2021
“The MODEM Modern and Contemporary Arts Centre is a cultural institution with international connections, which has two main missions: the exhibition of the most significant 20th century Hungarian and international works of art, and the representative presentation of the current schools and progressive efforts of the contemporary visual art and culture as well as most respected Hungarian and international artists.”
The MODEM intends to realise those ambitious goals that the institution has set for itself during the start-up period.
With one of the best infrastructural conditions in East-Central-Europe, the MODEM is to be an essential part not only of the visual art scene but the whole cultural sphere. The art center is suitable to represent that the culture has high priority for the institutes and the whole town. Therefore, one of our basic goals is to make the MODEM a wider intellectual space and forum to where not only the spectators but also the artists return regularly with pleasure.
The primary point of view of the MODEM is the reconstruction of its character in the Hungarian art life, with the cooperation with new elements which strengthen the relation with the local and regional community as well as with the broader international cultural scene in a longer term perspective and form and run a multilevel and manifold network. We aim to create a brand new narrative which change the public opinion about the role of the contemporary art and make the visual art the part of the everyday life. An important goal of our programme is to represent the diversity of the contemporary art and to display the attendant art in different forms. In the selection of thematic exhibitions, not only the visual art gets into focus but the architecture and social science as well.
The Antal‒Lusztig Collection also plays a major role in the MODEM’s life, since it is permanent part of the ground floor exhibition room. The items of the collection are presented by newly arranged exhibitions twice a year. Furthermore, the professional and accurate cataloguing of the collection has started simultaneously as well.
KOLONIE WEDDING
Berlin Contemporary Art
The Kolonie Wedding is on the one hand a prime example for Berlin’s lively landscape of project spaces, and on the other it is unique in Berlin and might even be unique worldwide. Kolonie Wedding has had since its founding in 2001 a strong international angle – members come from all over the world and have organized a variety of international exchange exhibitions with East Europe, South America and, for example, New York. At the same time, the project spaces have a regional focus and regularly organize events, concerts, performances and exhibitions with a participatory character, inviting their neighborhoods to take part. Further, Kolonie Wedding is special in so far as membership and (international) exhibition activities are of an exceptional continuity.
In 2001 a group of project spaces connected and founded the non profit organization “Kolonie Wedding” in Berlin-Wedding, one district in Berlin. After 15 years the Kolonie consists of 23 project spaces in the area around Soldiner Straße. The associated project spaces coordinate their openings: on every last Friday of each month those of the spaces which show new exhibitions open their doors simultaneously – usually about ten of the project rooms, and there are guided tours to all the spaces for the interested public. Many of the projects focus on specific topics or genres, like for example video art, performance; connections between art and the sciences, politics. Some of the spaces cultivate regular international art exchanges with the Balkan states, Russia, Austria, Turkey, Brazil or Finland. Maybe the “Kolonie” itself could, with an extended conception of art, be seen as a Gesamtkunstwerk – one that can cross or even dissolve borders and that is a fertile ground for innovative ideas.
2020
CENTRUL
DE INTERES
Special guest @ ART MARKET BUDAPEST
The Centrul de Interes contemporary art center from Cuj Napoca has presented its projects and exhibitions and its newest catalogue made for this spring's group exhibition: 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin' organized by the art center, that included works from 24 artists: residents of the center or specially invited for the exhibition.
Exhibited artists @ Art Market Budapest 2020: Irina Dumitrașcu, Florin Ștefan, Zsolt Berszan, Istvan Betuker, Robert Bosisio, Andrei Budescu, Andrei Ciurdărescu, Valentin Ionescu, Adrian Ghiman, Ovidiu Leuce, Mihai Zgondoiu, Cristian Opriș and Virgilius Moldovan
2019
Dunaujvaros, Hungary
Instiute of Contemporary Art in partnership with Centrul de Interes organised two major exhibition in 2019 with the title “Changing Places”. The first group exhibition of Centrul de Interes artists was taking place in spring at ICA and the second exhibiton, works from ICA collection was organised during the summer in Centrul de Interes at Cluj Napoca.
