White Cuib

Unelte & (i)materiale Răzvan Botiș// Irina Dumitrașcu Măgurean/ Corina Oprea White Cuib, April 8 - May 2 Hammer, screwdriver, chisel, anvil, paintbrush, nails, lathe, laptop, printer, ruler, mixer, cement, broom, paper, canvas, paint, stone, kiln, clay, camera — a random list of tools and materials. When we think about artistic work, we most often visualize the classic easel and a canvas — perhaps with a palette smeared with thick layers of dried paint. A cliché that is hundreds of years old, screwed firmly into the collective subconscious. Or a large block of marble, with a chisel and a hammer. Of course, for more than a hundred years now, it has been well known that artists use all kinds of other material and immaterial means to express themselves. In the case of this exhibition, the three artists (Răzvan Botiș, Irina Dumitrașcu Măgurean, and Corina Oprea) present works broadly based on light, tissues smeared with traces of paint, deodorant spray, and a neon tube. Again, it may seem like a random list, especially since the works were conceived in different years, with concepts that are not directly related to one another. And yet, in each of the artists’ practices, I sense a poetic undercurrent (also) about art materialized from (almost) nothing. In short, without describing the works, the exhibition includes photography, installation, video, and object — and yet the first thought you may have (or the second) will likely be about the immaterial, the intangible, like many poems you read a long time ago and (almost) forgot, but which stayed somewhere in your mind, and now it is difficult to say exactly what words they were made of (yet you know you liked them, and why). Or you might think about something you once saw on the street: a stain of light spilling across a wall, a crumpled piece of paper fallen from a trash bin (which somehow looked like an object to be exhibited in a gallery), a long and fragmented shadow that intrigued you.(Alina Andrei)