Ivan

Before a Warning (Then as Now) brings together the works of artists Sándor Bartha, Geta Brătescu, Florina Coulin, Ion Grigorescu, Gavril Pop and Iulia Toma. The starting point of the exhibition is the video performance created by Ion Grigorescu in 1994, in Timișoara, for the Orient, Occident exhibition, curated by Ileana Pintilie. The work will be presented for the first time, as it was not part of the exhibition selection in 1994. In this video performance, Ion Grigorescu interviews his colleagues, raising the issue of conflict and violence. Then, as now, tensions were pushing the population into a tense state of waiting, marked by uncertainty. Thirty-two years after this video was made, we find ourselves in a similar situation: a war on the border, a divided society, and a succession of conflicts that have either already erupted or are about to do so in multiple parts of the globe. Ion Grigorescu’s film thus becomes the starting point for the exhibition Before a Warning (Then as Now), a space where, like in the video, discussions, reflections, and questions are encouraged. Against the backdrop of an increasingly suffocating and unpredictable global security crisis, the accelerated collapse of the old order makes the need to talk about the present instinctively open up.