Art Encounters 1st Edition – Appearance & Essence

http://www.artencounters.ro/language/en/

What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things. Starting from this truth it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface. Constantin Brâncuși, in Brummer Gallery catalog, New York 1926

The history of visual arts unfolds by the artworks of past times and the actual artistic practice. Artworks are condensed documents of thought, reason and of emotional relation to reality and social surrounding. Art history translates such documents into language and theory against the background of additional historic facts. Since the last decade Western art history is getting rewritten and reformulated. The one-sided narrative of art history based on the Western European and North American allegedly logical development is getting completed and modified by many stories about parallel developments based on the multiplicity of cultural spheres on our planet.

As an important element in the new and global perspective on parallel cultural narratives, also the Eastern part of Europe is getting re-discovered and re-evaluated in its own speed of development, logical relations, cultural references and differences, especially since the fall of the Iron Curtain.“We will focus the 1^st Timișoara Art Encounters on artists, who belong in some way to Romanian culture and are having some of their roots in these spheres by reason of birth, language or artistic references. Artists, who are living and working in Romania and abroad. We will employ an archaeological point of view. Looking from outside and searching for the essential elements, also by attempting to make this immanent content visible. Curating means, defining the empty space in an exhibition, the space in between the artworks, the passage from one work to another. This our task, to write content into the void, which can be experienced by the visitor.

Appearance & Essence are the curatorial giudeline for this field study of the Romanian art scene. But we are not looking for some enigmatical national identity, we are looking for the cultural difference, for the individual nuances in the global discourse.”The 1^st Timișoara Art Encounters is focussed in such a way on a particular chapter in the multi-layered narrative of contemporary art, the Romanian narrative. The 1^st Encounters will look at Romanian art from the 1960ies up to now and will trace back some of the inherent storylines.

Nathalie Hoyos / Rainald Schumacher