“Changing Places I.“ List of artists: Belenyi Szabolcs, Berszan Zsolt, Betuker Istvan, Razvan Botis, Alin Bozbiciu, Mircea But, Andrei Ciurdarescu, Radu Comsa, Andrei Ispas, Irina Magurean, Alex Mirutziu, Vlad Olariu, Mihai Platica, Florin Stefan, Veres Szabolcs.
Centrul de Interes hosted works from the valuable collection of the ICA-D Institute of Contemporary Art was shown at level 4th of Centrul de Interes as a one and first, off its kind exposure in Romania.
”Changing Places II. Works from the Institute of Contemporary Art - Dunaújváros Collection”
List of artists: Ádám Zoltán, Bajusz Orsolya, Betuker István, Birkás István, Bogyó Virág, Böröcz András, Braun András, Brückner János, Csákány István, Csáky Marianne, Csörgő Attila, Eperjesi Ágnes, Esterházy Marcell, Fehér Márta, Friedrich Ferenc, Gémes Péter, Gerber Pál, Gerhes Gábor, Gróf Ferenc, Horváth Tibor, Kaszás Tamás, Kiss Róka Csaba, Kis Varsó, Komoróczky Tamás, Koronczi Endre, Kovách Gergő, Kupcsik Adrián, Lakner Antal, Lendeczki Kinga, Nagy Kriszta, Nemes Csaba, Oláh Mátyás László, Patakfalvi-Czirják Ágnes, Société Réaliste, St Auby Tamás, Szabó Ádám, Szacsva y Pál, Szalay Péter, Szűcs Attila, Tarr Hajnalka, Várnai Gyula and Várnagy Tibor
Curators: Deak Nora and Zsinka Gabriella
“Changing Places I.”
ICA-D INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART
“Changing Places II.”
CENTRUL DE INTERES 4th FLOOR
in partnership with BAZIS contemporary and CENTRUL DE INTERES
Alexandru Radvan
”Partner for the Abyss”
Curator: Diana Dochia
Alexandru Radvan, one of the most controversial artists of his generation, tries tirelessly to penetrate the darkest and most abject human desires. There, in the inner darkness, in the serenity of silence, the artist shapes his heroes and goddesses in oversized self-portraits, in which the self becomes an alter ego of the mythical characters. "Partner for the Abyss" describes an inner state, a permanent desire to find an "Other" capable of deciphering, understanding and accepting a multiplied and multifaceted “I”. An “I” that was born from the abyss, coming from deep chaos, where the feeling of inadequacy has its support in the artist's sense of alienation through distancing from himself. True knowledge needs conflicts, breaks, contrasts and leaps, a total change. Rădvan searches for these passages at all times, these sketches of an "I" always depicted differently. His current creation resembles a crossing of the Rubicon through which the "I" is in some isolation from the surrounding society. There, in the abyss, this "I" discovers the real world, a world full of force and vigor, a world outside of any norm. Alexandru Radvan's paintings and sculptures are carried out on large surfaces attracting the viewer through both, the impressive dimensions and the addressed topics. The rough, unveiled sexuality, often seeks the marginal, the exception, the abnormal, the fabulous. In the exhibition "Partner for the Abyss" sexuality is used as a tool to give a milestone about the abyss, to create order in disorder. It is a fine-tone representation of a de-doubled "I", which is reinterpreting oneself with himself. His drawings are preparatory sketches, interpreted as a commentary upon the history of humanity, in which all values are dissected. "Partner for the Abyss" is about the distance between what the "I" wants to be and what can become. Whether this "I" is represented in the form of an ancient goddess, Titan, fertility goddess or hunter. The impossibility of realizing this identity transforms the "I" into a self-condemned who chooses the Eternal Abyss.
THE MARIA AND WALTER SCHNEPEL COLLECTION
project by SPATIU INTACT in partnership with Centrul de Interes Federation
“I am, You are, He is”
Contemporary Artists Interpret The Bauhaus Lamp
The objects in the exhibition look familiar to the unaware viewer, and the shape which unites them all is indeed one that has entered popular iconography almost a century ago, even though its history may not be familiar to everyone. In time, it has become part of the collective imaginary. But while the underlying shape and the way it explores the circle in three embodiments, as a disk, a cylinder and a sphere, is indeed familiar, there is much more to see in each one of the artworks (or objects) on view: BIC pens, glass Mickey Mouse ears, interwoven rattan, a vintage tape player, an intricate embroidery-like structure, butterflies, various colors, words that may or may not make up sentences, a hat and many other items.
