BERLIN SHOW #4: Inventory
14 Nov 2015 - 12 Mar 2016
BERLIN SHOW #4: INVENTORY
14 November 2015 – 12 March 2016
Galeria Plan B is pleased to announce BERLIN SHOW #4: Inventory, an exhibition organized on the occasion of the gallery’s anniversary, opening on November 13 in the Plan B Berlin space.
The project includes 15 different solo presentations by the gallery’s artists, shown successively over a duration of 15 weeks.
This autumn, Plan B turned 10 years old. When we initiated this project in 2005, the premises were significantly different. At that time, the gallery came into being as a response to the precariousness of the local art scene in the Romanian city of Cluj. A new space would respond to the existing difficulties in the local art scene that was in need of revival, and worked towards a program that included young contemporary artists that evolved along with the gallery itself. From the beginning, the space has been adamant about including historical artists in their programming as well without whom, we believe, contemporary art could not be understood completely.
Plan B is a collaborative project between the curatorial team, direction and the artists, and augmented with each new artistic, theoretical and critical contribution. For the past 10 years, the project’s financial, artistic and directorial independence has always been essential to the space’s existence.
In 2008, Plan B opened a second exhibition space in Berlin. The dynamic art scene of this city, unique in its eclecticism and richness, potentiated the gallery’s program even more and opened up new directions for the kind of practices we wanted to highlight, that didn’t all strike root in Cluj. Simultaneously and paradoxically, Berlin has given us the chance to amplify the voice of the Romanian art scene. Therefore, we’ve decided to look back on the past decade through a series of exhibitions in the Berlin gallery space.
The BERLIN SHOW #4 exhibition is an inventory of the artistic practices that make up the gallery; a sequence of solo exhibitions in a space within the gallery designed by Mircea Cantor, a long standing friend of the gallery in these past 10 years. The series of exhibitions counts as an overview of an ever evolving project. It highlight its commencement in the past, its current state of being and its developments towards the future.
‘A space within the space always requires special motivation and needs double consideration why to do it. An anniversary can be a good reason, and that’s why a simple form yet sophisticated needed to mark this moment. I said sophisticated because all measures and relationships between the sizes, the volumes, and the surfaces are based on the golden ratio. We have so many examples throughout art history that embody the use of the Phi number. 10 years of activity of Plan B needed to be visualized as the materialization of their adventure from moving from location to location, opening up, growing with the artists. The outside column, hidden in the back of the “cube” is almost like a reference to the ‘house’s snake’ -the legendary, fairytale creature that hides, yet protects the house from evil. This snake indeed is the extraordinary vision and dedication of Mihai and Mihaela, that have been keeping “the house alive” in all these years, through bold proposals from the artist’s side.’ Mircea Cantor, Paris, November 13, 2015
The exhibition will start with the project Dead Weights by Ciprian Muresan, on view from November 14 to 21.
Dead Weights reflects on the strategies of undermining the ideological discourse of an artwork. By copying an art object, that object grows weak and vulnerable, turning against and dismantling its original spirit. Muresan's project draws on Romanian art history, using copied sculptures from the Art Museum in Cluj as weights for etchings that remain unrevealed to the public. The artist’s undertaking unfolds in a story about authority, the accepted canon, history, and mimetic strategies for subverting them all. The authority of an art object can be disrupted by appropriating it and reworking its meaning.
The new website of the gallery will be launched during this exhibition.
14 November 2015 – 12 March 2016
Galeria Plan B is pleased to announce BERLIN SHOW #4: Inventory, an exhibition organized on the occasion of the gallery’s anniversary, opening on November 13 in the Plan B Berlin space.
The project includes 15 different solo presentations by the gallery’s artists, shown successively over a duration of 15 weeks.
This autumn, Plan B turned 10 years old. When we initiated this project in 2005, the premises were significantly different. At that time, the gallery came into being as a response to the precariousness of the local art scene in the Romanian city of Cluj. A new space would respond to the existing difficulties in the local art scene that was in need of revival, and worked towards a program that included young contemporary artists that evolved along with the gallery itself. From the beginning, the space has been adamant about including historical artists in their programming as well without whom, we believe, contemporary art could not be understood completely.
Plan B is a collaborative project between the curatorial team, direction and the artists, and augmented with each new artistic, theoretical and critical contribution. For the past 10 years, the project’s financial, artistic and directorial independence has always been essential to the space’s existence.
In 2008, Plan B opened a second exhibition space in Berlin. The dynamic art scene of this city, unique in its eclecticism and richness, potentiated the gallery’s program even more and opened up new directions for the kind of practices we wanted to highlight, that didn’t all strike root in Cluj. Simultaneously and paradoxically, Berlin has given us the chance to amplify the voice of the Romanian art scene. Therefore, we’ve decided to look back on the past decade through a series of exhibitions in the Berlin gallery space.
The BERLIN SHOW #4 exhibition is an inventory of the artistic practices that make up the gallery; a sequence of solo exhibitions in a space within the gallery designed by Mircea Cantor, a long standing friend of the gallery in these past 10 years. The series of exhibitions counts as an overview of an ever evolving project. It highlight its commencement in the past, its current state of being and its developments towards the future.
‘A space within the space always requires special motivation and needs double consideration why to do it. An anniversary can be a good reason, and that’s why a simple form yet sophisticated needed to mark this moment. I said sophisticated because all measures and relationships between the sizes, the volumes, and the surfaces are based on the golden ratio. We have so many examples throughout art history that embody the use of the Phi number. 10 years of activity of Plan B needed to be visualized as the materialization of their adventure from moving from location to location, opening up, growing with the artists. The outside column, hidden in the back of the “cube” is almost like a reference to the ‘house’s snake’ -the legendary, fairytale creature that hides, yet protects the house from evil. This snake indeed is the extraordinary vision and dedication of Mihai and Mihaela, that have been keeping “the house alive” in all these years, through bold proposals from the artist’s side.’ Mircea Cantor, Paris, November 13, 2015
The exhibition will start with the project Dead Weights by Ciprian Muresan, on view from November 14 to 21.
Dead Weights reflects on the strategies of undermining the ideological discourse of an artwork. By copying an art object, that object grows weak and vulnerable, turning against and dismantling its original spirit. Muresan's project draws on Romanian art history, using copied sculptures from the Art Museum in Cluj as weights for etchings that remain unrevealed to the public. The artist’s undertaking unfolds in a story about authority, the accepted canon, history, and mimetic strategies for subverting them all. The authority of an art object can be disrupted by appropriating it and reworking its meaning.
The new website of the gallery will be launched during this exhibition.