Une copie méchanique: La chambre bleue @La Cave
March 30, 2023 by Sabina Suru Ehibitions, Installation, Video Comments Off on Une copie méchanique: La chambre bleue @La Cave
March 30-April 13, 2023
Solo show
Post-digital installation / cyanotype on glass / video
La Cave, Institut Français de Roumanie à Cluj
the project was co-produced by 2pe3 galeria
in the framework of A Mechanical Copy residency program (2022)
So happy that The Blue Room has been selected for the 2023 exhibition program of La Cave, at the French Institute in Cluj-Napoca!
Each year they give carte-blanche to a young local curator who choses the artists they wish to work with in the coming year. So here I am, enjoying my collaboration with lovely young curator and art historian Xenia Tinca.
“
The artistic project The Blue Room was generated as a result of the artist’s efforts during a one-week residency hosted by 2/3 gallery in Bucharest, whose space was transformed into a darkroom during the residency. Sabina Suru is inspired by Walter Benjamin’s reference text, The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility, and approaches photography both as an evocative and at the same time reifying tool, in order to concretize intuitive perspectives of understanding reality. The works in the project also examine modes of optical instrumentation impacting the aesthetic dimension of the photographic image and introduce a cinematic vision, particularly through the serial approach.
Revisiting Benjamin’s writings, beyond his vision that circumscribes the technical image and the modification of even the ontological status of the image induced by the possibility of its mechanical and mass reproduction, Sabina Suru reflexively dwells on the understanding of the register of temporality that can be developed starting from the ideas of the German author. Time, timing, duration are essential referential contents in his art, which is also an attempt to make possible a problematic dialogue between analogue and digital. Thus, her creative endeavours try to question the preconceptions that often seem to guide the way we relate to photography as a tool for recording reality, but also to film, as a mechanism for transferring perception and consciousness into a new space-narrative time.
“
Text by Xenia Tinca
About
La Cave – a space of contemporary expression, was inaugurated by the French Institute in Cluj-Napoca in March 2017, as an intimate and multipurpose space that hosts exhibitions, screenings, performances, conferences and workshops dedicated to contemporary art and culture.
The French Institute in Romania in Cluj has been operating since 1991, being one of the 4 French Institutes of the circuit in Romania, under the auspices of the French Embassy in Romania. It is located in the former Béldi Palace (XVII century), made available by Babeş-Bolyai University.
https://institutfrancais.ro/cluj-napoca/#/
Contributors
Xenia Tincă (curator)
Thank you’s:
Raluca Mateiu & IFR Cluj
Claudia Retegan & 2/3 galeria
Andrei Tudose
Ioana Dumitrescu
Ștefan Dinu
Allkimik