NEWS NAG BUCURESTI

WHITE NIGHT OF THE ART GALLERIES - NAG #8
FRIDAY, MAY 23 2014, 19h00 – 04h00
BUCHAREST
noapteagaleriilor.ro

The White Night of the Art Galleries - NAG#8, Friday, May 23, 2014, continues its contemporary artworks and exhibitions production series. Among this year’s premieres:  Pasaj, proudly produced by NAG, with artists Michele Bressan, Lea Rasovszky, and Larisa Sitar (curator Diana Marincu, project manager Alina Bucur), presented at MNAC Annex, in partnership with the National Museum of Contemporary Art, for an extended period, from May 23 to June 22, 2014.

Also this year, NAG inaugurates a new program, namely Art on Display, an urban intervention program through production and display of contemporary art works in the showcases of private, commercial and public spaces. The Art of Display debut: Ioana Ciocan's Blue Heart, presented in the showcase at 1 Magheru Blvd., with the support of Graffiti Art Work.

Additionally, NAG is consistent in discovering and encouraging young graphic artists, inviting every year a young artists to create the visual identity of Nag event. Mircea Pop is the 2014 visual instigator, and we are presenting his works at NAG Info Point, 5 Piata Amzei St.

NAG#8 powered by Ephemair Association is a cultural project produced with the support of Raiffeisen Bank, in partnership with: The National Museum of Contemporary Art / MNAC, Ad Production, Zile și Nopți, Consulting Business Alliance, Magheru One, i’Velo. Media Partners : Radio Romania Cultural, Radio France International, TV City, ring, Cocor Media Channel, The Institute,  igloo, Revista Arta, Zeppelin, feeder, Tataia, re:art, BookBlog, weart, re:forma.

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PASAJ
Artists: Michele Bressan, Lea Rasovszky, Larisa Sitar
Curator: Diana Marincu
Project manager: Alina Bucur

Pasaj [Passage] is the second installment in the collaboration between Michele Bressan,  Lea Rasovszky and Larisa Sitar after Voiaj [Journey] in 2011 (MNAC Anexa, 2nd Starting from Edward W. Soja's “third space” theory, this exhibition reflects on the artistic and conceptual strategies that create a new mental space, a necessary passage in setting up personal identities and understanding the other. Located between two polarized worlds – thinking paradigms, emotions or the blurry boundary between dream and awakening –, the passage offers to the subjects the possibility of renegotiating their positions, thus overcoming the dialectics of science versus mysticism.

Following a classical narrative structure consisting of chronologically laid-out episodes, this second meeting between the three artists naturally continues the journey they have begun together. In this point of transition between two worlds, a new map configures the route, rife with questions and uncertainty, suspended outside the past and the future, trying to extract from the “spatial excess” the elements which are usually repressed.

Drawing appears in Larisa Sitar's works as a ghost of perceived or simply inherited images which finely imprinted on her personal imagination as if claiming their right to visibility. A statue covered in moss is a visual metaphor of forgetting and human memory as well as of the capacity of nature to colonize spaces deserted by man. The folk stories told in Maramureș villages recounting supernatural occurrences make up a sound installation, a collaborative work between Larisa Sitar and Lea Rasovszky, and can become believable for those open to relaxing their rational criteria for understanding the world. Installation is for all three artists a way of provoking new situations through which the viewers often become players themselves, choosing their own path in the space. Lea Rasovszky creates installations using objects and text that complement each other, light and darkness acting as metaphors for the discrepancy between desires and actual outcomes. Michele Bressan explores the routine repetition and mechanical character of a gesture by emphasizing the error that confers a personal touch to human actions (for instance the work starting from a text by Emil Cioran: “Boredom is the sickeningly obvious feeling which announces the time ahead of you, the time which you must live through and for which you have no use.”). The ready-made work entitled “Fine” quotes the ending of a film narrative from which one can partly reconstruct certain imaginary scenes starting with the actual surrounding cues or the ghosts of one's own obsessions for the end. As a commentary on the visual or mental obstacles which we face every day, the exhibited works discretely populate the context of the space, evoking a familiar imaginary which evoke a familiar feeling of everyday existence, as well as the nostalgia of a utopian space. Badly Happy: Pain, Pleasure and Panic in Recent Romanian Art, Performance Art Institute San Francisco (2010).

Michele Bressan (b.1980) lives and works in Bucharest. In 2010 he won the Constantin Brâncuși fellowship at the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris. In 2009 he recived the ESSL award for photography, and in the same year was nominee for the Henkel award.Selected solo shows: ViennaFair The New Contemporary, Jecza Gallery (2013) and Waiting for the Drama, H’art Gallery, Bucharest (2012). Selected group shows: Les Rencontres Internationales, La Gaîté Lyrique and Palais de Tokyo (2014), Recorded Memories, Museum für Photographie Braunschweig (2013; National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest, 2014), e-cité Bucarest. Une scène artistique roumaine, Musée d'Art Moderne Saint Etienne (2011, Centre Wallon d'Art Contemporain, 2012), Biennale di Venezia, Padiglione Italia nel Mondo (2011), Ne tourne pas la tête ! Photographie Roumaine Contemporaine, Mois de la Photo, ICR Paris; Badly Happy: Pain, Pleasure and Panic in Recent Romanian Art, Performance Art Institute San Francisco (2010).

Lea Rasovszky (b.1986) lives and works in Bucharest. Her projects highlight the stereotypes and values of the society towards which she has a critical view. Selected solo shows: Mentors, Anca Poterasu Gallery, Bucharest, RO; The Savages, Atelier 35, Bucharest, RO (2012), MEN, Atelier 35, Bucharest, RO; Sorrow, Heartache, Recovery & Shit, ALERTStudio, Bucharest, RO (2011), Wallpaper Drawings, 29 Gallery, Bucharest, RO (2009). Selected group exhibitions: Spazi Aperti, 10th Edition, Romanian Academy in Rome, Rome, IT (2013), The Biennial of Young Artists, 5th edition, Overlapping Biennial, Bucharest, RO (2012), Preview Berlin – the Emerging Arts Fair, 11th edition, Berlin, DE; Fresh Drawings, LC Foundation – Contemporary Art Center, Bucharest, RO (2011). International residences: Artist Residence Herzliya via ICR Tel Aviv, Herzliya, IL (2011), Schafhof - Europäisches Künstlerhaus Oberbayern, Freising, DE (2008).

Larisa Sitar (b. 1984) lives and works in Bucharest. Her work investigates issues of national identity, memory, and nostalgia making use of different media (photography, video, installations, drawing, and interventions into public space). Selected group exhibitions: Care Crisis, Futura Gallery, Prague (2012), Essl Art Award CEE, Winners’ Exhibition, Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg/Wien (2011), Zoomania.Ro, National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest (2010), End of academia, MNAC Anexa, Bucharest; EMERGEANDSEE, 2010 - media arts festival, video, Berlin (2010), TUSOVKA New Act, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2009).

May 23 –June 22, 2014
MNAC Anexa, 62-68 Calea Moșilor, the 3rd floor, Bucharest
Opening hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 10.00 – 18.00
Produced by NAG#8. Sponsor: Raiffeisen Bank
Partners: MNAC, Jecza Gallery, Zăganu, Ad Production, Business Alliance Consulting.