Exhibition on view through June 25th, 2016 / photos from the opening
Photos: Wilfried Petzi & Alex Mirutziu
Third Solo Show of Alex Mirutziu at Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, München
[english]
Alex Mirutziu at Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle
Apr 22 – Jun 25, 2016
Exhibition opening: Thursday, Apr 21, 2016, 7–9 pm
The artist is present
The oeuvre of the intermedia artist Alex Mirutziu includes photography, performance, sculpture, painting, graphic art, and video art. Mirutziu calls the recently deceased singer David Bowie one of his role models. And so, the young Romanian artist also routinely breaks with conventional representations of masculinity and femininity in his works. Mirutziu’s artistic language is closely related to the 'performative turn' and offers social interpretations and concepts of cultural change in the form of staged settings and the investigation of rituals. His approach goes beyond concepts of Body Art through questioning terms of 'Gestalt' or the 'Apparatus'.
In his most recent cycle, consisting of drawings and etchings, Mirutziu references the works of the Milan-based sculptor Adolfo Wildt (1868–1931). Wildt’s works are hard to describe in precisely defined artistic categories: At times they seem like works which draw on a quiet classicism but also owe a great deal to Art Nouveau and Symbolism, and in his self-portraits captured in moments of painful distress, Wildt is on the precipice of expressionism. Alex Mirutziu picks up on this visual language in his own works: The lines of his portraits are expressive and informed by a dramatically Mannerist mimicry. The pen strokes are nervous but resolute. Portraits take shape in the repeated continuations of lines which explore temporality, excitement, and changes of mental states. In addition to the works on paper, this solo exhibition shows Mirutziu’s sculptural works. Their fragile physicality and the integration of living plants touch on subject areas such as death, transience, creation, and transformation.
Alex Mirutziu describes his approach of drawing as follows:
„In my drawings I make use of jagged lines which I call 'bastard lines’ or 'homeless lines’. This method of drawing with lines do not follow the contour of things but entail a movement of an alien, almost uncanny hand. My hand doesn't account for the mind of what it should draw. I trained my hand to attack the paper and to create an instantaneous texture of lines and not to show the immediately apparent. My drawings are generated without any pretence of continuity. It is much more fetching to build a climate in drawing than representing the object or subject. I want to momentarily suspend meaning, to question closure even for a brief moment.“
Alex Mirutziu was born in 1981 in Sibiu, Romania. He lives and works in Romania and England and lectures at various European institutions such as the Royal College of Arts, London, the Von Krahl Theater in Tallinn, and the Konstfack University in Stockholm. Recent projects have been presented at the ZdB in Lisboa, The Power Plant in Toronto, Mücsarnok Budapest, the National Museum in Warsaw, and the Biennale di Venezia.
Alex Mirutziu - ”Wildt Case #5”, 2016
[deutsch]
Alex Mirutziu
22. April – 25. Juni 2016
Eröffnung: Donnerstag, 21. April 2016, 19-21 Uhr
Der Künstler ist anwesend
Das Œuvre des intermedialen Künstlers Alex Mirutziu umfasst Fotografie, Performance, Skulptur, Malerei und Zeichnung als auch Video. Den kürzlich verstorbenen David Bowie nennt Mirutziu als ein großes Vorbild. So bricht auch der junge rumänische Künstler in seinem Schaffen stets mit konventionellen Repräsentationen von Männlichkeit und Weiblichkeit. Die künstlerische Ausdrucksweise Mirutzius steht in enger Beziehung zum performative turn und bietet in Form von inszenatorischen Settings und Ritualuntersuchungen gesellschaftliche Interpretationen als auch kulturelle Wandlungskonzepte an. Sein Ansatz geht über Konzepte der Body Art hinaus, indem er sich intensiv mit Begriffen von Gestalt oder vom Apparatus beschäftigt.
In seinem neuen Werkzyklus, bestehend aus Zeichnungen und Radierungen, referiert Mirutziu auf das Schaffen des Mailänder Bildhauers Adolfo Wildt (1868-1931). Wildts Arbeiten lassen sich nur schwerlich in genau definierten künstlerischen Kategorien beschreiben: Teils wirken die Arbeiten an einem ruhigen Klassizismus orientiert, sind aber auch immer wieder vom Jugendstil und Symbolismus geprägt und mit seinen Selbstporträts in schmerzhaft erschütterten Momenten steht Wildt an der Schwelle zum Expressionismus. Alex Mirutziu greift diese Bildsprache in seinen Werken auf: Die Portraits sind expressiv in ihrer Linienführung und von dramatisch-manieristischer Mimik geprägt. Der Strich ist nervös, aber bestimmt. Durch mehrfache Konturierung entstehen Bildnisse, die Zeitlichkeit, Erregung und Zustandsverschiebungen thematisieren. Ergänzend zu den Arbeiten auf Papier zeigt Mirutziu in seiner Einzelausstellung skulpturale Werke. Die fragile Körperlichkeit der Arbeiten sowie die Integration lebender Pflanzen umschließt Themenfelder wie Tod, Vergänglichkeit, Schöpfung und Transformation.
