 29-December 4, 2022
Post-digital installation / cyanotype on glass / video
In the framework of A Mechanical Copy artist-in-residence program
2/3 gallery, Bucharest

 

At the invitation of Claudia Retegan from 2/3 galeria in Bucharest, who had the lovely idea of turning the gallery space into a camera obscura, I’m taking over the gallery for a week in an artistic residency-type setup and turning the space into a far-larger-than-necessary-but-awesome darkroom aka my cyanotype on glass mass production studio.

I will be developing a project I’ve been thinking about quite a bit over the last few months, The Blue Room and since I’ll be turning a digital video into a big pile of glass cyanotypes, which in turn will become a video by digitization, Walter Benjamin’s seminal text, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility (which is in fact the inspiration for the residency program concocted by Claudia) brought me so many new perspectives on the idea of technical image, multiplication and seriality.

The public is free come by at any time, although I do recommend visiting from November 29 onwards, when we open an exhibition-like event (so not just the improv darkroom hehe!)

O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_WIP_credit Andrei Tudose (4)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_WIP_credit Costina Purice (17)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_WIP_credit Claudia Retegan (14)
Sabina @2/3
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_WIP_credit Claudia Retegan (16)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_WIP_credit Costina Purice (6)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_WIP_credit Costina Purice (4)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_WIP_credit Claudia Retegan (7)

photo credit: Costina Purice, Andrei Tudose, Claudia Retegan

While the gallery’s focus is photography, my practice approaches this medium both as a speculative tool to objectify certain perspectives of reality and investigate how it can change through optical instrumentation (and, in this case, tactile conversion), and as a cinematographic element through seriality.

By revisiting Benjamin’s book, beyond the theories surrounding multiplication and the technical image, I stopped on a discreet but omnipresent component: the idea of time, timing, (re)temporalisation. I opened a dialogue between the digital and the analogue, in an attempt to analyse approaches that have the potential to overturn our preconceptions about how we navigate time, physical space and, of course, how we relate to photography as a tool for recording reality or to film, as a transporting mechanism into a new narrative space-time.

 

The Blue Room is the third project within the exhibition-residency program A mechanical Copy, whose purpose is to outline differentiated artistic practices and the delimitation of distinct creative processes, organised by 2/3 galeria under a concept by Claudia Retegan.

For four weeks, the space of 2/3 galeria was transformed into a photographic camera and functioned simultaneously as a camera obscura and experiential installation, as an exhibition space and as a creative studio, with 3 artists in residence invited to create artistic works and site specific photographic installations. A mechanical copy questions concepts related to the mechanization of the photographic process, wanting to explore ideas related to uniqueness, original and copy, as well as the mystifications of the photographic image, in a contemporary hyper-digitalized society.

O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_installation_credit Costina Purice (47)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_installation_credit Costina Purice (2)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_installation_credit Costina Purice (3)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_installation_credit Costina Purice (39)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_vernisaj_credit Costina Purice (17)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_vernisaj_credit Costina Purice (60)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_vernisaj_credit Costina Purice (68)
O copie mecanica_SabinaSuru_2pe3_vernisaj_credit Costina Purice (79)

photo credit: Costina Purice

About

2/3 gallery is a young art gallery founded in Bucharest, our aim is to promote contemporary art, focusing on photography and the photographic image.
https://2pe3galeria.ro/
https://www.instagram.com/2pe3galeria

Big thank you’s

Claudia Retegan & 2/3 galeria
Andrei Tudose
Ioana Dumitrescu
Stefan Dinu & Allkimik
Tudor C. Popa
Costina Purice