The Luckman Gallery at Cal State University Los Angeles is holding an exhibition of artwork by Romanian artists that deals with the state of the isolated citizen in a post-communist bloc country. However, much of the work references struggles with personal identity within the institution of society and lends itself to interpretations not exclusive to the Romanian experience, but instead raises issues relevant to a broader contemporary audience.
This opening piece by Lia Perjovschi confronts the viewer the moment one walks into the space. An ink on vinyl wall installation, her piece employs a textual diagram exploring the connections between language, politics, and the ways in which identity is constructed. The term "subject" is at the center of the piece, and in a rather fascinating strategy of disseminating information, Perjovschi scrawls the issues relating to each peripheral buzz word (environment, democracy, free will, etc.) to construct a literal and semantic map of the ways in which one can define an identity.
Dan Perjovschi, who is best known for his performances in which he allows museum-goers to watch him draw directly on the walls of an exhibition space, in this show is exhibiting 30 panels of more subtle, framed drawings that seem to investigate the aloneness and alienation of the contemporary citizen. These small cartoonish drawings of faces within a grid, some squares left conspicuously empty, are evocative of feelings of isolation within a crowd. Though
surrounded by other faces, and panels of faces, the people in his small drawings are drawn with a sense of anguish and angst, as conveyed by the jerky scribbled lines. Perjovschi's installation very successfully visually represents the state of Romanian society, wherein the residual effects of surveillance and military occupation of the repressive Communist era have created a fragmented and distrusting society.The show featured several photographs and video installations, some more engaging and relevant to the central theme of the exhibition than others. A photograph by Ciprian Muresan titled "Leap Into the Void, After Three Seconds" is one of these pieces, and was even chosen as the publicity image for the exhibition, shown on the brochure and website. A reference to the iconic picture by Yves Klein that shows a man flinging himself off of a building, Muresan's photograph is a rather clever commentary on post-modern art, as well as the futility of some aspects of modern life. By showing the end result of Klein's neo-Dada ambition as a man fallen face-first into pavement,
Muresan is able to express the disappointment of the post-modern times that art, as well as civilization, has not advanced very far. The presence of another figure turning his back on the fallen man also speaks to the "invisible body' theme of the exhibition and apathy of contemporary society. This multi-faceted image is an excellent example of the capabilities of appropriation in the medium of digital photography to create a critically engaged post-modernist work of art.Another shining example of photography in this show was Alexandra Croitoru's two pictures shown side by side and titled "ROM_". The photographer is the subject, and she shows herself in a bikini, imitating a vacation photo by posing in front of an idyllic blue boy of water. At odds with this faux-tourist image is the ski mask she wears in Romanian colors in both photos. By utilizing visual conventions familiar to the viewer, Croitoru brings all the association one has with a vacation photo, or an almost nude woman, or the criminality of the ski mask, and brings them together in terms of a Romanian nationalist identity. Her staged photographs challenge preconceived notions of imagery and identity in a successful use of post-modern theory concerning appropriation of techniques of image-making, and are refreshingly shocking in their jarring representation of the human figure.
Though pleasing to look at and helpful in shaping a broader understanding of the Romanian
experience, I did not find most of the paintings in this exhibition as engaging as the photography discussed above. However, the installation of 11 small paintings by Serban Savu had the opposite effect. While I was not particularly inspired by the technique used in the figurative oil paintings, the pieces did provide a commentary on the isolation of the ordinary working civilian in post-modern society. Various subjects are shown: a man sitting alone at his desk in a flourescent office, a barber cutting his client's hair while neither acknowledges the other, a group of window washers working together but not interacting. Savu's message of alienation and indifference to others in the contemporary era is conveyed clearly.
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