The Approximate Man 3.0

Mihai Zgondoiu
08.04.2022 – 21.05.2022

The Approximate Man 3.0 is an exhibition not only about the world but rather about some worlds. It is about some possible worlds, those half-real and half-imagined universes legitimately suggested by the artist, in various forms and formats (in our case, from drawings to different prints, installations, sounds and objects) and the pseudo-scientific literature, which is abundantly present in the exhibition through specific publications.

The title perfectly suggests this overlapping universe: on the one hand, it refers to the famous title of Tristan Tzara’s volume of poetry; on the other hand, it suggests the ambiguity of these unearthly universes’ characters, the ALIEN-ated man, the alien endowed with an approximate human identity. Both resources are essential in Mihai Zgondoiu’s creation: firstly, the avant-garde, used by the artist not only as a historical landmark and conceptual argument but also as a mechanism (for instance, the speculation of chances as a method of work or some absurd provided with a certain degree of irony influencing the whole process). Then, it is about the artist’s preoccupation with fantastic literature, for the popular „research” in the area of mysteries, parallel and paranormal worlds, personal mythology assumed sarcastically and seriously and highly instrumented within the frames of this exhibition.

The numerical reference suggests the current technological vocabulary naming the next generation of the internet: one of the meta-verses, the decentralised use, or the cloud. Thus, the Approximate man 3.0 is equally about the actuality and continuously updatable avant-garde, and about other types of the universe, about us, the clouds and the approximate beings that inhabit them.

Horea Avram