ghost-geometry

GHOST GEOMETRY

GHOST GEOMETRY, Cristian Rusu
The exhibition GHOST GEOMETRY is curated by Diana Marincu, in conjunction with Different Degrees of Freedom project.

October 22nd, 2022 – February 25th, 2023

‘The artist Cristian Rusu has been following for several years the subject of “ghostly” spatial geometries that influence our perception and thinking, highlighting the structure of the visible universe as a framework that deserves to be dismantled and rebuilt, through site-specific projects. Looking at the tensions between physical and sensible space, the artist has chosen a direct confrontation with the exhibition space – the industrial hall where Kunsthalle Bega was inaugurated in 2019 – with its architectural identity and with our own preconceptions or perceptions. The alternation between full and empty, horizontal and vertical, large and miniature draws in space a series of escapes resulting from the set of constraints with which one usually works. This volumetric drawing can be a map of freedom, of the search for the sublime and, simultaneously, a reordering of a way of seeing and a questioning of the visual space.’ (Diana Marincu)
 
‘My dialogue with the space is a polemical one, in which, starting from the morphology of the exhibition space, I try to destabilise the given architectural order, through volumetric interventions. From the very beginning, I perceived the Kunsthalle Bega space as extremely visually challenging: a complicated space because of its structure (size, architectural structures, geometry). That’s why I decided to overbid this psycho-somatic pressure to maximum saturation. Through this installation, I also continue my research on the approach to the sublime (beauty, fascination and fear) in a contemporary context, as well as my melancholic gaze towards the admiration of the ruin that I see as an engine of my artistic meditation. The installation is a personal intervention in the Kunsthalle Bega, as well as a space reshaped for the upcoming exhibition Different Degrees of Freedom.’ (Cristian Rusu, 2022).
 
Cristian Rusu (b. 1972) is a visual artist and scenographer, PhD lecturer at the Faculty of Theater and Film of “Babeș-Bolyai” University in Cluj. His main artistic research consists of the questioning of space and in his melancholic meditation on ruin and the sublime in a contemporary context. Through various visual arts techniques and combining spatial and architectural concepts, he interrogates the interplay between aesthetics, sensibility and ideology, mainly through site-specific projects.
 
Following the spatial intervention proposed by Cristian Rusu, the exhibition Different degrees of freedom will be installed at Kunsthalle Bega in January, inviting 12 more artists from Romania and from the international scene, who will reflect on the two fundamental aspects on which art is based: physical freedom and mental freedom. On the one hand, in physics and mathematics, the degrees of freedom of a point in space depends on the Cartesian system’s parameter variables that can define its position. And on the other hand, in a metaphorical sense, the degree of freedom that we can imagine about an individual, but also about a system, is closely related to the scenarios and projections related to the independence from the norms to which they refer and the possibilities of “release” in relation to it. The invited artists are: Andreea Albani (RO), Ștefania Becheanu (FR/RO), Andrei Bucovanu (RO) Mircea Cantor (FR/RO), Ștefan Curelici (RO), Judith Fegerl (AT), Adrian Ganea (RO), Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien (FR), Sebastian Moldovan (RO), Ciprian Mureșan (RO), Cristian Rusu (RO), Sinta Werner (DE), Anna Zvyagintseva (UA).
 
Cristian Rusu′s project is the largest in-situ intervention in the GHOST GEOMETRY series, produced by Kunsthalle Bega, co-financed by the Timișoara City Hall through Timișoara Project Center within the priority program “Repere în cultură”.
 
Diana Marincu is a curator and art critic, artistic director of the Art Encounters Foundation in Timișoara, member of AICA and IKT, winner of the Bega Art Prize in 2022. In 2017, she received the title of Doctor from the University of Arts in Bucharest, Department of History and Theory Art.