Salonul de proiecte / Projects' Salon 14 Loc pe harta

Piggy Bank

19:00 - 04:00
instalation

artists: Daniel Knorr si Coate-Goale

For the exhibition at Salonul de proiecte, Daniel Knorr designed an installation, thought-out according to the parameters of the exhibition space in which are inserted interventions of young artist Coate-Goale thus instituting a dialogue between the works of the two artists. Keeping the line adopted by Salonul de proiecte by encouraging the production of contemporary art and inter-generational dialogue, the exhibition enables the occasion for Daniel Knorr and an emerging artist to meet and exchange ideas.
Used to destabilize the conventions that regulate the functioning of the art system and those that mark the minefield of conflicts around the idea of public space, Daniel Knorr often adopts a critical perspective avoiding producing mere conceptual "gestures" which would be difficult to interpret in an explicit manner. Found object/ urban waste is converted and resized by the artist through recycling, re-contextualization, an act intended to indicate the immanency of entropic processes, pointing out - at least in utopia - a possible diversion from its destructive purpose. Art is assigned with a representational function serving as the trigger mechanism of the social and historical awareness, launching questions about cultural and political conditionings - and also implicit assumptions – on which is based, for example the construction of national identity. Daniel Knorr suggests a type of art made largely by the public. His work is often materialized by the reactions, the debates that it generates in the public sphere or mass-media containing a controversial decision adopted by the artist. It happened at Manifesta 7 (2008) when the exhibition space allocated to his participation became by the artist's own will a public space, or in 2005, at the Venice Biennale, when the Romanian Pavilion was left completely blank, bearing the names of previous exhibitions and giving free rein to interpretations - mostly uncomfortable - on the construction of Romanian identity, then preparing to entry the EU. To some extent, the exhibition at Salonul de proiecte has a similar logic: the exhibition space is transformed into space of reflection because what prevails is the many possible interpretations - juggling with theoretical concepts and cultural references, from " exhibition value "of art to considerations of the current capitalist system - that each viewer builds individually.
Coate-Goale is interested in "establishing an urban dialogue with the spectator" and his interventions in the public space alter the meanings of advertising messages, drawing attention on the advanced state of degradation of old buildings or displacing the symbolic configuration of some places. In other situations, his experimental approach lies in questioning the photographic device: a recent project is to transform the pipes found in outer space (in the mountains, the city – the bars used to clean carpets) in photo subjects, thus “the framing is already made" and the image is the result of an act which suspends completely the subjective involvement of the artist. In the Piggy Bank exhibition Coate-Goale brings his expertise in the laboratory analysis thus contributing to an extended meditation on the connections between art, money and various methods of symbolic and real evaluation.