The history of this exhibition parallels the history of European culture and the rebellion of the industrial aesthetic against excessive decoration, and with it the search for streamlined and functional design.
In 1924, a man called Wilhelm Wagenfeld started working in a Bauhaus workshop in Weimar where he received a simple assignment from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: to design a lamp. The result was the object known today simply as “the Bauhaus lamp” and which has become more than any other the embodiment of Bauhaus designs as defined by Gropius. The aesthetic of the lamp is directly connected the philosophy which re-thought every day items from a minimalist, functional perspective and eliminated all redundant details; in time, it also became a symbol of good taste and a collectible. It is ironic that the Bauhaus lamp which, like other Bauhaus objects, was programmatically intended to look industrial, and also to be industrially produced, turned out to be both too expensive to be mass produced as well as too revolutionary in terms of design to actually become popular.
When Walter Schnepel associated with Wagenfeld to re-issue the Bauhaus lamp in 1980, he also looked for a way to re-define the iconic form and anchor it in contemporary culture in a different way than as a historical artifact which was still relevant but had to be respected as such. Instead, he chose to initiate a chain reaction, inspired perhaps by his collection of Fluxus art: a performance event which gave the historical object a new and different lease on life by going against its intended function as an industrial product. He understood that any iconic object lives on as long as it is the subject to interpretations and, ultimately, debate, and decided to offer it to artists to alter it as they saw fit.
By the contribution of artists such as Jochen Fischer, Christian Gürtler, Richard Hamilton. Alison Knowles, Christiane Möbus, Aldo Mondino, Paul Renner and Florin Ştefan, the new Bauhaus lamps on view live now at the intersection of two worlds: one where the purity of form still exists and another one, where they are the first layer of a palimpsest, a metaphor of living history and of individuality.
About Walter Schnepel
Walter Schnepel has been collecting since the 1960s and during the years has amassed a significant body of Fluxus art (Joseph Beuys, Daniel Spoerri, Wulf Vostell, Arthur Köpcke, Takako Saito, Nam Jun Paik and many others). The collection which includes over 2,000 items has been exhibited in museums (most recently at the Ludwig Museum in 2017.
Dana Altman
New York City
Source: spatiuintact.ro
France-Romania season 2019
As part of the France-Romania Season, with the support of the French Institute and the Normandy Region, the Esam Caen / Cherbourg and the Spatiu Intact art center in partnership with Centrul de Interes Cluj-Napoca presented the work of five artists French (Louise Aleksiejew, Thomas Auriol, Leticia Martínez Pérez, Antoine Medes, Léa Tesson) and five Romanian artists (Mircea But, Andrei Ispas, SJ Revo Kim, Cristian Opris, Lucian Popaila). The "Papanache / Camembert" exhibition was held in the gallery of Esam Caen / Cherbourg from November 30 to December 21, 2018, and the "Camembert / Papanache" exhibition in the Centrul de Interes of the Spa d'artiu Intact art center in Cluj-Napoca from May 7 to June 10, 2019. Led by the two artist-teachers Benjamin Hochart and Florin Stefan.
Camembert Papanache
Centrul de Interes ATRIUM, Cluj-Napoca
Artists: Louise Aleksiejew, Thomas Auriol, Zsolt Berszan, Andrei Ciurdarescu, Adrian Ghiman, Valentin Marian Ionescu, Andrei Ispas, Sungjæ Revo Kim, Leticia Martínez Pérez, Antoine Medes, Oana Nastasache, Ioana Olahut, CA Opris, Lucian Popaila, Léa Tesson
Curators: Benjamin Hochart and/et Florin Stefan.
