IOANA NEMEȘ:
SOMETIMES WE SHOULDN'T PRETEND EVERYTHING IS OK.
21 june – 04 august 2013

Two years after Ioana passed away, we have taken upon ourselves the gesture of making a first attempt to reflect upon her artistic practice. Without any claim to being a retrospective, the selection of works concentrates on the Monthly Evaluations series (2003-2011). The exhibition brings together a discontinuous constellation of “days”, which, as Ioana used to say, form “a meta-narrative of consumed time”, in which the linear perception of time is diverted towards a different kind of reading. In various visual formats, the schema of a “day” condenses a rigorous, elaborate system whereby Ioana investigated her existential journey, according to parameters that took into account her physical, emotional, intellectual and financial state and the coefficient of luck. The rigour of the method of evaluation, which became a constant exercise in Ioana’s life, is counterbalanced by the fact that she opens to us a means of accessing own intimacy. This experience continues to reverberate, in a subtle and indeterminate way, with the inner processes of each and every one of us.

Although it was difficult, the exercise of re-establishing contact with the archive of “days” brought us closer to Ioana once more and at the same time made us become aware of the inevitable shift in perception caused by the fact that re-reading them occurs now, when she is no longer among us.

The majority of the works in the exhibition are reconstructions of the “days” and “months” conceived by Ioana over the course of time, and so the various ways of conceptualising this subject are shown here in the same space for the first time.

We would like this exhibition to open the way to new research and perspectives on an artist as complex as Ioana. Other aspects of her artistic practice deserve similarly sustained attention. In conjunction with the exhibition at the Salonul de proiecte, two inserts will be published in IDEA arts + society magazine, presenting newly commissioned texts written by two curators with whom Ioana Nemeș worked closely: Livia Paldi and Alina Șerban. These publications, which also include an interview with Ioana Nemeș and a hitherto unpublished text by her, will be available at the opening of the exhibition.

Special thanks: KILOBASE BUCHAREST, Apparatus 22, Ioana Nemeș Circle of Friends,Jiri Svestka Gallery, Livia Paldi, Alina Șerban, Claudia Pascu, Timotei Nădășan, Anne Barlow, Courtenay Finn, Bettina Sporr.



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