1st Timisoara Art Encounters

APPEARANCE & ESSENCE

Exhibitions, art in the public space, residencies, lectures

Curators: Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher

October 3 – October 31, 2015

Stretching over the historical center of the city, Timisoara Art Encounters offers multilayered displays at diverse sites that invite visitors to share in the sensual and intellectual experience of contemporary art. It appeals to people of all ages, to visitors both local and international.

The curatorial theme is ‘Appearance and Essence’ and with it Timisoara Art Encounters focuses on a secret chapter in the history of European art: the story of Romanian art from the 1960s to the present day. The selected works trace the distinct narrative thread of Romanian art that emerged and evolved in parallel to art in Western Europe. For the first time visitors have the chance to experience a comprehensive survey of Romanian art of the last 50 years.

Participating artists include:

Saâdane Afif, Dragos Alexandrescu, Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu, Apparatus 22, Marius Bercea, Mihut Boșcu Kafchin, the Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Mircea Cantor, Marieta Chirulescu, Adrian Ghenie, Ion Grigorescu, Anca Munteanu Rimnic, Ciprian Mureșan, Ioana Nemeș, Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Veda Popovici, Stefan Sava, sub:real, Iulia Toma, Gabriela Vanga, to name but a few.

Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher, the two Berlin-based curators, take Romanian art as the starting point for their selection. “We will concentrate the Encounters on artists who have a relationship with Romanian culture and whose art is rooted in its history. Be it by place of birth, by language or by some underlying artistic references. Artists, who live in the country or abroad. As outsiders, we have taken an ‘archeological’ look at the Romanian art scene, and have tried to capture its essence.

After identifying the uniquely Romanian quality of this art, we bring it to the surface and make it clear to see. APPEARANCE & ESSENCE is the curatorial theme for this edition of Timișoara Art Encounters. We are not looking to pin down a specific ‘national’ identity, and are instead searching for certain cultural differences and individual nuances in theglobal discourse.”

Timișoara Art Encounters takes place across the entire historical city center. A thematic map will connect exhibitions in institutions, public galleries, the Timișoara Art Museum, a former high school, and several abandoned buildings. Numerous artistic interventions will be staged in public places. A series of talks featuring international artists, curators and art historians will intensify the open dialogue with the public and the city at large.

The educational program developed for Timișoara Art Encounters is aimed at all ages and communicates a concept of art as an open space, where different ideas, opinions and concepts about the world can meet and interact.

Curators

In 2014 the curators, Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher, developed a film- and video program for Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg. The curators’ selection was the first major survey of film- and video art by contemporary artists, working both in the East and West, from the 1960s until today.The exhibition Fragile Sense of Hope, which they curated in 2014 at me Collectors Room in Berlin, featured highlights from a corporate art collection focusing on contemporary art from Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

Image: Piata Unirii during actual reconstruction, Timisoara, Romania, March 2015 – in the back one venue of the Timisoara Art Encounters, the baroque building of the Timisoara Art Museum. Photo Rainald Schumacher.