Hidden Treasures of the Neo-Avant-Garde: Paul Neagu, Horia Damian, Constantin Flondor
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“The eye is fatigued, perverted, shallow. Its culture is degenerated, degraded and obsolete, seduced by photography, film, television”, wrote Paul Neagu in his 1969 “Palpable Art Manifesto”. In response to the eye culture, exhausted by the deluge of images that constantly surround us, Neagu advocates for an art addressed to all senses, including the mind, performative and participative. Under these auspices we open the exhibition dedicated to three masters of the European Neo-Avant-Garde, Paul Neagu, Horia Damian and Constantin Flondor, showcasing 11 museum-quality works generously loaned by the Trestieni collection. What the three artists have in common, besides their Romanian origin, is their holistic approach to art, seen as an intellectual and philosophical exercise rather than a materialistic, professional mastering of a technique. Their taste for the performative, ephemeral, self-effacing artistic practices, makes them pioneers of the post-war avant-garde, at odds with the modernist cult of the artist but also with the capitalist fetishization of the art object. The common experience of living a large part of their creative lives under a dictatorship, resulted in an art that is not political – in the sense that it refers to current states of affairs – but universal, where maintaining one’s own intellectual and artistic integrity becomes an act of resistance in itself.
Opening: Friday 6th of November starting 6 p.m.
Guided tour: 7th of November at 3 p.m.
Musical audition: between 26-29 November during the Nocturnes du Sablon (time&date to be confirmed)
Espace Intermédiaire, Impasse Saint-Jacques 3, 1000 Bruxelles
____
Sculptor, painter, graphic and performance artist, Paul Neagu (1938-2004) is considered one of the most important conceptual artists of his time, who’s teaching and work has influenced an entire generation of artists, like Anish Kapoor, Anthony Gormley, Rachel Whiteread, etc. He studied painting in Bucharest, where he began experimenting with his first tactile sculptures, “Neagu’s boxes”. In 1970 he left the country, at the instigation of the gallerist Richard Demarco, settling in London in 1971. By the time he arrived in England, he had already defined some of his most important artistic directions and concepts. One of them is “Anthropocosmos”, which consists of a “series of (anthropomorphic n.a.) drawings, paintings, tactile objects and edible constructions whose modular base is the cell” . In Neagu’s philosophical system “Anthropocosmos” represents the imbrication of the human and cosmological plans of existence, where the cell is not a reduction, that by multiplication creates a whole, but in itself can contain and expand to a universe. From this series we have the pleasure to expose, for the first time in public display, a very rare and important work, a man’s “Skull” (1973), created in collaboration with the ceramic artist Merilyn Smith, representing the artist’s head. The pendant of this work, a woman’s skull (shaped after that of his collaborator), is part of the permanent collection at Tate Modern. The honeycomb structure, constructed from ceramic strips, underline the fragility of the human body; the cellular structure which in other sculptures is lined with tactile materials that the visitors could touch, here is hollow, symbolizing the absence of perception in death.
Another distinctive symbol, that would become the epicenter of his sculptural practice, is the “Hyphen”. Bridge between perception and language, idea and form, the macrocosmic and the microcosmic, the hyphen is also a gap, a gate, a vehicle, opening up to a space of infinite possibilities.
Horia Damian (1922-2012) studied architecture in Bucharest, where he made his debut as a painter, before emigrating to Paris in 1946, where he became a student of André Lhote and Fernand Léger. Leaving behind his more classical manner of painting, he turns to geometric and sculptural forms, attracting the attention and admiration of artists like Yves Klein or Salvador Dali. He destroyed most of the works produces in the second half of the ’50s. His monuments, rooted in the early modernist traditions, are set against the backdrop of 1960s Minimalism, and serve him as a medium situated between art, landscape, and architecture. In 1976 he constructed “The Hill” for the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, from Styrofoam covered with tiny paper spheres and painted in yellow. The contrast between the colossal monumentality of the city, and the organic, fragile, almost volatile construction, enhances the effect of a “work with no author” as Radu Varia puts it , paving the way for a new sensibility that harmonizes the individual and the universal, the spiritual and the temporal. His fascination with monumentality continues with the series of “utopian architectures” from which we present a bronze sculpture titled “La cité” from 1984. It represents the model for an “ideal city”, a symbolic vision of the urban space regulated by geometry and spirituality. Cast in bronze at the Blanchet Fondeur ateliers, the sculpture acquires a symbolic weight, suggesting eternity, stability and a timeless quality.
