Art Encounters 2017 Exhibitions:

Cristian Rusu (b. 1972) is a visual artist and stage designer, and teaches at the Faculty of Theater and Television, part of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca. His main artistic preoccupation is researching space, and meditation upon ruins and the sublime. Using techniques such as drawing, photography, video, installation, and combining architectural and spatial concepts, he is targeting the interaction between aesthetics, sensibility and ideology.

Selected exhibitions: The Factory of Facts and other(unavowable) stories, Domino / Plan B Foundation, Cluj-Napoca (2016); Ein Loch im Meer, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (2016); I am the invisible man, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (2016); A few grams of Red, Yellow, Blue, Ujazdowski Castle Contemporary Art Center, Warsaw (2014); Open Monument, Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien, Berlin (2013); European Travellers: Art from Cluj Today, Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle, Budapest (2012); From Mathematics to China, Salonul de proiecte, Bucharest (2012); Subtle Construction, Transboavista VPF Art Edifício / Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon (2011); Romanian Cultural Resolution, Spinnerei, Leipzig (2010); Fear Itself, Plan B, Cluj-Napoca (2009, solo); Space Itself, Plan B, Berlin (2009, solo), Pavillon Tyrol, Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Innsbruck (2007, solo).

Cristian Rusu’s artistic practice includes drawing, installation and object, as he raises the subject of the interaction between ideology, utopia and aesthetics. In the context of the biennale’s aspiration to strengthen the artistic connections of the Romanian field with those in its close geographic proximity, the artist’s work is a comment on the Romanian-Yugoslavian relations from the communist period. Using as a starting point the pact between the two countries – for each repatriate refugee, Romania offered Yugoslavia a wagon with salt, according to the memories and information gathered by the artist – Cristian Rusu introduces, with a touch of irony and criticism, this historical episode, insufficiently commented on so far. In the suggested project, the artist would like to place a wagon with salt in Timișoara, the next step being that it should head towards Serbia and be integrated there in a public space that would accept it and keep it there.

Images:

1. Cristian Rusu, A wagon with salt (2017), scale model 1:87, Installation conceived for the public space (freight wagon, track rail, approx. 140 T of salt), photo credits: Cristian Rusu