Vlad Nancă and Nona Inescu / Aerial Roots
Curated by Nikolett
Erőss
20th January – 10th May 2017
Trapéz Gallery
Henszlmann Imre utca 3, Budapest, Hungary, 1053
Nona Inescu
Nona Inescu
Nona Inescu
Nona Inescu
Vlad Nancă
Vlad Nancă
Vlad Nancă
The idea weaving through the exhibition is the
concept of the aerial root, originating high above the ground, heading to the
earth; a metaphor of immobility and (the impossibility) of drawing away, of
release. The works of Vlad Nancă (Bucharest, 1979) and Nona Inescu (1991) are
characterised by an attachement to their environment, a boundedness, and at the
same time a distance originating from examining this situation to which humour
is also well known. Both artists highlight and re-phrase characteristics of
their environment; characteristics which attest to a very precise, delicate
knowledge of this environment, and a close observation of it, while becoming
determining factors of it, almost unawares. These are banal things in front of
the eyes of all of us which soak into the environment in a way that we do not
notice that their absurdity or impressive beauty is under the threshold of
everyday life.
The two artists highlight these found
situations and phenomena. Vlad Nancă committedly collected DIY-constructions
created by town-dwellers to reserve parking spots. He re-created these
constructions, changing their earlier ephemeral quality to finely-shapen,
durable materials; this way the constructions remind us more to minimalist
statues than somewhat autocratic reserving instruments of the street. Nona
Inescu’s commitment to a botanical mode of visualisation, to less valued weeds,
or to leaf textures chewed by caterpillars, which are also indigenous in
cities, shows a similar attention and systematic thinking, resulting in an
especially sensitive mode of representation.
The emblematic work of the exhibition is the
concrete slipper created by Nona Inescu: the overleather is connected to a
concrete lower part making a step almost imspossible. The constant sense of
being on the road, which is necessarily pertaining to the role of the
contemporary artist (as well) inhibits the clinging to cosiness; the reassuring
feeling of belonging somewhere is suspended by the burden of fixedness, the
weight of the consequences of the steps.
The aerial roots meet at several points while
following their own paths: they are the transition, the boundedness, and at the
same time arborescent possibilities as well.