IT'S COMPULSORY THAT
WE HAVE A TITLE
21 february – 07 april 2013

Salonul de proiecte continues the series of exhibitions generated by its open call to young artists, a series whose main aim is to support the production of contemporary art. The selection of the works presented in this instalment was made by artist Ciprian Mureșan, who lays out the arguments for his position as follows:

“I accepted – perhaps more from masochism than from any satisfaction in taking on the position of the person who has to decide things – the invitation from Salonul de proiecte to select a number of proposals gathered as a result of an open call. The more I got bogged down in uncertainties, the more comical the situation seemed: how was I to choose six projects from around seventy? These uncertainties should not be viewed as an excuse for any eventual poor reception of the exhibition, because the state of constant doubt suits me down to the ground and nourishes my “artistic practice”. As such, it would have been unjust and pointless to seek, to invent, a common line or anything coherent in the choices I made. It’s important I mention that I didn’t choose finished works, but rather proposals for projects that would then be implemented, in whose production I had no business or intention of intervening, but which, perhaps from professional distortion, I pictured in the way I myself would have made them.

Andreea Ciobîcă flagellates herself through drawing, something that could not fail to impress me. The Mixer group sets out from a widespread phenomenon among Romanian housewives: sharing and copying recipes – a kind of open source resulting from motives that the Mixer group “examine” in their work, gathering documents and testimonies which they process by using illustrations that fetishise the “props” of the phenomenon, as well as by identifying with the “subject” (writing their own recipe notebook). These methods go beyond “sociological research” (as the major curators would call it).

Far from helping the marginalised – some artists are, on the contrary, privileged within the art scene (Mihuț Boșcu Kafchin has been selected for the Paris Triennial, and Andrei Dinu is a successful stage designer) – I should say that the choices have been made according to different criteria.

While in some works the selection took account of formal criteria, others have nothing to do with any history of art (which in any case nobody seems to be very familiar with, and this causes it to be reinvented nowadays by gallery owners, businessmen collectors, communists, capitalists, MNACs, Erstebanks, and art magazines – even the Orthodox Church has something to say on the subject). While the works of Mihuț have done the rounds of the European and perhaps even American fairs, Andrei Dinu has, as far as I know, exhibited his art only in small circles. In both cases, what attracted me was the absurdity and the irony: God depicted as a disco glitterball with a Santa beard and an icon in which some hermits are gazing dumbly at some sandwiches.

Flaviu Rogojan is not sure whether he is an artist or a curator (maybe he’s neither the one nor the other), but I interpreted this ambivalence as a reaction to the wave of painters who throng the streets of Cluj and the Paintbrush Factory. He transforms a space dedicated, i.e. “consecrated”, to exhibitions into one that is ordinary and has no particular function. In other words, he is going against precisely the (praiseworthy) tendency to create as many arts spaces as possible, and I don’t see why he shouldn’t have the right to do so. And if you can’t be bothered to see the exhibition, we invite you to use Daniela Pălimariu’s work, which is intended to be functional, and I hope that it will play the role of a space for rest and relaxation (in corporatist offices as well as in the exhibition space).

Although some works try to avoid certain trends and may fall into the snares of others, I think that all the same, what they have in common is their inability to repeat an exercise. While this can lead to disaster in gymnastics, in the arts it can be beneficial, because it makes us realise the impossibility of professionalisation, of the certainty lent by status, honorary titles, diplomas, certificates of authenticity, and even the self-awareness of being an artist.

After the whole experience, I was left with at least one more question, which adds to my heap of doubts: do we really need a title?”