Geta Bratescu
30 Mar - 28 Apr 2012
GETA BRATESCU
30 March - 28 April, 2012
Galeria Luisa Strina is pleased to present the solo show by Romanian artist Geta Br?tescu, featuring recent drawings and collages, along with artworks from the 1990s.
Geta Bratescu is considered one of the most relevant individuals in the Romanian art scene, being a key figure in the vanguard and postwar developments. Her work has included drawing, collage, photography, experimental film and video, drawing and book illustration.
With a degree in literature and philosophy, which she earned in parallel with her studies in visual arts, Geta began her work in a heterogeneous and stimulating context during the 1940s and '50s, passing through a turbulent political period of socialism in Romania and its collapse at the end of 1989. These social, cultural and political events allow for an understanding of determined forms of artistic expression, which Br?tescu presents in her work.
"During the 1970s I drew a lot. There was a period in which I was involved mainly with textiles and lithography. These were techniques which allowed me to make things that were visually new, to experiment, because the system did not allow for much. For instance, through textile I tried to use various materials or to materialize some ideas, which was impossible with the means of painting." [1]
Her artistic practice somehow reveals a literary discourse, through the accumulation of cultural references, articulated with a conceptual austerity, with compositions of the visual field using fabrics, paper and objects. Geta is constantly developing an exercise on the possibility of reaching an image equivalent to a literary thought, by way of a complex interaction of ideas, artistic elements and materials. Just like fiction, which presents reality transformed into an imaginary narrative. Geta's visual responses are open-ended. Like a book that progresses from chapter to chapter, creating a rhythm, tension and constant interaction between form and formlessness, order and disorder, as can be seen in the series of artworks in the exhibition, Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night, from 1991.
Geta Bratescu (1926), lives and works in Bucharest, Romania.
Her work has been featured recently in group exhibitions such as A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance Art, Tate Modern, London, (2012); L'Internationale, MACBA ? Museu D'Art contemporani Barcelona, (2011); and Ostalgia, New Museum New York, (2011). In 1960, the artist represented Romania at the Venice Biennale, and in 1983 and 1987 she participated in the Bienal de São Paulo.
[1] Interview with Geta Bratescu: http://xplaces.code-flow.net/sevova-skin/geta-bratescu-en.html
30 March - 28 April, 2012
Galeria Luisa Strina is pleased to present the solo show by Romanian artist Geta Br?tescu, featuring recent drawings and collages, along with artworks from the 1990s.
Geta Bratescu is considered one of the most relevant individuals in the Romanian art scene, being a key figure in the vanguard and postwar developments. Her work has included drawing, collage, photography, experimental film and video, drawing and book illustration.
With a degree in literature and philosophy, which she earned in parallel with her studies in visual arts, Geta began her work in a heterogeneous and stimulating context during the 1940s and '50s, passing through a turbulent political period of socialism in Romania and its collapse at the end of 1989. These social, cultural and political events allow for an understanding of determined forms of artistic expression, which Br?tescu presents in her work.
"During the 1970s I drew a lot. There was a period in which I was involved mainly with textiles and lithography. These were techniques which allowed me to make things that were visually new, to experiment, because the system did not allow for much. For instance, through textile I tried to use various materials or to materialize some ideas, which was impossible with the means of painting." [1]
Her artistic practice somehow reveals a literary discourse, through the accumulation of cultural references, articulated with a conceptual austerity, with compositions of the visual field using fabrics, paper and objects. Geta is constantly developing an exercise on the possibility of reaching an image equivalent to a literary thought, by way of a complex interaction of ideas, artistic elements and materials. Just like fiction, which presents reality transformed into an imaginary narrative. Geta's visual responses are open-ended. Like a book that progresses from chapter to chapter, creating a rhythm, tension and constant interaction between form and formlessness, order and disorder, as can be seen in the series of artworks in the exhibition, Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night, from 1991.
Geta Bratescu (1926), lives and works in Bucharest, Romania.
Her work has been featured recently in group exhibitions such as A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance Art, Tate Modern, London, (2012); L'Internationale, MACBA ? Museu D'Art contemporani Barcelona, (2011); and Ostalgia, New Museum New York, (2011). In 1960, the artist represented Romania at the Venice Biennale, and in 1983 and 1987 she participated in the Bienal de São Paulo.
[1] Interview with Geta Bratescu: http://xplaces.code-flow.net/sevova-skin/geta-bratescu-en.html