NMCA 20BIS

The 20th anniversary of The National Museum of Contemporary Art

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 13.11.2023, 18:50

The National Museum of Contemporary Art (NMCA) plans, until next year, more precisely until October 29, 2024, to celebrate, through monthly events, the 20th anniversary of the Museum’s existence in its headquarters in the Palace of Parliament. Thus, this autumn, the official opening of the new exhibition season and the launch of the NMCA 20BIS anniversary year were announced.

Călin Dan, NMCA director, detailed:

As usual, we have a large number of new exhibitions, which pivot around a permanent exhibition entitled Leviathan, and which, located on the second floor of the museum, is practically an occasion for the public to visit our collection, in a warehouse situation, but arranged to have an intelligent, transparent contact with what contemporary art means in our museum. On the ground floor, I remember the Alma Redlinger exhibition, that of an artist who was trained in the interwar period, and who until the end of her life researched the great themes of historical modernism in painting. Next to it, in the Marble Hall, the generic space of the museum, the space that defines the curatorial ambitions of our institution, we have Eugen Raportoru’s installation, which is inspired by the title Patrimonio, and which looks at the destruction of cultural, material and immaterial, and historical heritage from the old center of Bucharest, from the Uranus-Bateriilor area, destruction that took place in preparation for the construction of the House of the People, the current seat of the Palace of Parliament, where we operate. It is an installation that looks at the past from the immediate present.

Călin Dan, NMCA director, continued the presentation:

On the 1st floor, the Plus 21 exhibition is a synthesis of the most significant works acquired by the museum in the last three years. The title is a metaphor for what 21st century energy means in contemporary art from Romania, in the visual arts from Romania. The third floor, with the Chronicles of Future Superheroes, offers a very interesting, very special exhibition, created with a group of young or middle-aged artists from several countries in Europe and Asia, an exhibition curated by the very talented Anca Mihuleţ, who lives in Seoul, and brings from there, from South Korea, a certain type of very particular aesthetic, very different from what we usually see in Romania, and which is also very popular with the young generations, this Korean Pop.

Maria Pop Timaru, is one of the exhibitors, and shared her experience in creating the exhibited objects:

The Chronicles of Future Superheroes is the name of the exhibition, curated by Anca Verona Mihuleţ. It is the second edition of the exhibition, the first was in Timisoara, at the Kunsthalle Bega, and my works from this exhibition are: The Mother Ship, which is a large-scale work, which I reconditioned through an older work, I recycled it, based on the concept of Lego, of traveling through game. The work can be broken down and recomposed in different ways, and I thought about the anticipation of the Journey and the Metal Construction that you can make with Lego, for example, where you are not afraid that you could make a mistake, and then you have a certain carefree attitude, related to childhood. I also have a series of ceramics, a bestiary, smaller works, some of which I made in collaboration with my children. It’s a game in which we exchange sheets of paper, someone draws the head, receives the sheet from the other, draws the body, and in this way some surprising characters emerge. I used this idea when I made the works.

Ruxandra Demetrescu, curator of the Victoria Zidaru exhibition, added:

You should see an installation that is called, from a technical perspective, textile-olfactory, because the artist works with a textile element, on home-woven cloth, often embroidered, which is presented in the form of reliefs and cords that are filled with aromatic herbs. Hence the olfactory dimension, which is very important for the artist. Victoria Zidaru is a sculptor by training, she was a student of Paul Vasilescu, a very important name in sculpture from the 60s onwards. In the artistic activity of Victoria Zidaru, a mutation occurred, 7 years ago, in which the three-dimensional object did not disappear, but the three-dimensional object is made of textile and vegetable material. This is what can be seen. It’s an impressive installation, which puts to work the space on the fourth floor, which has a spectacular skylight, very well placed, from a technical perspective, and from a conceptual perspective. The exhibition is called the First Day, so it’s an allusion to Creation, obviously, but seen in an originary meaning. Artistic creation, which is the princeps moment of inspiration. And what I hope the visitors will experience in this exhibition is a kind of assault of the senses: it is the visual dimension, the tactile dimension, the olfactory dimension, and, last but not least, the sound dimension. Victoria Zidaru practices collaborations, so that music is heard in the exhibition.

The auditorium hosts the exhibition of the artist Felix Aftene from Iasi, Dali’s Mustache and Other Colors, a multidisciplinary collaboration.

NMCA remains more than a museum, it is a life experience in itself!