On Body and Space / REST

There is a timeless connection between the human body and the surrounding space, a theme revisited across different cultures and artistic movements throughout time. This narrative forms the foundation of the exhibition featuring two artists, Ioana Olăhuț and Alexandru Rădvan.

Ioana Olăhuț / Alexandru Rădvan

curator: Ioana Olăhuț

The relationship between the body and the surrounding space has been explored in art across most cultures, from the ancient Australian cave paintings (The "Bradshaw" Paintings, c. 17,000 BC), to the solitary figures soaring over landscapes in the works of Caspar David Friedrich, or Andreas Gursky’s photographs capturing thousands of identically dressed participants in the grand socialist demonstrations of North Korea. It can be seen in the Fluxus group, which presented simple, repetitive body actions, revealing their meditative quality and elevating everyday activities to the status of art. It continues with abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, who connected painting, gesture, and action in performance, presenting both the finished artwork and the artist’s body in the act of creation, thus bringing the body out from behind the easel and demystifying the act of painting. European artists in the 1960s began using their own bodies as an artistic medium in performances, using photography to document these ephemeral artworks, which only existed for the duration of the gesture.

We revisited all these practices before proposing this exhibition. Can a fresh perspective still be found when bringing together the concepts of body and space, addressed through the lens of a highly traditional medium—painting? We posed this challenge to two contemporary artists whose practice spans different mediums but is primarily rooted in painting, and whose narratives rarely stray from the body and its attributes. Gathered in the realm of color, their figures linger and silently converse in an exchange of gazes and gestures, immortalized and exposed to the viewer like insects encapsulated in translucent resin.

"...I remember when, standing before art, I was struck mute and fascinated, when I felt shaken, when I felt dizzy and forgot where I was, when a murmur of admiration escaped involuntarily from my chest.

And I decided to create the same experience for others. Without a powerful patron wanting to become immortal, asking you to outdo yourself, without impressive palaces offered to you for decoration, without the vast ceilings and domes of churches, without grand stories or heroism, because it’s a different century, and you were born on the outskirts of the empire, where the monumental becomes stagecraft.

And yet, utopian, delirious, and in perfect discord with what the times and reason urge me to do, I decided to commission the magnificent decoration of the imposing Scuola Grande that I have carried inside me for so many years, and from which I have scattered shards and fragments on a road from which I no longer know how to return.

And its name will be, of course, Scuola Grande della Tenerezza, and people will stand silently, gazing at the immense and beautiful paintings that will speak to them of ordinary people and simple, loving gestures. And it will make them wonder when was the last time they truly felt someone’s touch, when was the last time they were intimate, or whether they even know what intimacy is anymore, when was the last time they cherished moments when nothing was happening.

And inevitably, this magnificent monument will never be realized, remaining only a struggle, perhaps the last, a fragment like a beautiful, decayed Venetian palace sinking irrevocably. And all that will remain will be other fragments, testimonies of a vast dream, realized with faltering means. A dream of tenderness and naturalness, of touches and embraces, imperfectly painted and thus wonderfully so.”

Rădvan Alexandru