Art Encounters 2017 Exhibitions:
The Unavowable Community

Mona Vătămanu (b. 1968) & Florin Tudor (b. 1974) have been working together since the year 2000. Using multiple techniques (film, photography, painting, performance, site-specific interventions), the artistic duo identifies and highlights common traits of postcommunist space, focusing on themes such as the flow of capital and the power relations in the global economy, to resignifying social utopia.

Selected exhibitions: The Wretched of the Earts, Salonul de proiecte, Bucharest (2016, solo); Still (the) Barbarians, EVA Biennial, Limerick (2016); Flying Utopia, tranzit.sk/Bratislava (2015, solo); Le monde et la dette, D+T Project, Brussels (2015, solo); All Men Become Sisters, Muzeum Sztuki ms2, Łódź (2015); A Luxury We Cannot Afford, Para Site, Hong Kong (2015); I do not know the real story which happens there, Argos Centre for Arts and Media, Brussels (2014, solo); 46°19′41″N 23°12′44″E Geamana, Andreas Huber Gallery, Vienna (2014, solo); Social Factory, 10th Shanghai Biennale, Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2014); A History, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014); All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, Extracity, Antwerp (2013, solo); I Dreamt the Work of Another Artist, Kunsthalle Lisbon (2013, solo); The Order of Things, DAAD Galerie Berlin (2012, solo); Geometric Analogies, D+T Project, Bruxelles (2012, solo); Land Distribution, Lombard Freid Projects, New York (2011, solo); All Power to the Imagination!, Secession, Grafischess Kabinett, Vienna (2009, solo); Mona Vătămanu & Florin Tudor, Surplus Value, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2009, solo).

Their works have been exhibited at important international exhibitions, including the EVA Biennial (Limerick, 2016), the 10th Shanghai Biennial (2014), the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011), as well as the 54th and 52nd editions of the Venice Biennial (2011/2007).

Mona Vătămanu and Florin Tudor have been working together since 2000, focusing on relevant themes for contemporary society, reflecting on a common space, such as collective memory, community belonging, or the dynamics of social relations dictated by money. Il Mondo Novo paraphrases the painting of Giandomenico Tiepolo (18th century) and reiterates this motif in various formulas over time. In the original work of art, the group of people has gathered to see images from the new world, although it may also seem that they are looking at a fluid and uncertain horizon. In the reinterpretation of these two artists, the group of people contemplates the ruins of a world in which nothing is left to be discovered, everything that is new being a regurgitation of some old principles and an unsolvable contradiction of the city outskirts.

Images:

1.Mona Vătămanu & Florin Tudor, Il Mondo Novo (2016), film, 3’41”, supported by Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest