Art Encounters 2017 Exhibitions:
Decebal Scriba & Serge Spitzer – 40 years after

Decebal Scriba (b. 1944) has been living in Fontainebleau-Avon since 1991. He is an artist approaching media such as photography, installation, performance and video art, with sustained activity in the sphere of conceptual art, in which he also integrates his preoccupation with drawing. Along with Nadina Scriba, he initiated the document video project House pARTy, editions I and II, between 1987 and 1988, in Bucharest.

He has exhibited in Romania starting in 1974, participating in notable group exhibitions: Situație și concept [Situation and concept], Atelier 35, Bucharest (1974); Fotografie și film experimental [Photography and experimental film], House of Art, Bucharest (1979); Scrierea [Writing], Institute of Architecture, Bucharest (1980); Spațiu-Obiect [Space-Object], Institute of Architecture, Bucharest (1982); Spațiul-Oglindă [Space-Mirror], Institute of Architecture, Bucharest (1986); Experiment în arta românească după 1960 [Experiment in Romanian art after 1960], National Theater, Bucharest (1996). During the communist regime, he participated in several projects abroad, between 1973 and 1988, which encouraged art by correspondence, or so-called mail-art, such as Objeto de Interferencia, Sao Paulo (1985) or the ecological project Messagio Terra, Milan (1983). After 1990 he participated in the exhibitions When History Comes Knocking: Romanian Art from the 80s and 90s in Close Up, curated by Judit Angel, at the Plan B Gallery in Berlin (2011) and The Poetics of Politics, curated by Olivia Nițiș, Propaganda Gallery, Warsaw (2012). In 2015 he opens his first personal exhibition at the Victoria Art Center, Bucharest, followed by his second, in 2016, at the Calina Gallery in Timișoara, both curated by Olivia Nițiș. He contributes to the exhibition Situations and Concepts, curated by Magda Radu, organized in 2017 at the Project Salon in Bucharest.

In 1974, led by the absurd, Decebal Scriba performed an unusual act. He walked down the street holding his hands in the shape of an object that looked like a gift box and tried to offer it virtually to passers-by. That year, the performance was met with the utter perplexity, as the audience probably reacted thinking of a facetious student, pushing them on an eccentric merry-go-round. The re-enactment of this performance during Art Encounters 2017 puts the interaction with the other in a radically different context. Previously, it was a matter of confronting, on a personal level, a norm imposed by the political regime in power. This time the volunteer performers will serve as a counterweight, with originality, contesting to individualism. The public will certainly play along and accept this hybrid creation, at once a virtual sculpture and a contemporary choreography, that is similar to the aesthetics of do-it-yourself, staged in a comic way.

Images:

1. Decebal Scriba, Portrait, photo credits: D. Scriba

2. Decebal Scriba, Action II (1973), 50 x 70 cm (A4-size original document from the exhibition Situation and Concept, Bucharest, 1974 and black and white digital print, 45 x 32 cm), with Stephen Cox, photo credits: D. Scriba