Mirutziu beschreibt seine Herangehensweise beim Zeichnen folgendermaßen:
„In meinen Zeichnungen arbeite ich mit schroffen Linien, die ich als 'bastard lines' oder 'homeless lines' bezeichne. Diese Methode der Linienführung folgt nicht der Kontur der Dinge, sondern bedingt sich durch die Bewegungen einer fremdartigen, fast unheimlichen Hand. Meine Hand legt dem Geist keine Rechenschaft ab, was sie zeichnet. Ich trainiere meine Hand dazu, das Papier zu attakieren und eine unmittelbare Textur der Linien zu erzeugen und nicht das sofort Ersichtliche wiederzugeben. Meine Zeichnungen entstehen ohne jegliche Vortäuschung von Kontinuität. Viel interessanter ist es, in der Zeichnung eine Stimmung zu erzeugen als das Objekt oder Subjekt darzustellen. Bedeutung möchte ich vorübergehend außer Kraft setzen und Abgeschlossenheit für einen kurzen Moment in Frage zu stellen.“
Alex Mirutziu wurde 1981 in Sibiu, Rumänien, geboren. Er lebt und arbeitet in Rumänien und England und übt Lehrtätigkeiten an verschiedenen europäischen Institutionen wie am Royal College of Arts, London, dem Von Krahl Theater in Tallinn oder der Universität Konstfack in Stockholm aus. Jüngere Projekte wurden u.a. im ZDB, Lissabon, The Power Plant, Toronto, der Mucsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, dem Nationalmuseum Warschau und auf der Biennale von Venedig präsentiert.
On invisibility with typography and dance
Stills from "But as a document" - Alex Mirutziu/Pär Andersson
"But as a document" to be premiered at Bucharest's National Museum of Contemporary Art
But as a document is a collaboration between artist Alex Mirutziu and choreographer and dancer Pär Andersson in which compiled lines from two internationally renown writers Graham Foust (USA) and Karl Larsson (SE) are written in Sweden Sans typeface and transferred from plain-page to plain-space. The performer recreates a live reading, shedding the meaning of stanzas, by grabbing words with their anatomical technicality. According to Jesper Robinell - head of design at Söderhavet agency, with Stefan Hattenbach, responsible with the official Swedish typeface ): "I don't think this has even been done before. When Alex contacted us, we were first baffled by the idea of making a dance out of a typeface. Now we are still baffled but also impressed and honoured that our design could inspire someone to create a dance based on it."
More about the exhibition in which "But as a document" will be presented see below.
Cătălin Ilie, I talked to the wall and the wall was impressed (Studies for a better understanding), 2015-2016, drawing and sound installation, mixed-media
I’M THE INVISIBLE MAN
Chapter II of “The White Dot and The Black Cube”, an exhibition project in six parts
Opening: Thursday, February 18th, 7 PM
February 19th – April 10th, 2016
The National Museum, of Contemporary Art - 4th floor, Bucharest
Curatorial impulse: Anca Verona Mihuleţ
Response: Diana Marincu
Artists selected by Diana Marincu: Michele Bressan (RO), Andreea Ciobîcă (RO), Norbert Costin (RO/SE), Cătălin Ilie (RO/DE), Alex Mirutziu (RO) + Pär Andersson (SE), Esra Oezen (DE), Cristian Rusu (RO)
MNAC coordinator: Mălina Ionescu
Architect: Attila Kim
Curatorial intro: The curatorial method employed in devising “The White Dot and The Black Cube” as an exhibition in six parts takes its starting point from the investigation of three essential display formulas: two group exhibitions, two duo-shows and two personal exhibitions. Each of these formulas is enhanced by the dialogue between the two curators and by their exchanges with the artists and the museum as an institution. The group exhibitions were conceived following a theoretical impulse that one of the curators transmits to the other; the dual ones by the curators assuming one of the two conflicting theoretical positions; and the personal ones through a triangular dialogue.
Set off by the imperceptible reality and symbolic processuality of the artistic gesture, I’m the Invisible Man, chapter II of the curatorial project “The White Dot and The Black Cube”, discusses the idea of invisibility. The conceptual approach of this exhibition comprises several layers of the relationship with image and matter, which most often constitute the visual hooks of a display. The artists invited to reflect upon this subject perceived the sensitive alteration of reality, which they either provoked themselves or recorded non-invasively, or adopted as such, thus opening the creative discourse towards suspense and coincidence.
The duality of the interpretation of the invisible integrates both its potential to protect visible matter and the fragility produced by erasing an object from space. We believe that both can constitute possible frames of interpreting the unity and discontinuity of a curatorial enterprise.
The invited artists commit themselves to the moment at which the invisible blurs the visible, at which certain planes coincide, at which the images are superimposed perfectly – man’s construction over nature’s construction, the artificial image over the natural one, and reason over intuition; the moment at which the visible body represents both a possible weapon and a vulnerability deriving from public discourses on marginality; the moment at which the white noise of the quotidian insinuates itself as “tense” materiality into our lives; and at which the residual frames of perception reach the centre of the visual field.
Monday Art Project with Alex Mirutziu
The conversation between Alex Mirutziu and Olga Krzeszowiec, Malmsten took place in Stockholm on April 26, 2015.
The object of this encounter with Olga Krzeszowiec is the collaboration I made with Swedish design agency Söderhavet, and the upshot of it -- the project called "But as a document" (with Pär Andersson). At that time I was an artist in residence at IASPIS Konstnärsnämnden, Stockholm; part of my research was dedicated to design, and the politics of reading and writing, thus the interview embody these two paths as well.
"My practice is geared towards understanding where am I and what the word is made of. To clarify is important, especially the matter of presence. I want my works to function, so to speak, to intertwine into a relevant network of idea, to help build a climate for what is to come, because a work of art is never only a work of art, it is so much more than that." - Alex Mirutziu