TIME TRAVEL

“The balance determines oppositions and equilibrium. By analogy, the title of the exhibition points to the central component of such a mechanism. It supports two parallel elements, positioned in opposition, which appear balanced. Time Travel does not define a precious or complex concept related to the notion of time, nor does it aspire to unravel the depths of the sources of inspiration behind the (hic) incipit of the works. Instead, it supports the selection of the works and the pairing of the two artists. On the right scale-pan of the balance called time travel there is a weight. I recall the concept of parergon, known especially thanks to Derrida, who used the term in one of the essays in The Truth in Painting. Through para- (outside) and ergon (work), he deconstructs the status of the frame, the boundary of a painting, distancing himself from the Kantian concept according to which the frame of a picture (or the column of a magnificent building) exists outside the work of art. For him, the frame is that part of the work which ‘gives birth’ to the artwork. Nevertheless, the history of the frame’s status cannot be ignored. Beyond philosophical interpretations, frames (whether they have utilitarian, aesthetic, or mental functions) vary together with the taste of the era or its characteristic ornamentation. Mircea Modreanu starts from photographs he took of frames in the Louvre Museum. The decision to treat the frame as a self-standing, primary object, and later to transpose it into a meta-frame, constitutes the contemporary instinct to isolate and exploit the artistic object. The discreet process of transferring the image onto the support of a hard material (plaster) and enclosing it within a raw wooden frame restores the familiarity of a current attitude. On the left scale-pan, another weight keeps the balance in equilibrium. Much more pronounced is the chronology of formation and deformation in Beniamin Popescu’s works. The antinomy formulated in his structures arises from the intention to build the unfolding of the double scenario of an archaeological site’s existence—from its origin to the contemporary contextualization of topographical components from a historical past. The temporal character, in the case of his artistic process, is transferred internally, immanent to the reference themes embedded in the works. The materials from which he constructs the various anthropogeographical histories reside in their compositional solidity. Form and color, on one hand, and the metallic structure, on the other, dispute supremacy in an inevitable attempt to understand their tendencies.” — Călina Coman, curator