Unlike his two conationals, Constantin Flondor (b.1936) never emigrated, but nevertheless practiced an art situated at the periphery both of the realist socialist dogma and the mainstream artistic discourse of that time. Settled in Timisoara, in the west of the country, his oeuvre comprises a board spectrum of media and creative approaches, ranging from conceptual practices to figurative-illusionist painting, motivated by the rigorous study of nature and the question of perception, where rational exploration is doubled by the contemplative, poetical, metaphysical observation. In the ’60 and ’70, as part of the groups 111 and Sigma, he practiced and promoted an experimental, performative, media-based art, in line with the international neo-avant-garde tendencies, in a country that was largely isolated from the West, both politically and culturally. From this period, we expose two photographs documenting an ephemeral installation, “Structuri efemere pe malul Timișului” (Ephemeral structures on the bank of Timiș) (1975) consisting in a net-like mesh of plastic ribbons, stretched between the trees, inviting the passers-by to interact with it. The motif of the network alludes to the cellular biological principle, like in Neagu’s work, but also functions as a visual metaphor of the intertwining between art and nature, the individual and the collective, and as a mediator between artist and spectator. In another vintage print, “Concave-Convex”, the artist points out to the subjectivity of perception, creating a photographic “trompe l’oeil”, where a heap of flour becomes an ambiguous sculptural object.
The exhibition is completed by an audition of the piece “Arcade” (1962) by Aurel Stroe (1932-2008), a composition of contemporary classical music based on the sequence of Fibonacci. Aurel Stroe is one of the leading figures of Romania’s musical avant-garde, who, like Damian and Neagu, lived a large part of his life in exile. His work was built at the intersection of mathematics, music and philosophy, an interdisciplinary and experimental approach, in the same vein as the artists’ presented above. Besides these elective affinities, the music of Aurel Stroe has its rightful place in the context of the Trestieni collection, as he is the collector’s own step-grandfather and a source of inspiration for the later.
Cover photo: Constantin Flondor, Concav/Convex, 1977
Opening: Friday 6th of November starting 6 p.m.
Guided tour: 7th of November at 3 p.m.
Musical audition: between 26-29 November during the Nocturnes du Sablon (time&date to be confirmed)
Espace Intermédiaire, Impasse Saint-Jacques 3, 1000 Bruxelles
____
Sculptor, painter, graphic and performance artist, Paul Neagu (1938-2004) is considered one of the most important conceptual artists of his time, who’s teaching and work has influenced an entire generation of artists, like Anish Kapoor, Anthony Gormley, Rachel Whiteread, etc. He studied painting in Bucharest, where he began experimenting with his first tactile sculptures, “Neagu’s boxes”. In 1970 he left the country, at the instigation of the gallerist Richard Demarco, settling in London in 1971. By the time he arrived in England, he had already defined some of his most important artistic directions and concepts. One of them is “Anthropocosmos”, which consists of a “series of (anthropomorphic n.a.) drawings, paintings, tactile objects and edible constructions whose modular base is the cell” . In Neagu’s philosophical system “Anthropocosmos” represents the imbrication of the human and cosmological plans of existence, where the cell is not a reduction, that by multiplication creates a whole, but in itself can contain and expand to a universe. From this series we have the pleasure to expose, for the first time in public display, a very rare and important work, a man’s “Skull” (1973), created in collaboration with the ceramic artist Merilyn Smith, representing the artist’s head. The pendant of this work, a woman’s skull (shaped after that of his collaborator), is part of the permanent collection at Tate Modern. The honeycomb structure, constructed from ceramic strips, underline the fragility of the human body; the cellular structure which in other sculptures is lined with tactile materials that the visitors could touch, here is hollow, symbolizing the absence of perception in death.