2018
JCE
Jeune Création Européenne Biennale
at Centrul de Interes, Cluj-Napoca
Project by SPATIU INTACT
Partner: Centrul de Interes
Curators: Florin Stefan / Corina Ilea
The JCE travelling art exhibition includes 56 emerging artists from seven countries – Romania, Denmark, France, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, and Spain. JCE Biennale is a network of artists, curators and art lovers aiming to create a launching platform for European young artists.
THE JCE NETWORK
The JCE Biennale is above all a network linking different European cities concerned with promoting the work of their country’s young artists as well as allowing these artists’ cultural actions to be known beyond their borders. Each country is represented by a curator whose responsibility it is to select eight young artists who will participate in the JCE Biennale by presenting one of their artworks. Once the artworks of each country have been assembled, the JCE Biennale takes the shape of a large traveling collective exhibit which settles down in each of the partner cities over the course of two consecutive years. Through implementing this network, the JCE successfully manages to assemble emerging art scenes in the European Union, which share similar values and cultural objectives. Thus it represents a privileged moment of encounters and exchange between artists and professionals across Europe. At the heart of these shared esthetics, perceptions, and creative processes, the JCE Biennale wishes to open a terrain conducive to the questioning and new experiences necessary in order to stimulate youth creation. It is this collaborative nature which imposes itself as the guarantor of the free circulation of ideas and artistic research both on the national and international scale.
Since 2000, the JCE Biennale has traveled through Europe thanks to its partner cities. However, it is still seeking new destinations and spaces to pass through in order to come across new talent and allow creativity to circulate further. If you are a municipality or a contemporary art center situated in the European Union and you support your country’s young artists, becoming a part of the JCE Network will allow you to open your cultural programming to beyond its national borders. Your selected arists will participate in the JCE Biennale and will be invited to exhibit their work at the heart of different art scenes, allowing them to connect with one another as well as giving them new opportunities (such as residencies, professional networking, grants, etc.)
2017
Galerie
Anne-Sarah
Benichou
Voilà c’est tout
Artist Valérie Mréjen
Curator: Florin Ștefan
Project by SPATIU INTACT
Partner: Centrul de Interes
Visual artist, photographer, writer, Valérie Mréjen lives and works in Paris. Mréjen multiplies the means of expression to better explore the language’s possibilities. Her videos are often inspired by memories, everyday events, cruel and farcical details of existence, platitudes, misunderstandings.
“Nowadays, there are two image worlds coexisting and confronting each other. The TV image, in extinction, which forms (or deforms?) the thought of those, mostly rural or periurban people, who choose populism as an appeasing solution to the problems of the contemporary world. Then the multimedia image unveils, showcasing the global exchanges, forming the urban elites and nourishing the frenetic thought, without any profound meaning sometimes.
Confronted with these two “formats”, Valérie Mréjen gives us another possibility of considering the image. In a singular and profound way, she doesn’t offer an idealistic vision of situations, such as the relationship with the Other or the relationship between a man and the woman that he is obsessed with.
Just like on an 80s video player, she presses the rewind button, she pauses, then she repushes “play” and watches the lives of couples running by in «flux tendu». In Valérie Mréjen’s work, as in the broken world of today, the cynical man manipulates women into becoming resilient. In fact, she reminds us of the fragility of human beings and of what we profoundly mean for each other” – Benoît Bavouset, director of the Cluj-Napoca French Institute.
Source: spatiuintact.ro
2016 - 2019
Ferenczy Museum Center, Hungary
2019
Morpheus
Florin Stefan
Curator: Szabó Noémi
Barcsay Museum
Florin Ştefan (born in 1968) is a Romanian painter, and a professor at the University of Fine Arts in Cluj-Napoca, he is also a member of the Centrul de Interes group of progressive artists.. The silvery-obscured surfaces of his canvases bear an expressive brushwork, their main scenes depict mysterious interiors or decomposed landscapes. His main characters are female figures, often nudes, who perform their daily activities. Florin Ştefan’s sensual paintings are related to the new painting tendencies of the late 20th century, while the artist’s powerful visual attitude does not lack social criticism or even the criticism of contemporary painting. His latest works express the particularly pronounced feelings of loneliness and vulnerability; the sleeping or awaked women, or women loitering between consciousness and unconsciousness, often evoke the examples of classical paintings. Compared to the classical models, however, the Romanian artist guides the viewer to an uncertain territory: the paintings are blurred, and their intimacy often creates a sense of being outside of space and time, in a kind of floating dream world. Depressing secrets, ambiguous situations, unexpected yet familiar symbols dominate his canvases. Florin Ştefan’s paintings are both prosaic and majestic.
