LERA KELEMEN Selected Works 2019 - 2021

ARTIST STATEMENT

Lera Kelemen (b. 1994) is an artist from Timișoara (RO) currently living and working in London (UK), where she graduated from the Royal College of Art with a Master’s Degree in Information Experience Design.

With a cross-disciplinary approach, her body of work consists of installations and spatial environments that investigate the intimate narratives occurring in the liminal space between private and public. Surfaces and textures become platforms for the manifestation of identity, while stories of habitation are embedded in the material itself. In Kelemen’s installations, these ideas are rendered through large-scale structures, audio-visual compositions, prints and casts, vehicles through which the artist articulates her critical thinking.

She obtained a Fine Arts degree in 2018 from the University of Art and Design in Timișoara, and was the recipient of the Art Encounters Award for her graduation project. She has since participated in several national and international residencies and co productions. In 2020, she was selected as artist in residence at Niki Artist-Run (Hanover) and was commissioned by TM2023 to work on a large-scale public space installation (Timișoara). Her most recent exhibitions include GREEN SKIN / CREVICE solo show at Borderline Art Space (Iași), I FEEL SOMETHING, DON’T KNOW WHAT group show at Zacheta Gallery (Warsaw), STAYCATION group show at Catinca Tăbăcaru Gallery (Bucharest), IF ANYTHING ELSE SURVIVES at Potential Project (Athens) and the 2022 Graduation Show at the Royal College of Art (London).

GREEN SKIN / AFFECTIVE INTERSTICE

GREEN SKIN / AFFECTIVE INTERSTICE was developed in the framework of I FEEL SOMETHING, DON’T KNOW WHAT, a curatorial coproduction between Diana Marincu (Art Encounters, Timișoara) and Magda Kardsz (Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw).

‘The starting point of Lera Kelemen’s new project for this exhibition, was an attempt to describe the sense of loneliness brought on by the pandemic isolation. The artist created a multimedia installation an interface of her individual experience, a specially constructed artificial space which compensates for the lack of freedom of movement and access to wild nature, as the boundaries of home/ city became difficult to cross over the past year. The artificiality of this mediated contact may be suggested by the artist’s use of the two types of greenery: natural and the green screen, the most artificial of all the available technological backgrounds.’ Magda Kardasz, curatorial statement.

GREEN SKIN / AFFECTIVE INTERSTICE started as a personal exercise in observing the solid surfaces of the built environment from a vulnerable and feminine point of view. Textures are analysed as areas of mediation of human interaction with built and natural environments on a microscopic level. The video work TEXTURE IS IDENTITY was screened at Art Encounters Foundation, Zacheta Project Room, Borderline Art Space and Media Art Festival Arad.

MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION

Single channel video, stereo sound, 3’03’’ / Metal structure / Engraved plaster slabs / Ultra giclée print on Hahnemühle paper / Green luminescent tubes

CREDITS

Metal work: Apor Nimbert Ambrus

Voiceover: Susan Atwill Photos: Andei Infinit (infi.ro)

MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION

Single channel video, stereo sound, 3’03’’ / Metal structure / Engraved plaster slab / Digital print on fabric / Ultra giclée print on Hahnemühle paper / Green luminescent tube

CREDITS

Metal work: Apor Nimbert Ambrus

Voiceover: Susan Atwill

Photos: Anna Zagrodzka

GREEN SKIN / CREVICE opened in September 2021 as a solo show at Borderline Art Space curated by Cristina Moraru and including the video work TEXTURE IS IDENTITY developed for the preced ing installation, GREEN SKIN / AFFECTIVE INTERSTICE.

The installation brings together a compendium of surfaces and structural elements mapped onto the gallery floor to determine a network of pathways. A building can be divided into surface and plan. Le Corbusier claims that the surface is what envelopes the mass and that the task of the architect is to ‘vitalise the surfaces which clothe these masses.’ In other words the surface is the epidermal layer, the fabric that conveys the identity of a building, and at the same time the facet through which the living, moving world interacts with constructions.

Within the installation, the extractions of plant tissue and sediment, overlaid with concrete and marble, echo the textural diversity of outdoor spaces. The rectangular format of the textile pieces are like the boundaries of a room or a screen, areas which became spaces of entrapment for individuals during the lockdowns imposed over the past two years.

MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION

Single

CREDITS

Metal

43 POP-UP DEVICE FOR EXPERIMENTING MARGINS

POP-UP DEVICE FOR EXPERIMENTING MARGINS is a pub lic space installation commissioned by TM2023 and Moving Fireplaces in December 2020.

The installation reproduces the architectural style of a typical house from the rural area of Banat (RO), tracing its contour at a 1:1 scale. This abstraction of the shape highlights the house as an archaic document that is slowly disappearing against the backdrop of gentrification and urban development. Arguing that frontiers are abstract notions rather than physical boundaries, the structure creates the premise of a space where inside and outside become relative dimensions. This space invites the audience to reflect on the personal and collective processes that define the private and public spheres and on the way in which people relate to the space of ‘the other.’

The project takes into consideration the different studies carried out by researchers from the Moving Fireplaces project, which talk about migration, frontiers and socio-cultural behaviours determined by spatial structures, and aims to produce an experience in which the differences between public space and domestic space are not apparent, where the two realms can be experienced simultaneously.

OUTDOOR INSTALLATION

CREDITS

Metal

Diana Bilec

MEMONNADE is an installation that was developed during a six-week residency at the Niki Hannover Artist-Run residency programme in collaboration with Art Encounters Foundation, between August and September 2020.

The project analyses ancient signs and techniques of data encoding, comparing them to modern computing processes. The installation draws inspiration from Giulio Camillo’s Theatre of Memory, an illustration through which the philosopher attempts to visualise the materialisation of human memory via a physical space, and enlarges this structure at a 1:1 scale. This semi-circular structure has eight subdivisions corresponding to the different sections of the Memory Palace. On each segment there are two flags: the white flags comprise of illustrations of old ciphers and sign alphabets used in early telecommunications systems. A short poem about memory is engraved in the wood, which is later encoded in a matrix through one of the alphabets and decoded again as sound signals. Through this process, the installation attempts to show how messages can be encoded through various systems without changing their original meaning.

MULTIMEDIA

CREDITS

KINAESTHETIC CABIN is an installation developed for the inauguration of Kunsthalle Bega, Timișoara between November 2018 and April 2019.

The cabin is made of four detachable pieces which, when assembled, determine the shape of a rectangle. Four speakers are incorporated in the shapes transforming the cabin into a resonant cavity. The audience is invited to read the guide, place themselves in the cabin or move the pieces around, observing how the sonic image changes accordingly. Inside an enclosed shape, the body stumbles upon the limitations of the space, as well as of its own physicality. Movement is progressively inhibited as the space becomes populated with objects, either through their position, scale or materiality. These features turn into conventions that dictate, prevent or enable motion.

‘Kinaesthesia’ comes from Old Greek and means movement awareness, a process which increases the kinetic sensitivity of the body towards space. The cabin is designed to constrain and challenge the relationship between shape and mobility through the perspective of the user, who faces limitations and interruptions inflicted by built environments.

MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION

Quadraphonic

Spray

CREDITS

Construction technicians: Fundația Calina

Electronics technician: Radu Sârbulescu

Photos: Adrian Cîtu

75 THE SENSIBLE REALM OF INHABITATION

The installation THE SENSIBLE REALM OF INHABITATION was developed within MIDDLE GROUNDS AND DISSONANCES, a duo research residency curated by Aici Acolo collective in Cluj-Napoca, during summer 2021.

‘Lera Kelemen traces the boundaries between cur rent spaces of intimacy in their epidermic origin, as the feeling of being touched by. As surfaces require closeness and proximity, they also act as a permeable membrane, something of an osmotic exchange, instead of the dichotomy built vs natural. In spaces of in-between and abstract forms, through mashed-up references of built environment’s debris and natural elements, a private feeling can emerge, right there, in public, while resonating with others.’ Edith Lázár, curatorial argument.

During the residency, the artists made a field trip to the Gorge of Tureni, a narrow pathway between mountains near Cluj-Napoca (RO). When the mountains’ stone concretions fall off the steep edge, they stack up resembling piles of debris on construction sites. The installation uses imagery from this landscape to highlight how material travels from nature, to constructions, to spaces of intimacy.

MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION

CREDITS