Exhibition: Unsaved Species

 

Brukenthal National Museum Sibiu invites you on Friday, May 10, 2024, at 6:00 p.m, at the opening of the "Unsaved Species" exhibition by Ștefan Radu Crețu, an artist from Sibiu, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, situated on 6, Tribunei Street.

 

The exhibition Unsaved Species marks another chapter in the career of Ștefan Radu Crețu. This time, the artist exhibits in the temporary exhibition space from the Brukenthal Museum of Contemporary Art. Sibiu is the city where he has lived and created for over twenty years and where he distinguished himself as an artist working with the public space, a teacher of fine arts, manager and cultural agent of the Mielu' Alb art space.

 

Passionate about movement - physical or on wheels, as well as ecology, he creates versatile forms inspired by nature, which he transforms into functional kinetic mechanisms. He assembles various useful objects - carpentry and gardening tools or construction materials with fragments of gears - velocipedes or other mechanisms, which he transforms into new forms, species in a ludic-poetic sense.

 

Recycling these materials becomes synonymous with saving the species, in a context created by magical thinking, on the way to extinction in the predictable world of adulthood. If art succeeds in anything concrete, even in the days of digital challenges and giddy metaverses, it's that it doesn't age. Neither she nor the authors behind it. It leaves indefinite room for play, for running, for spinning ideas or merry-go-rounds, and for the illusion of omnipotence.

 

If we fail at something in our daily life, we save the situation into a work or a project. And intractable problems, such as saving the species, turn into real personal utopias and playful challenges for the audience.

 

The artist has reached a necessary level of realism, so the exhibition deals exclusively with the unsaved species, our inability to solve all problems proximate or distant, turning this limitation into an advantage - playful and visual.

 

Born on January 26, 1983 in Câmpina. He works and lives in Sibiu, Romania.

2006 He Graduated from the University of Visual Arts and Design, Cluj-Napoca, ceramics profile

2005 Socrates Erasmus Scholarship, Wroclaw Academy of Fine Arts, Poland

2008 Master's degree at the National University of Art Bucharest, sculpture department

2016 Doctorate at the National University of Art, Bucharest

 

 

2023. "Puls 22" National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (group exhibition).

2021-2022 "Predictions of the Earth. About ecological thinking and practice" (group exhibition) at the Cotroceni National Museum, Bucharest and itinerant at ICR Paris and ICR London.

2021 “Spannungsverhältnisse im Dialog” Haus der Kunst, Baden, Austria (group exhibition)

2020 "After twelve years. Artistic production from Romania in 180 works". MNAC Bucharest (group exhibition).

2018/”voo cinnyris geometrica”, Parque Marechal Carmona, Cascais, Portugal (solo exhibition).

2018/ "The origin of boxes", UNA Galeria, Bucharest (personal exhibition).

2018/ “At Different Angles”, MNAC Bucharest (group exhibition)

2017 /“International Kinetic Art Exhibit and Symposium, Boynton Beach, Florida, USA. Celebrating Art in Motion (group exhibition).

2017 "Possible Evolution", Victoria Art Center, Bucharest, (personal exhibition).

2016 "Resolution for/about a cultural capital". Galeria Calina Timișoara. (OUR group).

 

"The idea of locomotion and movement is an important source of inspiration that I chose to explore in various aspects. First of all, I study the natural means of locomotion, which involves movement in all its diversity - terrestrial, aquatic, aerial, and at the same time I carry out a comparative analysis with artificial means of locomotion. After many attempts to motivate my research through personal projects and achievements, I started to use movement in varying proportions: linked to the source of inspiration, to the natural-artificial ratio. I have arrived at some syntheses that I express in both bi- and tri-dimensional forms. To enhance the value of the objective, minimization and abstraction are also important.

These syntheses bring to the fore the relationship between fragmented organic forms and artificiality, both of which are approached in a contemporary manner, given the subject matter and the technological aspects involved.

Sometimes the final image can have an ironic character that targets the technological limitations, remaining in a state of zero gravity...a playful paradigm before the gravitational phenomenon. This is the area where they come in, minimizing some solutions exploiting the mass-inertia relationship and canceling the gravitational force through solutions related to flight or levitation.

All these aspects represent a metaphor by which I mean to bring to the fore the idea of human frailty in its physical and cognitive evolution."

E-mail: stefan.r.cretu@gmail.com 

Phone no: 0735-871236