Mihai Vrabies

ELEMENTS BORN FROM THE INTENSE

R THE TRAIL LEFT BEHIND BY THE EXHAUSTION SPIRIT A PERCEPTION THAT WILL TRACE

THE VOID EFFECT Mihai Vrăbieş

CONTEMPORARY ART

Mihai Vrăbieş

October 29 – November 10, 2015 IAGA-Contemporary Art

under the patronage of

lements born from the xhaustion, or the sicken or articulation, one that c reates new lements that are define astonishing nd pathetic , childish a olent and ultimately rickster-like energy t orth towards nothing particular, as an escape from th y of the initial series of stum es. these texts re not meant to convey re o convey exhaustion and seducti THE VOID EFFECT

Curated by Walter Bonomi

ELEMENTS BORN FROM THE INTENSE EXHAUSTION

A PERCEPTION THAT WILL TRACE THE MARK OR THE TRAIL LEFT BEHIND BY THE SPIRIT

Regaining your spirit ,thru the act of unlearning , means to run towards it, exhausting yourself ,and in the process every action that follows is intensified by a rejuvenating pathetic desperation. Thru this the true face of the spirit is showed it becomes undeniable , it’s body lives once more, free of baggage. Thru the practice of art, i want my spirit to appear, to show that it is a body not just a metaphor, one that is alive, one that acts like flesh on the bone, an energy that creates a condition that i cannot escape. A condition is a narrative that stretches thru time, it is performative in nature, a theater in full display.

This theater is one of pure exhaustion, and the many moments, elements, actions, interactions that are created by this pure exhaustion, all melt together into a multitude of faces, the faces of my spirit, for these faces are the true body of the spirit, one that is is alive and not dead.

And for this to be represented in our immediate reality a language must be created, an aesthetic of the visual as well as the written word, one that would be powerful enough to puncture the surface and let the spirit reconnect whit it, invade it. Intricate and pathetic faces of my spirit. This aesthetic can be describes as forms caught in the process of a rapid and feverish articulation from a ‘stumbled’ state, one that is as urgent and determined as it is fragile and wavering ,such as a man rising up from falling to the ground, dazed, whit out him expecting it to happen.

An articulation made out of moments that escape our pre-cise regulation and coordination, such as the facial ‘rictus’ that the process of relaxing from a punishing effort, where fragility and cruelty form a strange bond, pathetic as it is noble.

This is our hidden body.

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What is an artwork?

A continuous story, a narrative that exhausts the reader the more they continue, a trick if I may say so, a ‘trick’ with the purpose of reaching the calm after the storm, the serenity after the exhaustion.

How much of yourself goes inside an artwork?

I can clearly say that just like every artist that lives or has lived, I fail at putting myself inside an artwork completely, that’s why the storytelling and the reading never ends, but I can clearly say that I fail with a pure heart, and that is the best a person can achieve.

When is an artwork finished?

It’s an undeniable feeling, when one more action or movement will disrupt the delicate accumulation of tension within the piece. When this feeling comes, and I trust that it always comes within the process of creation, that’s when I stop.

When is your work of art taken out of the workshop and into a gallery?

When all of its parts are as clear and fresh as possible, 8

based on the individual character of the work, when the presence of the character is as ‘fleshed’ out as possible, once again it works on belief that this will happen if you continue with determination and perseverance.

Do you think that you, with your artworks, are a spiritual guide?

The spirit is a body in action, and it’s movements and it’s language are unfiltered, savage and raw, but very evocative, complex and pure. The spirit always has a pure heart, it is not human in nature, even though every person has one. It has nothing to do with what we can or cannot be in a society or culture, what is right or wrong. I hope I’ve made myself understood. So in this fashion I am more of a spirit that a social or cultural person, and maybe in some limited, unavoidable way, a guide, who knows. Either way, I’m not a preacher.

e e f e c u t f in c s t t

the important aspect from here onwards is the energetic articulation from a decisive and perpetual stumbled state, a state that implies the use of faults

elements born from the intense exhaustion, or the sickening need for articulation, one that c reates new elements that are defined by an astonishing and pathetic , childish and benevolent and ultimately trickster-like energy to surge forth towards nothing in particular, as an escape from the cruelty of the initial series of stumbled states. these texts are not meant to convey reason, but to convey exhaustion and seduction

the important aspect from here onwards is the energetic articulation from a decisive and perpetual stumbled state, a state that implies the use of faults

elements born from the intense exhaustion, or the sickening need for articulation, one that c reates new elements that are defined by an astonishing and pathetic , childish and benevolent and ultimately trickster-like energy to surge forth towards nothing in particular, as an escape from the cruelty of the initial series of stumbled states. these texts are not meant to convey reason, but to convey

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Do you think that you, with your artworks, are a conceptual artist?

Do you lose something of you when you work as artist?

I believe in aesthetics, and yes, I am a conceptual artist to some degree, but mostly I believe in the visual image, the ‘niche’ and tangled qualities that it possesses.

