Geta Bratescu
17 Nov 2010 - 15 Jan 2011
GETA BRATESC
Alteritate
17 Movember, 2010 – 15 January, 2011
We are very pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by Geta Bratescu at Galerie Mezzanin.
Geta Bratescu, born in 1926 in Ploiesti, Romania and today living and working in Bucharest, is considered as one of the most significant personalities in Eastern European contemporary art. Nevertheless, until now her work has remained closed to a wider international audience.
After the comprehensive exhibition organized by Silvia Eiblmayr in 2008 at the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck, in which Bratescu was shown together with Ana Lupas, this is the first solo presentation of the artist in Austria.
Inspired by a stimulating intellectual environment in Romania during the post-war era, on the one hand, and by a totalitarian repression under Ceausescu, on the other, Bratescu’s work has travelled through the times. Bratescu’s experience with social and cultural turning points is essential to understanding the meaning behind her work.
In times of greatest hardship the studio becomes for her both a place of artistic as well as human freedom. Entirely independent upon medial ideologies, her consistently performative works revolve around the place of her development and reveal far beyond that.
It is through these experiences that her works develop, such as the self-referential film, “The Studio” (1978) filmed by her artist colleague Ion Grigorescu, in which she examines her physical and psychological environment. The camera, acting simultaneously as a voyeur, invades the artist’s universe, the studio, and addresses the relationship between camera and actor in a symbolic manner.
The exhibition at Galerie Mezzanin, which developed out of a close collaboration with the artist, dedicates itself to various groups of her oeuvre from the last decades and unites works on paper as well as objects, photography, and film, which in large part have not been exhibited before and are seen here for the first time.
In relative solitude Geta Bratescu created an oeuvre, which maintains an intriguing dialogue with artists such as Bruce Nauman, with his cinematic surveys, Paul McCarthy, John Baldessari, as well as artists such as Cindy Sherman, whose work has a fundamentally stronger performative rather than photographic character.
Alteritate
17 Movember, 2010 – 15 January, 2011
We are very pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by Geta Bratescu at Galerie Mezzanin.
Geta Bratescu, born in 1926 in Ploiesti, Romania and today living and working in Bucharest, is considered as one of the most significant personalities in Eastern European contemporary art. Nevertheless, until now her work has remained closed to a wider international audience.
After the comprehensive exhibition organized by Silvia Eiblmayr in 2008 at the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck, in which Bratescu was shown together with Ana Lupas, this is the first solo presentation of the artist in Austria.
Inspired by a stimulating intellectual environment in Romania during the post-war era, on the one hand, and by a totalitarian repression under Ceausescu, on the other, Bratescu’s work has travelled through the times. Bratescu’s experience with social and cultural turning points is essential to understanding the meaning behind her work.
In times of greatest hardship the studio becomes for her both a place of artistic as well as human freedom. Entirely independent upon medial ideologies, her consistently performative works revolve around the place of her development and reveal far beyond that.
It is through these experiences that her works develop, such as the self-referential film, “The Studio” (1978) filmed by her artist colleague Ion Grigorescu, in which she examines her physical and psychological environment. The camera, acting simultaneously as a voyeur, invades the artist’s universe, the studio, and addresses the relationship between camera and actor in a symbolic manner.
The exhibition at Galerie Mezzanin, which developed out of a close collaboration with the artist, dedicates itself to various groups of her oeuvre from the last decades and unites works on paper as well as objects, photography, and film, which in large part have not been exhibited before and are seen here for the first time.
In relative solitude Geta Bratescu created an oeuvre, which maintains an intriguing dialogue with artists such as Bruce Nauman, with his cinematic surveys, Paul McCarthy, John Baldessari, as well as artists such as Cindy Sherman, whose work has a fundamentally stronger performative rather than photographic character.