VANITAS group show

The VANITAS group show, on view through December 31st, 2015 at Centrul Artelor Vizuale Multimedia in Bucharest, brings together twelve artists to reveal varied perspectives on the theme vanitas, the Latin word for vanity referring to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the futility and transience of existence (Vanity of vanities; all is vanity), often linked to the memento mori motif, present in most artworks through the symbol of the skull.

The exhibition shows the fragile balance and line between life and death, the human obsession with the latter, the madness of escaping it opposed to the calmness and silence of accepting it, the causes that lead to the death of the self, the emotions and values murdered by intentional or irrational choices. There is also an ironic approach, reducing death to a simple and ordinary fact of life, lacking anything that could amaze and startle. A matter of gods or human play, of divine power or mundane arrangement on an improvised stage.