Works and Interview through Sculpture

WORKS AND INTERVIEW THROUGH SCULPTURE

Alex Mirutziu - Razvan Sadean

from March 16, 2012 - May 6, 2012 

Vault Gallery, Prato, Italy

www.spaziovault.com

This project, presented in Italy for the first time at Vault Gallery, is a collaboration between the two Romanian artists Alex Mirutziu (1981, Sibiu, RO) and Razvan Sadean (1987, Sfantu Gheorghe, RO) as the natural end of their shared experience during an artistic residency at the Ze Dos Bois Centre in Lisbon in 2011. Both artists they were oriented to the performance, using their body as a kind of machine for eviscerating dark, obscene and gory aspects of the surrounding reality. The exhibition is divided into two "dimensional" works (a series of four photographs from the video "History is nothing but muscles in action" and a performance "Interview through Sculpture") and two video projections, where the physical element and the body rise to a pivot around which all the work rotates. Starting from the critical aspect of Who-Is-What and What-Is-Who, the two artists move like living sculptures with the intent to study human action, starting from the purely muscular process until the time that an action can be defined as that and established its relevance over time. They are both the creators and the product of their work with clear references to the contemporary tradition of body art, almost as if they would be incorporated into their work, negotiating a possible way out of this world which they have self-created and that apparently seems to leave no escape.

Alex Mirutziu: His work draws on different fields of research, writing, theatre, photography, video and lately mainly to the performance. The artist proposes a survey of social and political processes that he calls revolutionary, and his body in all its ambiguity, it is the preferred solution.

Razvan Sadean: Even his work includes germination from contemporary writing, web-art, photography and literature. In his works he focuses so obsessively on the dramatic materiality of the body, so obscene, socially awkward and often with extreme realism.

"Action is guilt / Method to Rourke" in Beyond the “liminal experience” curated by Francesco Scasciamacchia

Beyond the “liminal experience”, curated by Francesco Scasciamacchia

The invited artists are: Izabela Chamczyk (Czestochowa, Poland 1980), Gabriele De Santis (Rome, Italy 1983), Daniela Di Donato (Lanciano (CH), Italy 1981), Alex Mirutziu (Sibiu, Romania 1981)

16th April - 18th June 2011

Opening 18.30 on 16th April 2011

The title of the exhibition comes from the concept of “liminality” through which Victor Turner during the 60s and the 70s called the state in which the spectator is when he/she attends a painful mise-en-scene. This condition is between the respect of the “art rules” and the “life laws”. On one hand the spectator would stop the artist while he/she is inflicting pain on himself/herself (ethical postulate); on the other hand he/she has to respect the artistic act in the name of Art (artistic postulate). The spectator remains in this suspended state for all the duration of performance.

Beyond the “liminal experience” invites the artists to reflect, to re-invent or simply to deal with the notion of “liminality” in an era of overuse of images in which videos and pictures have became the new media for the “violent act”. Beyond the “liminality” but also beyond the media of performance and of ephemeral actions.This psychological mechanism inducts the public to think about contemporary art, affirming its existence. Regardless of whether the spectator will like or dislike the artworks, they will realize that contemporary art exists as a fact.

On the occasion of the opening, Alex Mirutziu will perform “Action is guilt / method to Rourke”. (Via Genova 17/15 Prato 59100 - Spazio Vault)