The curatorial program of the Arsmonitor gallery continues with an original group-show, entitled “Table et Tableau”, in which works signed by Grațian Gâldău, Dumitru Gorzo, Ioana Gorzo, Teodor Graur, Nicu Ilfoveanu, Gili Mocanu, Răzvan Neagoe, Ilie Pavel are exhibited , Radu Pandele, Bogdan Pelmus, Magdalena Pelmus and Mircea Suciu. The exhibition is open to the public until August 29, 2024.
The exhibition “Table et Tableau” is the fourth exhibition this year organized by Arsmonitor, after a solo exhibition dedicated to Răzvan Neagoe and two duo exhibitions, one dedicated to the brothers Ioana Gorzo and Dumitru Gorzo and the second dedicated to the couple Magdalena and Bogdan Pelmus.
“Table et Tableau” brings up the issue of disposing (not exposing) the “shadow” of the creator and his creation. This form of arrangement facilitates the viewer’s access to a small part of the living archive, composed of notes, sketches and disparate objects, which are the basis of the appearance of the work and the formation of the identity of a number of artists representative of the various periodizations and typologies of Romanian contemporary art.
The theme proposed in Table et Tableau invites the viewer to reorganize the objects of this unfinished archive, with the aim of becoming the curator of their own micro-narrative, according to their own authorial interests. The viewer is the curator.
The table is a common place in the approach of curatorial research and in the museum setting, when it comes to the presentation and organization of an archive. Carefully arranged, protected behind a glass cover, labeled and classified by engineering and inaccessible to touch and approach, the objects of the “archive” are given a superior and magical status. Things and artifacts that have no particular purpose or value during the artist’s lifetime become the cult objects of posthumous research. Full of the charm of the montage of images and truncated information, the archive, arranged like a dissection table, aspires to rewrite history, the curator imposing his own narrative on history, the world or the deceased author.
“In the present case, Table et Tableau gives the table a function as a critical medium, offering accessibility and inviting touch, engaging the viewer to create their own meaningful organization, tasting the sensation to which the curator aspires — that of being an author — subjecting the archive to the condition of raw material, which he can shape according to his own limitations.” — passage from the curatorial text.
Arsmonitor, the first art gallery that opened in the Casa Presei Libere, is the newest gallery in the cultural landscape of Bucharest, a space dedicated to art and transformation, as well as dialogue between artists, collectors and art lovers.
