Impressed & depressed | Art Yourself Gallery

Impressed & depressed exhibition is part of the 11172014 project, launched by Art Yourself Gallery and consisting of 11 exhibitions planned for the current year, with 17 contemporary artists invited.

The idea of the exhibition is rooted in the fact that the act of contemplating beauty brings us closer to the Big Question of existence, making us feel awe when facing the unexpected, jealousy because it does not belong to us as creation and finally sadness because we understand that all beauty carries its end within even since its genesis.

We are impressed by stimuli, sensations, ideas, with remarkable effects. And at the same time we feel depressed by reversed causes that have a profound impact at a conscious and subconscious level. So Impressed & depressed opposes two extreme attitudes, which react, thus influencing.

ARTISTS

Aitch, Felix Aftene, Gabriel Caloian, Codruţa Cernea, Mihail Cosuleţu, Cristian Crisbăşan,Suzana Dan, Amalia Dulhan, Andreea Floreanu, Cornel Lazia, Ileana & Cătălin Oancea, Dragoş Pătraşcu, Tudor Pătraşcu, Radu Rodideal, Adrian Sandu, Bogdan Teodorescu, Ioana Ursa.

Amalia Dulhan – The most beautiful thing I ever was / ‘The most beautiful and sad view in the Universe is the starry sky. I never feel more alone and more at home than when I look at celestial bodies, inaccessible and indifferent, bodies which remind me I was once one of them. I am child of the stars, as all those who gaze at me’.

Dragoş Pătraşcu – Tristeţea Sensului (The sadness of meaning) / ‘I wouldn’t have been a man if I didn’t like the manufactured melancholia’.

Cristian Crisbăşan – Everything that has a beginning has an end / ‘The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth that you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.’ (Morpheus)

Ioana Ursa – Venice Queen / ‘Inspired from the beautiful song “Venice Queen” by RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS / Gloria Scott was a heroin addict and when she passed away, she had 22 years of recovery from addiction. She worked as a drug counselor at Cri-Help in North Hollywood, California and lived in Venice. She helped thousands recover from addiction (thanks, Liz – Venice Beach, CA – Scott was Liz’ counselor in 1983)’.

Felix Aftene – Impressed depressed / ‘The work is part of the “taxidermia” series, in Greek – “the arrangement of skin”, and it explores this motif. A universe of beings emptied of content, present only through their skin. In this landscape dominated by the false of creatures with frozen grins, profound feelings unexpectedly appear, reflective and hard to differentiate – hunted or hunter?’.

Suzana Dan – Waiting

Gabriel Caloian – Life is life

Codruţa Cernea – Untitled

Cătălin Oancea – Toy-God / ‘Toy-God represents the modification of an Egyptian deity typology superposing the idea of a wood toy’.

Bogdan Teodorescu – We don’t need no education / ‘In relation with the center, the peripheral cultures commercially subsist through ossification in exoticism’.

Radu Rodideal – Tained perception / ‘Erroneous impressions give birth to depressions… and vice versa’.

Cornel Lazia – Under Construction / ‘They said it was like ancient Rome/ The perfume burned his eyes/ Holding to her thighs/ And something flickered for a minute/ And then it vanished and was gone’. (Lou Reed – Romeo and Juliette)

Andreea Floreanu – Too Depressed / ‘If yesterday a thing gave you a positive state, today you don’t perceive it the same, because your state changed’.

Mihail Coşuleţu – Temple Mount / ‘The border between colossal and depression always seemed to me confused, narrow and, personifying it, bipolar. An impossible, unapproachable edifice rests, in its immeasurable whole, in the power of whom it addresses, crushing him. Kafka lives here’.

Adrian Sandu – Impression / ‘Impression prefigures the principle of action and reaction in a common whole. Moreover, it opposes two extreme attitudes, which react, thus influencing’.

The exhibition can be visited until March 29, 2014.

View photos from the Conflict of Choice exhibition here.

Photos: The re:art