Another distinctive symbol, that would become the epicenter of his sculptural practice, is the “Hyphen”. Bridge between perception and language, idea and form, the macrocosmic and the microcosmic, the hyphen is also a gap, a gate, a vehicle, opening up to a space of infinite possibilities.
Horia Damian (1922-2012) studied architecture in Bucharest, where he made his debut as a painter, before emigrating to Paris in 1946, where he became a student of André Lhote and Fernand Léger. Leaving behind his more classical manner of painting, he turns to geometric and sculptural forms, attracting the attention and admiration of artists like Yves Klein or Salvador Dali. He destroyed most of the works produces in the second half of the ’50s. His monuments, rooted in the early modernist traditions, are set against the backdrop of 1960s Minimalism, and serve him as a medium situated between art, landscape, and architecture. In 1976 he constructed “The Hill” for the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, from Styrofoam covered with tiny paper spheres and painted in yellow. The contrast between the colossal monumentality of the city, and the organic, fragile, almost volatile construction, enhances the effect of a “work with no author” as Radu Varia puts it , paving the way for a new sensibility that harmonizes the individual and the universal, the spiritual and the temporal. His fascination with monumentality continues with the series of “utopian architectures” from which we present a bronze sculpture titled “La cité” from 1984. It represents the model for an “ideal city”, a symbolic vision of the urban space regulated by geometry and spirituality. Cast in bronze at the Blanchet Fondeur ateliers, the sculpture acquires a symbolic weight, suggesting eternity, stability and a timeless quality.
Unlike his two conationals, Constantin Flondor (b.1936) never emigrated, but nevertheless practiced an art situated at the periphery both of the realist socialist dogma and the mainstream artistic discourse of that time. Settled in Timisoara, in the west of the country, his oeuvre comprises a board spectrum of media and creative approaches, ranging from conceptual practices to figurative-illusionist painting, motivated by the rigorous study of nature and the question of perception, where rational exploration is doubled by the contemplative, poetical, metaphysical observation. In the ’60 and ’70, as part of the groups 111 and Sigma, he practiced and promoted an experimental, performative, media-based art, in line with the international neo-avant-garde tendencies, in a country that was largely isolated from the West, both politically and culturally. From this period, we expose two photographs documenting an ephemeral installation, “Structuri efemere pe malul Timișului” (Ephemeral structures on the bank of Timiș) (1975) consisting in a net-like mesh of plastic ribbons, stretched between the trees, inviting the passers-by to interact with it. The motif of the network alludes to the cellular biological principle, like in Neagu’s work, but also functions as a visual metaphor of the intertwining between art and nature, the individual and the collective, and as a mediator between artist and spectator. In another vintage print, “Concave-Convex”, the artist points out to the subjectivity of perception, creating a photographic “trompe l’oeil”, where a heap of flour becomes an ambiguous sculptural object.
The exhibition is completed by an audition of the piece “Arcade” (1962) by Aurel Stroe (1932-2008), a composition of contemporary classical music based on the sequence of Fibonacci. Aurel Stroe is one of the leading figures of Romania’s musical avant-garde, who, like Damian and Neagu, lived a large part of his life in exile. His work was built at the intersection of mathematics, music and philosophy, an interdisciplinary and experimental approach, in the same vein as the artists’ presented above. Besides these elective affinities, the music of Aurel Stroe has its rightful place in the context of the Trestieni collection, as he is the collector’s own step-grandfather and a source of inspiration for the later.
Cover photo: Constantin Flondor, Concav/Convex, 1977
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Where is it happening?
Impasse Saint-Jacques 3, 1000 Brussels, Belgium, Slotstraat 3, 1000 Brussel, België, Brussels, Belgium
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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Host or PublisherEspace Intermédiaire