There is a powerful feeling, that becomes quickly a Truth, which is that their will always will be a gap between your spirit and the images that compile it’s body, and the material world of representations thru different mediums.

However the feeling of realization, that this gap can never be closed completely is one that only tests your loyalty to your spirit and it’s influence, it only makes you stronger in the end and thru your journey you focus on he end result more and more as you go along, while never reaching the end.

Do you think that you can understand the desires and the fears of the public in front of your artworks?

Fears? Maybe a lack of understanding what the works represent, or a lack of trust in a person they don’t know that well and can’t understand. In the potential light of this, I can only stay strong and persevere, all shall be revealed only in time, through a process of exhausting focus, with a pure heart as an engine.

Do you think that you, with your artworks, are an object of desire?

Do you think that the public can undestand your desire and secrets in front of him?

Sure, if they listen closely, they might hear my heartbeats.

People are attracted to profundity and purity of heart, of people that live in the comfort of their own idea, of their own story, that makes up the spirit. This, in my opinion, is the most disturbing and the most attracting aspect of life that people are naturally inclined to desire.

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Years go by, I still want what i can’t have More years go by, I still want what i can’t have After all these years have gone by,

I still want what i can’t have.

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I want my human body to break away

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Into one thousand pieces,

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And after this moment, my spirit will be reveled, And no one would be able to forget me ever again

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Our destiny is not to live in the comfort of our fabricated human condition, but to understand that we have been born with a dark side, one that formed out of unchallengeable and powerful abstract qualities that form a body, which in return is our spirit, who we are. And so from that point on, our entire life, from our birth until our inevitable death, we are completely controlled by how we choose to deal with this abstract spirit, the moments when we accept it or the moment s when we fight it, when we feel that we have a pure heart because of this effortless realization, or the moments when we fall within the shallow comforts of our human condition, and apathy ensures from then on to control us, to guide us away from our confrontational and dangerous spirit. But more important it is when we feel that we gain a kind of fighting but childish and pure nobility born from our complete acceptance of our spirit, that somehow every moment and every action, now matter how distant and out of context, is some how dominated from the hadows by the aesthetic of this spirit that one posses, like a permanent shadow following you around, forcing you to acknowledge it, and in the display of a strange smile on your face, hushed and rather demonic in nature, as the final stylistic and somewhat ironic seal or covenant. From now one regaining one’s language is an exhausting and never completed tribulation into becoming complete once more.Regaining your spirit, through the act of unlearning, means running 22

towards it, exhausting yourself in the process, and after this, what follows is intensified by a rejuvenation, a new beggining . Through this, the true face of the spirit is shown, free of baggage. Through the practice of art, I want my spirit to be revealed, to show that it is a body, not just a metaphor. One that is alive, one that acts like flesh on bone, an energy that creates an unescapable condition. A condition is a narrative that stretches through time, it is performative in nature, a theater in full display.

This theater is one of pure exhaustion, and the many moments, elements, actions, interactions that are created by this pure exhaustion, all melt together into a multitude of faces, which are in reality the faces of my spirit, for these faces are the true body of the spirit, one that is alive and not dead. When it comes to the posibility and the need for this face to be represented on the surface, the immediate reality, a language must be created, a language that would evolve into an aesthetic of the visual as well as the written word, one that would be powerful enough to puncture the surface and let the spirit reconnect , interact and profundly affect it. This aesthetic can be further described as forms caught in the process of a rapid and volatile articulation from a ‘stumbled’ state, one that is as urgent and determined as it is fragile and wavering, such as a man rising up after having fallen to the ground, dazed, without him expecting this to happen, getting caught up in the process of getting up to an upright position, and in his

effort that is completely dominated by a cruel but childish vulnerability, all of the different qualities of the body are in a state of communion whit each other , unfiltered and uncompromised. This aesthetic is needed to uncover the lost spirit of the body and its essence, the trespassing of a person’s intimacy and the undressing of his achieved and fabricated condition, an aesthetic that would drag one’s perception closer to the certainty of his body formed out of sub-conscious impulses as well as mental projections, that i call ‘life in action’, for they are pre-articulated, unregulated actions that are a hidden, repressed language and thus speak a taboo story. An aesthetic that will use the visual image, the word, the mental focus, that would ‘catalogue’ and give these elements a program, a project, a direction and a strategy in order to constantly create a story, a narrative, a genesis, and with these, a new character, one lifted at the status of hero, one that can be born out of this research. Research, for my purposes, describes an intense focus, one that never reaches an objective, pragmatic or predictable finality, but one that always amplifies the research through the constant story-telling and ‘mapping’ of its objective, and that is to make the invisible more visible, to shed light on the spirit and its condition rather than on the material, human conditon.

