Galleries Brunch
ALCHIMIE
With Sasha Bandi, Liliana Basarab, Horia Bernea, Dan Beudean, Victor Brauner, Alexandru Chira, COADY (AUS), Floriama Cândea, Ștefan Câlția, Anca Coller, David Farcaș, Ingrid Farcaș, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Sultana Maitec, Răzvan Năstase, Paul Neagu, Abel Rad, Dumitrița Răzlog, Ramon Sadîc, Daniel Spoerri, Ruxandra Tudoran, Ion Țuculescu, Martina Vacheva (BG), Yunfeng (CN)
Curated by Maria Bîrsan & Alexandru Niculescu
Alchemy - a working method, a structure of thought, a personal choice to treat each step as an essential stage in a great process of becoming. Not just a transformation, but a reduction to the essential and from there a little further towards perfection. This Ars Magna has inspired and informed, created strong connections with art and artists, always occupying the dark, even marginal place, content to remain, fundamentally, an obsession with the way matter allows itself to be forced, melted or reconfigured. Just as alchemists operated for centuries trying to reshape the natural world, redefining the primordial elements, artistic processes evoke inner transformation through experiments on form, light, color, human and more than human bodies.
The fascination with mystical and esoteric themes, the eternal search for the philosopher's stone, the legendary substance believed to be able to turn any metal into gold and offer eternal life, have been and are speculated by artists. In the rooms of Vila Catena, their works evoke alchemical processes, from which a common desire to understand, transform and subject the matter specific to their practice reverberates.
