Aerial Roots

The idea weaving through the exhibition is the concept of the aerial root, originating high above the ground, heading to the earth; a metaphor of immobility and (the impossibility) of drawing away, of release.

The works of Vlad Nancă (Bucharest, 1979) and Nona Inescu (Bucharest, 1991) are characterised by an attachement to their environment, a boundedness, and at the same time a distance originating from examining this situation to which humour is also well known.

Both artists highlight and re-phrase characteristics of their environment; characteristics which attest to a very precise, delicate knowledge of this environment, and a close observation of it, while becoming determining factors of it, almost unaware.

These are banal things in front of the eyes of all of us which soak into the environment in a way that we do not notice that their absurdity or impressive beauty is under the threshold of everyday life.

The two artists highlight these found situations and phenomena. Vlad Nancă committedly collected DIY-constructions created by town-dwellers to reserve parking spots. He re-created these constructions, changing their earlier ephemeral quality to finely-shaped, durable materials; this way the constructions remind us more of minimalist sculptures than somewhat autocratic reserving instruments of the street.

Nona Inescu’s commitment to a botanical mode of visualisation, to less valued weeds, or to leaf textures chewed by caterpillars, which are also indigenous in cities, shows a similar attention and systematic thinking, resulting in an especially sensitive mode of representation.

The emblematic work of the exhibition is the concrete slippers created by Nona Inescu: the overleather is connected to a concrete lower part making a step almost imspossible.

The constant sense of being on the road, which is necessarily pertaining to the role of the contemporary artist (as well) inhibits the clinging to cosiness; the reassuring feeling of belonging somewhere is suspended by the burden of fixedness, the weight of the consequences of the steps.

The aerial roots meet at several points while following their own paths: they are the transition, the boundedness, and at the same time arborescent possibilities as well.