After the opening of the exhibition Out of Place at Tate Modern, acclaimed Romanian artist Ion Grigorescu returns to London for a screening and a conversation with curator Kathrin Rhomberg. The exhibition is the first public presentation of his work in the UK, with support from the Romanian Cultural Institute in London.
Out of Place in the Level 2 Gallery series features four artists from different backgrounds whose works focus on how political changes affect the lives of individuals. Ion Grigorescu (Romania), Cevdet Erek (Turkey), Hrair Sarkissian (Syria) and Ahlam Shibli (Palestine) expose the physical traces of historical shifts and political decisions. History marks the reality with monuments, the architecture of the new and the ruins of the old. Documenting memory-laden landscapes, new constructions, abandoned places and the voids left behind by migrants, the artists present a meaningful record of transformed reality and individual stories being lived within it.
Ion Grigorescu (b. 1945) has worked extensively with performance, which he documented through photos and 8mm films (most of them in black and white). After 1990 the artist staged a spectacular comeback with a series of personal exhibitions and happenings in Bucharest, Venice, Vienna and Amsterdam. His body-focused work from the 1970s has been rediscovered and Grigorescu is now unanimously acknowledged as a highly relevant contemporary artist.
When: Monday 21 March 2011, 6.30 pm Where: Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG. Free entry.
