Founded in 2015 by Ovidiu Șandor, art collector and entrepreneur from Timișoara, the Art Encounters Foundation is a project that aims to grow and support the development of contemporary art in Romania, cultivating dialogue, knowledge, research and experimentation. The Foundation’s activity is divided into several directions: the organization of the Contemporary Art Biennial, the exhibitions set up at the permanent headquarters of the Foundation or in other places, the residency program for artists and curators.

Starting from January 2018, the Art Encounters Foundation carries out its organizational activity and exhibition program at the headquarters located in the ISHO House, in Take Ionescu Blvd. n. 46C, Timișoara. The exhibition space is located on the 1st floor of the building on a 264 square meters area. The position of artistic director is held by Diana Marincu.

The fourth edition of Contemporary Art Biennial will be held from 1/10 to 7/11/2021; entitled Our Other Us, the 2021 Biennale will pay particular attention to the forms of coexistence that we can now design, intuit and establish, also focusing on the transformations and drifts that mark individual or collective self-perception. At the heart of this Biennale are the two projects proposed by Mihnea Mircan and Kasia Redzisz. The section curated by Mircan is called Landscape in a Convex Mirror, a kind of anamorphosis of contemporaneity. “The exhibition brings together shapes and figures – elongated, compressed or distorted, blurred or dizzying – at a distance, perspective axes redesigned to take into account moving objects and zoomed in on unusual panoramas, articulating telescopic relationships between them, in a syntax of blind spots and enlarged details. Indirectly, and perhaps allegorically, these nodes of evanescent lines and optical axes, tracing the trajectory of a figure that falls or slips into an always precarious relationship with its background, correspond to a network of gaps and cracks in the social space, of immune barriers and toxic neighborhoods “.

In this section we find the works of artists such as Benjamin Bannan, Traian Cherecheș, Sara Culmann, Alice Gancevici & Remus Pușcariu, Adela Giurgiu, Femke Herregraven, Zsófia Keresztes, Szabolcs KissPál, Magdalena Łazczyk, Jean-Luc Moul Narkus, Manuel Pelucu, Miklós Onmucuș, Laure Prouvost, Ana Prvački, Saul Steinberg, Hito Steyerl, Remco Torenbosch, Achraf Touloub, Bernard Voita.

The section curated by Redzisz is called How to Be Together (and may remotely recall the guiding title of the last Venice Biennale, Architecture sector). “The concept of the exhibition has its origins in the identity of the city of Timișoara, an industrial, academic and cultural center, which hosts various communities. The exhibition is divided into two distinct parts: a historical research that investigates the relationship between artists and nature, while the other seeks a correspondence in the contemporary world. The set of works is more than a simple analysis of the present moment, becoming a reflection on the development of possible futures”.

This section includes, among others, the following artists: Flaviu Cacoveanu, Ndidi Emefiele, Irena Haiduk, Mihaela Hudrea, Suzanne Husky, Nona Inescu, Agata Ingarden, Gizela Mickiewicz, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Davinma-Ann Robinson Jura Shust, Dardan Zhegrova.

Furthermore, the intent of Kasia Redzisz is to explore the history of the link between artists and nature in Eastern and Central Europe, highlighting the contribution (nuanced but radical) to the canons of Western art of the 60s and 70s by of artists residing beyond the former Iron Curtain. The exhibition brings to the fore artists such as: Stefan Bertalan, Eva Kmentová, Frans Krajcberg, Katalin Ladik, Wanda Mihuleac, OHO Group, Maria Pinińska-Bereś, Eugenia Pop, Zorka Ságlová, Sigma Group, Rudolf Sikora, Kazimiera Zimblytė.

These three exhibitions are completed with Aripa Secretă (“Secret Wing”), a section entirely organized by the Interart TRIADE Foundation and the National Art Museum of Timișoara. The project represents a collaboration between the international curator Maria Rus Bojan and the poet and philosopher Bogdan Ghiu, and examines the artistic discourses from the 1980s and later, from the point of view of poetry. The title is inspired by a well-known book by the poet Mariana Marin (1956-2003), one of the emblematic authors of the generation of the Eighties, who had still experienced understanding and moral resistance to totalitarianism. Bringing together works from important private collections, this section includes the following artists: Lucas Arruda, Marcel Broodthaers, James Lee Byars, Ion Bitzan, Kasper Bosmans, Sophie Calle, Traian Cherecheș, René Daniëls, Marlene Dumas, Octav Grigorescu, Sigalit Landau, Gherasim Luca, Reinier Lucassen, Ioan Aurel Mureșan, Ioana Nemeș, Iulia Nistor, David Robilliard, Nora Turato, Ulay.

These are the venues of the Biennale: Corneliu Mikloși Public Transport Museum, ISH Office and ISHO Pavilion, ISHO House, National Art Museum of Timișoara, Helios Art Gallery, FABER Cultural Center, French Institute Timișoara.

Sonia Bartolomeo

Info

Biennial of Contemporary Art. Our Other Us
1/10 – 7/11/2021
ISHO House (e altre sedi)
Art Encounters Foundation
46C Take Ionescu
300124 Timișoara, Romania
contact@artencounters.ro