Art Encounters 2017 Exhibitions:
Home, Sweet Home

The work of Teodor Graur (b. 1953) includes performance, photography, sculpture, painting and installation. For the last years, the artist has focused on a series of objects comprising a “museum” that is equally nostalgic and ironic. The artist’s sometimes nostalgic, sometimes critical relation with the gathered and recycled objects is visible in his ensemble pieces, from “ecological monuments”, to “funerary monuments”, or to interior monuments. Together with Olimpiu Bandalac, he founded the Euroartist Bucharest group (active 1994-1996).

Selected exhibitions: Notes on a Landscape, Central Exhibition at Art Safari Bucharest (2017), Nature-Culture. Star & Grey (Made in Romania), Nicodim Gallery, Bucharest (2016, solo), M, Plan B Cluj-Napoca (2016, duo show with Cristian Rusu), Nostalgia, tranzit.ro/ Bucharest (2014, solo); 3 X The Totalitarian, Modernist, Balkan Museum, The Contemporary Art Gallery of the Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu (2012, solo); The Hero the Heroine and the Author, Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2012); Teodor Graur, Club Electroputere, Craiova (2012, solo); Blood & Honey – Future’s in the Balkans, Sammlung Essl, Vienna (2003); In Search of Balkania, Neue Galerie, Graz (2002); Transitionland, National Museum of Art, Bucharest (2000). He participated in the Venice and Istanbul International Art Biennales (1997 and 1995, respectively).

The work, Home, in (Free) Eastern Europe, reconstructs elements of everyday life and emphasizes the symbols of a grey period in life during communism, when the radio was one of the few elements of connection with the exterior. By overlapping objects from different areas of life, both intellectual and domestic, the artist ironically comments on recent history and the speed at which the obsession for novelty has replaced what, not long ago, was very up-to-date.

Images:

1. Teodor Graur, Portrait

2. Teodor Graur, Home, in (Free) Eastern Europe (2009), installation, 85 x 210 x 36 cm, courtesy of: Nicodim Gallery; photo credits: Teodor Graur