The Center for Contemporary Art, in collaboration with the Romanian Cultural Institute in Tel Aviv, presents “Gaining in a State of Debt” the first solo exhibition by Romanian artist Alex Mirutziu (1981, Sibiu, Romania. Lives and works in Cluj-Napoca, Romania). Opening: March 14 at 8 pm, Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv (Tsadok ha-Cohen St. 2a). The exhibition will last between March 14 – April 18, 2019.
Mirutziu’s practice
extends over a wide range of
media and activities, including sculpture, drawing, poetry, and performance, as
well as critical and curatorial projects. In his work, which is both highly
intellectual and deeply physical, he expands the notions of approximation and proximity
in connection to time, presenting “dislocated modes of arrival at meaning.” In
his modus operandi, he seeks to facilitate the understanding of the body as a
“turbulent performative occasion” – drawing on the poetics of homelessness and
invisibility. Through his artworks, he looks at ways of suspending the set-ups
of doing and un-doing, thinking and un-thinking. Alongside TAH29 (The
Artist Himself at 29), he acts within a collective body whose modus operandi is
“retroactive irony.”
Video program
(not on view during the performances):
• Dignity to the Unsaid, 2017. Performance, HD video, 17:42 min.
• But as a Document, 2015. Performance to camera, HD video, 12:01 min.
• Doing Sub Thinking, 2018. Performance, HD video, 10:51 min.
• The Gaze is a Prolapse Dressed in Big Business, 2018. Performance, HD video, 14:37 min.
• Stays Against Confusion, 2016. Performance, HD video, 14:52 min.
His exhibitionat CCA Tel Aviv features a new performative work, entitled “Bottoms Know It”, and a compilation of videos that contextualize the new work and at the same time open up new avenues of understanding. Conceived for CCA Tel Aviv and featuring three performers and three props, “Bottoms Know It” exposes what may come across as being implicit but unnoticed, which is not necessarily a feature of truth-making.
Through the combination of different streams of thoughts and informed by philosophical concepts that are always personalized and freely interpreted, the artist is capable of creating time-based and durational experiences between himself and the viewer, using the artwork – whether in the form of an object or a body (his own or somebody else’s) – as a channel, a catalyst, a sort of remote controller that is linking two individuals, himself and the viewer, possibly located in two different geographical and time zones. However, all the aforementioned notions never come as we usually expect them: “time-based” should be considered according to an unusual notion of time; “durational” should be perceived according to a larger scope of perception. The work of Alex Mirutziu not only makes us think, it also makes us think about the conditions allowing us to think, and un-think, to do, and un-do.
“Alex Mirutziu: Gaining in a State of Debt” is curated by Nicola Trezzi in close collaboration
with the artist.