The propagation of a small, unconscious action, perpetrated by a material body with its own form in action (alive) 23

is an impulse. The marching of more impulses constitute a project that is always a struggle of some kind that inevitably and somewhat dramatically transcends into a story, a destiny. Through this a character is born, abstract, with qualities that represent the real stage of meaning and purpose. The impulse and its language (language that can be displayed through many mediums and in fact it’s very useful to be displayed in as many ways as possible) is not so much the precision of its general and detailed structure, its major lines of action (beginning, climax, end), nor is it in its precision of fixed details (changes of direction, diverse qualities ‘forced’ to be in a relationship of some kind etc.), but more of how the language of impulses, that form a ‘living’ body, manage to trick or cheat its own structures, while at the same time not succeeding in completely thwarting their clarity and influence, as to preserve some of its presence, just enough to present a dramatic and tense situation, that could be the carrier of meaning of both struggle and calm complacency, as the ‘living’ body and its form comes to term with its twisted and evocative life. The spirit is a form in movement, one that is in a perpetual articulation from a stumbled state, a state created after the form suffers a completely unexpected influence by a force of cruelty and instability. From this point on, the form’s life is one of overcoming resistance, and the infinite ways that it can do this, ways that solidify into stories of a dramatic na24

ture, of struggles, where fragility becomes a strength, and the nature of the trick, the fault becomes an agent of creation and not of destruction. From this point on, the truth of the spirit, of its body, its form is in the exhausting act of reading the stories of drama created by this feverish re-articulation, of this battle with resistance. To emphasize this description, imagine the trail of impulses governing the form of a person who is tryng to touch his elbow with his chin, imagine and focus on the ‘spirit’ of the body in motion, as a subtle but tense and somewhat ‘volatile’ balance between unnanatural awkwardness of the body in motion, and of the natural tendencies that the body possesses. In this example, the arm that is opposite the sholder that the person wants to touch is in a natural inclination of compensation, of rising up slightly in order to facilitate the action in process. Now one can imagine if this was suppressed ligtly, but still with a clarity of its own.

This would provide an even more awkward tension to the ‘spirit’ of the observed syrgle per say, and the sight would be enriched further by a resistance, by a point of ‘drama’ or dramatic intent. We can see that as the initial situation is enriched, this play of resistances and the subtle but daunting tension and dramatic points that they add, communicate between each other just as much as they are in a state of opposition, thus offering one’s observing eye and mind no point of rest...

for articulation, one that

reates new elements that are defined by an astonishing and pathetic , childish and benevolent and ultimately trickster-

c

need

elements born from the intense exhaustion, or the sickening

Mihai VrăbieĹ&#x;

ARTWORKS

as an escape from the cruelty of the initial series of stumbled states. these texts are not

like energy to surge forth towards nothing in particular,

THE VOID EFFECT

The Void Effect #1 2015, empty frame, 30x40 cm 29

The Void Effect #2 2015, empty frame , 83x83 cm 30

The Void Effect #3 2015, empty frame , 30x40 cm 31

The Void Effect #4 2015, empty frame , 41x43 cm 32

The Void Effect #5 2015, ink on paper , 30x40 cm 33

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The Void Effect #6 2015, ink on paper, 44x58 cm 35

The Void Effect #7 2015, ink on paper , 30x40 cm 36

The Void Effect #8 2015, empty frame, 44x58 cm 37

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Mihai Vrabies Born in 1977 in Cluj-Napoca (Romania), he studied sculpture at the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca. He Lives and works in Cluj-Napoca (Romania)

Selected exhibitions

2015 The Others, Tourin (Italy), participant and courtesy of IAGA International Art Gallery Angels, Cluj-Napoca The Void effect , Cluj-Napoca (Romania), curated by Walter Bonomi, IAGA International Art Gallery Angels; Art market Budapest, Budapest (Hungary) participant and courtesy of IAGA International Art Gallery Angels, Cluj-Napoca; Fragment B side project, Cluj-Napoca (Romania), curated by Walter Bonomi, IAGA International Art Gallery Angels, ClujNapoca; Si Sale - Festival Resiliente del Piemonte Sud (Italy) curated by Ilaria Bignotti and Walter Bonomi, IAGA International Art Gallery Angels, Cluj-Napoca; Vilnius Art Fair, Vilnius (Lituania), participant and courtesy of IAGA International Art Gallery Angels, Cluj-Napoca; Art Athina, Athena (Greece), participant and courtesy of IAGA International Art Gallery Angels, Cluj-Napoca;

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For the first edition of this book 50 copies have been printed.

Each copy is signed by the artist.

The IAGA Gallery thanks Elvira Bozga and Sabina Elena Dragomir for their precious collaboration with the Gallery Photos have been taken by: Catalin Hladi

Š IAGA International Art Gallery Angels

From an idea by Alberto Perobelli

Critical texts Walter Bonomi Graphic design Sabina Elena Dragomir Andreea Balcan Printed by A&M Graphis Editura SRL

IAGA - Contemporary Art Str. Closca, Nr. 9/11 Cluj-Napoca [Romania] tel: +40-364735428 www.iaga.eu info@iaga.eu

member of:

CONTEMPORARY ART

Those are my words that you will never see Walter Bonomi