The Museum of Modern Art in New York will present, starting with May 2, an exhibition of Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi. For his first solo museum exhibition in the United States, the artist will create a site-specific wall drawing reflecting current social and political events on one wall of The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium. Two weeks before the official opening, beginning April 19, Perjovschi will begin drawing on the wall during public hours, allowing visitors to observe the creation of the work. The project is also accompanied by a free newspaper created by the artist.
Part of MoMA's Projects Series, highlighting the work of today's most exciting and inventive artists, the exhibition is organized by Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography, Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition benefits from the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York.
Previously to the exhibition opening, the Romanian Cultural Institute will host on Thursday, April 26 at 7:30 pm, a dialogue with Dan Perjovschi.
"Perjovschi's sketches and skits portray reality with a sense of criticality and pointed humor. Using concise phrases and wordplay, he employs textual puns in his work. This is clear in the work's rhetorical title, WHAT HAPPENED TO US?, in which 'US' may refer to either the pronoun 'us' or the noun 'United States of America'," states Ms. Marcoci. In the last decade, Perjovschi's drawing installations have focused on recording history as a flux of events. His satirical works, which often incorporate previously drawn images with new ones, address such topics as the position of Eastern Europe in a post-Cold War world, the Israel and Palestine conflict, the power dynamic between the United States and the European Union, issues of censorship, and the artist's identity in society.
Perjovschi, who lives and works in Bucharest, Romania, has exhibited widely throughout Europe, with recent shows at Tate Modern in London (2006), Portikus in Frankfurt am Main (2006), and Museum Ludwig in Cologne (2005). He has also shown in the Sharjah Biennial (2007), Moscow Biennial (2007), Istanbul Biennal (2005), and the Venice Biennale (1999). In 1991, he joined 22 , the Bucharest-based weekly oppositional paper, as the publication's political illustrator and art director. Perjovschi received a MFA from George Enescu Conservatoire of Fine Arts, Iasi, Romania, in 1985. His drawings and artist's books are represented in MoMA's collection.
(Image: Dan Perjovschi - "Part of the big club". Created for the April-May Events brochure of RCI New York © 2007 Dan Perjovschi)
