Winter 2015 / spring 2016 exhibition program

Anna Konik: In the Same City, under the Same Sky…
Exhibition in care of: Suzana Dan
MNAC Coordinator: Cerasela Barbone
Architect: Attila Kim
Exhibition produced by MNAC and the Polish Institute Bucharest
Partner: New Europe College (NEC)

“In the Same City, under the Same Sky… reacts to the reluctance shown towards immigrants and the tragedies that befall them on their way to Europe. These testimonies of immigrant women from communities in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Burma, Palestine, Turkey, Kurdistan, Congo, Romania, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Somalia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ecuador, and Roma form an authentic record of their plight. All of these stories focus on the authentic experiences of women seeking a home and life away from war, terrorism, poverty, sexual oppression and violence.”
(Anna Konik)

At the beginning of 2016, in the presence of the artist and in partnership with the Polish Institute in Bucharest and with the New Europe College, MNAC will host a program of discussions and presentations on immigration subjects.

The Collection as Archive
MNAC Coordinators: Adriana Oprea, Irina Radu
Artists from the museum collection

Working with the MNAC collection is both an exciting and challenging process. The researcher is confronted with a multi-layered, sometimes chaotic repository resulting from long and complicated art history processes expressed in very diverse objects. Looking at the collection in a trans-disciplinary way and establishing links between those objects, would likely be the best option. For the moment, the specialists of MNAC are happy to explore the collection as an archive—browsing its content for highlights and offering to the public a glimpse of some of the finest moments in recent Romanian art.

Liviu Stoicoviciu: Imagined Cities
Curator: Călin Dan
MNAC Coordinator: Sandra Demetrescu
Architect: Attila Kim
With the support of: JECZA Gallery, Diehl Berlin Gallery

Liviu Stoicoviciu has been visualizing the generative processes derived from the abstract virtues of the Golden Ratio for almost half a century. This obsessive activity has resulted in countless drawings and sketches of refined subtlety—in graphs envisioning chaotic fractals, in large-format paintings trying to bring order to this chaos, and in a number of sculptures that point to the spatial virtues of those processes. The artist is a visionary who designs his shapes at urban scale, and a utopian who imagines his drawings transformed into objects with practical functions. MNAC is proud to offer Liviu Stoicoviciu the first major solo show of his career.  

In Times of Hope and Unrest. Critical Art from Iași
Curators: Cătălin Gheorghe, Cristian Nae
Artists: Dan Acostioaei, Dragoș Alexandrescu, Liliana Basarab & Bogdan Pălie, Matei Bejenaru, Cezar Lăzărescu, Dumitru Oboroc
Micro-archive: Vector 
MNAC Coordinator: Sandra Demetrescu
Architect: Attila Kim
Partners: “George Enescu” University of Arts, Iași, Asociația Culturală AltIași (Borderline Art Space), The Center for Contemporary Photography, Iași 
With the support of: Epson

This exhibition focuses on the artistic productions generated by the artist-run institution Vector of Iași since the late ’90s. Conceived as a retrospective view, it presents recent artworks by artists who have maintained a close relation with the programs and projects developed in Vector’s micro-community, committing themselves to art as a critical social practice. The selected works explore problematic situations of Romanian society after 1989, characterized as a co-existence of contraries. Technocratic rationalism and religious belief arose in response to collective anxieties and utopian hopes; the rhetoric of institutional and national (re)construction and that of security policies often encounter reflexive nostalgia; and spontaneous civic commitment and solidarity is contrasted with public and deeply rooted forms of extremism and intolerance.

R.E.M.X
Curators: Călin Man, Ileana Selejan
Artists: Amalia AIA, Sean M. Barbe, Linda Barkasz, Sandor Bartha, Florin Bobu, Paul George Bodea, Marius Bogdan, Bogdanator, Vlad Gheorghe Cadar, Darius Cheţa, Claudiu Cobilanschi, Ioan Paul Colta, flo’, Norbert Fodor, gH., Ayham & Ghayde Ghraowi, Bogdan Gligor, Golem, Codruța Gongola, Mihai Iepure-Górski, Mihnea Rareș Hanțiu, Anda Ionescu, Marius Jurca, Amanda Kirkpatrick, Levente Kozma, V. Leac, Alex Leric, Alex Man, Roxana Man, Livia Mateiaş, Nita Mocanu, Cosmin Moldovan, monocore, Sergiu Mureșan, NEURO, Daria Nistor, Adina Ochea, Maga Ola, Livia Pancu, Paradis Garaj, Mihai Păcurar, Daniela Pălimariu, Pnea, Laurian Popa, reVoltaire, Adrian Sandu, Sergiu Sas, Mihai Sălăjan, Traian Selejan, Diana Serghiuță, Shahryar Shahamat, Maria T., Anamaria Tatu, Bogdan Tomșa, Arina Varga, Jason Varone, Francisc Visky, Monica Vlad, Charlie Whitney
MNAC Coordinator: Adriana Oprea
Production: Arad City Hall, The Municipal Cultural Centre in Arad
Partners: kinema ikon, :BARIL, Atrium Mall Arad

R.E.M.X—Rapid Eye Movement is the title of the second edition of Arad Media Art Festival (2015). It now comes to MNAC as a traveling exhibition, with audio-video installations, photography, objects, video projections, and multimedia works. Before we get too bored with the White Cube or disappear into the Black Box, we will jump into, feed on, debate, intervene, pollinate, dismantle, and empathize with the permanent collection of the art museum in Arad (occasioned by the first edition of the Media Art Festival in 2014, “R.A.M.—Random Access Memory”), or we will infiltrate, occupy, and play by opening a “Magazin Mixt” store in the heart of the town’s mall, with a franchise in Timişoara (the second edition in 2015). Eventually, we will return to the museum, although not in Arad this time.

Dark Side of Nature
Chapter I of “The White Dot and The Black Cube,” an exhibition project in six parts
Curatorial impulse: Diana Marincu
Answer: Anca Verona Mihuleţ
Artists selected by Anca Verona Mihuleţ: The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Igor and Ivan Buharov, Antanas Gerlikas, Minseung Jang + Jaeil Jung, Rosell Meseguer, Adrien Tirtiaux
MNAC Coordinator: Mălina Ionescu
Architect: Attila Kim
Partners: Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), Wallonie-Bruxelles Delegation in Bucharest, Austrian Cultural Forum, Balassi Institute / Hungarian Institute in Bucharest, Cervantes Institute in Bucharest
With the support of: BenQ
Exhibition on view until Januray 31, 2016

The exhibition Dark Side of Nature, the first chapter of the curatorial project “The White Dot and the Black Cube”, reflects upon the paradigm of nature as a vulnerable and defenceless entity in the context of the political debates around climate change and environmental activism. We tried to understand whether this approach doesn’t defer to an incomplete vision upon the natural as something that needs to be domesticated and perpetually re-evaluated. Nature is not about readership, but about contributing to a lucid and astute process of day-to-day decision-making and positioning in relation to science and research, which draws us near to a real contact with all that surrounds us.

Sponsors: Crama Oprișor, Policolor, Saint - Gobain Rigips, Grup Transilvae
Media Partners: 2activePR, Igloo, zeppelin, Șapte Seri. Radio France Internationale - Rfi, feeder, energiea, we ART, Vision Media Plus, Kepi Consult, Veioza Arte