2018
The Flowers of Decomposition
Zsolt Berszan
Kmetty Museum
Curator: Dalma Eged
Transylvanian artist Zsolt Berszán (1974) made his Hungarian debut in 2010, when he had a solo show at the MODEM. He has also exhibited at the Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle Budapest, the ArtMill, and the Vajda Museum. For the past decade, his objects made of silicone have been characterized by the emphatic use of the colour black. In his works, the human being plays the leading role, but not as an all-conquering spiritual and intellectual principle: as a creature made from flesh, organs and cells, who is doomed to decomposition and exists at the mercy of time – in contrast to silicon compounds whose “life expectancy” exceeds the span of a human lifetime many times over.
His site specific works on display at the exhibition turn away from the exclusive use of black that is otherwise so characteristic of Zsolt Berszán’s art. The works made of bright red and black silicone, which have been placed among the plants in the garden of the Kmetty Museum, stand like unassailable obstacles in the way of nature. The passivity of the sculptures made from a material that is indifferent to climactic conditions and physiological factors calls attention to the unequal playing field between organic and inorganic existence. The inhabitants of Berszán’s garden – a life-size flesh eating plant, a parasite protruding from a living tree, and a table bearing haphazardly placed organs – raise questions from the perspective of silicone-based existence about the relationship between nature and its domesticator, the human being, as an organic life form and culture-creating being.
2016
Szentendre, the town located immediate vicinity of Budapest, is one of the most important centers in Hungary of all-time contemporary art for nearly a century — currently also about 130 artists live here. The Ferenczy Museum Center is the determining institution of the artistic life of the region, which is operate ten museums and exhibition spaces in the small town along the Danube River. This institution — with a civilian organization, the Art Capital Foundation – is organizing a large-scale international contemporary arts event series between 27 August and 16 October 2016 in Szentendre. In the Art Capital, launched with intention to create a tradition, twenty, thematically connected exhibitions wait for the visitors in a venue which easy to get around on foot: the historical downtown of Szentendre. The theme is nowadays’ time experience — the exhibitions reflect on this, and there are large number of accompanying programs also.
The central exhibition curated by Gábor Gulyás, the Director of Ferenczy Museum Center (the former leader of MODEM Debrecen and the Kunsthalle Budapest, the former Hungarian national commissioner of the Venice Biennale). In the exhibition, organized with the title: Wasted Time, determining representatives of international contemporary art can be seen like for example the Serbian-American Marina Abramovič, the American Bill Viola, Judit Reigl who lives in Paris, the Finnish Eija-Liisa Ahtila, the Japanese Chiharu Shiota, the Austrian Peter Kogler and Jelena Bulajić who lives in London.
In the exhibitions of Art Capital there are more than thirty Hungarian artists, but there are a large number of Polish and Romanian artists also. The letters are mainly artists from Paintbrush Factory, Cluj-Napoca who are presented in a separate exhibition in Szentendre (Almost Objects, Vajda Lajos Museum), and five of them — Zsolt Berszan, Radu Comşa, Sorin Neamtu, Florin Ştefan and Szabolcs Veres — are exhibiting in the central exhibition in ArtMill.
“ALMOST OBJECTS”
CURATOR: LILI BOROS
TEODORA AXENTE I BERSZÁN ZSOLT I BETUKER ISTVÁN I ANCA BODEA I RĂZVAN BOTIŞ I RADU COMŞA I GÁSPÁR SZILÁRD I MIHAI IEPURE-GORSKI I DAN MĂCIUCĂ I IRINA MĂGUREAN I VLAD NANCĂ I SORIN NEAMŢU I VLAD OLARIU
VAJDA LAJOS MUSEUM, SZENTENDRE, HUNGARY
The Art Capital, regarding its nature and magnitude also, is a unique initiation in Central Europe.
