The Thin Thread Line
curated by Alex Radur & Thomas Zitzwitz
with an exhibition design by Justin Baroncea & Maria Ghement & Alexandra Muller
Thursday, June 26th, starting 7PM, we are excited to invite you at /SAC Berthelot (str. Gen. H.M. Berthelot nr. 5, ring at 10) for the opening of the international group exhibition "The Thin Thread Line", curated by Alex Radu and Thomas Zitzwitz, with an exhibition/graphic design by Justin Baroncea, Maria Ghement and Alexandra Müller.
"The Thin Thread Line"
/SAC Berthelot
26.06 - 16.08.2025
artists: Justin Baroncea & Cristian Matei, Marie Bovo, Nicolae Comănescu, Iulian Cristea, Călin Dan, Suzana Dan, Elger Esser, Maria Ghement & Alexandra Müller, Dimitrie Luca Gora, Gregor Hildebrandt, Ana Ionescu, Alicja Kwade, Julian Lennon, Ana Ion Leonte, Dragoș Lumpan, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Ruxandra Nițescu, Marcel Odenbach, Marlon Red, Haleh Redjaian, Mircea Suciu, Virginia Toma, Dominika Trapp, Marco Verhoogt, Jorinde Voigt, Nives Widauer, Thomas Zitzwitz
curated by: Alex Radu & Thomas Zitzwitz
exhibition/graphic design by: Justin Baroncea, Maria Ghement, Alexandra Müller
The line of a common horizon.
"The Thin Thread Line" can be the firm, tried line that separates us, or the fragile line that unites us. The one delimiting themes or drawing intersections to be explored. The (frail) thread that sometimes keeps us alive, onto which we sometimes cling with hope. The line we keep following day after day with the desire/need for coherence, for personal integrity. It could be the thread that curates our differentiations, our individualization, or the vulnerable thread that (re)places(/aligns) us into a continuity, into compositions. The hypercomplex, visible and/or invisible cobwebs that interconnect us. The line of a common horizon. Or the line as a representation.
A line measuring the distances between art and propaganda.
"The Thin Thread Line" comments, in contrast, on the brutal red line of today's dictators who draw-invade (outside of their own borders) territories of influence. And how lists of enemies, of forbidden words/books and attitudes, of restricted rights are drawn up.
The title also hints at Terrence Malick's (Tarkovskian) film "The Thin Red Line" and at the labyrinth of human consciousness, made of thoughts and experiences amidst the maze of grass, blood, bullets, clouds, sweat and fear on the intense battlefield set on a tropical island – Guadalcanal, among the Solomon Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, which became a theater of operations between the North Americans and the Japanese during World War II.
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"The Thin Thread Line" is part of a series of interconnected exhibitions organized by /SAC in 2025, attempting to be a subjective and collective foray about our very reactions (including the entire range of emotions and thoughts, and their respective externalizations) and what we, as individuals, can do in-front-and-in-the-middle of this increasingly troubling period, when the way in which democracies and (common) values look like is being de/re-constructed/defined. What we, as actors on the artworlds' stages (artists, curators etc.), can do with our relative “power of changing the world through art”, without letting it become propaganda. But can art (and the exhibition) become an instrument for fighting against manipulation and populist propaganda? A vaccine? An antidote? For whom?
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"The Thin Thread Line" continues a curatorial endeavor that began with the exhibition "Individual All-Around" organized by /SAC in Timișoara – European Capital of Culture 2023.
The exhibition can be visited at /SAC Berthelot (str. Gen. H.M. Berthelot nr. 5, ring at 10) in the period 26.06 - 16.08.2025 from Thursday to Saturday, 4 PM to 8 PM. We would like to thank Goethe-Institut Bukarest for the support.
ABOUT THE WORKS AND ARTIST BIOS
JUSTIN BARONCEA & CRISTIAN MATEI
¯ Π ¯
HORIZON SWITCH
"site-specific" installation, 2025
These places of suffering functioned as true extermination centers for all those who opposed the communist regime or were considered potential threats. The harsh truth behind the communist regime is that, in order to ensure its survival, it resorted to drastic measures to suppress opposition, such as isolation, physical torture, starvation, and the denial of adequate medical care for prisoners, blatantly violating fundamental human rights.
JUSTIN BARONCEA
Since 2009, Justin Baroncea has been recycling disparate objects, bits of discarded technology, and electrical appliance parts and turning them into seemingly useful UFOs. In 2015, he published a book about rabbits and satellites hanging from the ceiling, and in 2021, a book about foam, wires, and cardboard speakers and squirrels playing the piano.
CRISTIAN MATEI
Interior designer (b. 1986) with a background in sociology, he approaches both interior and exterior spaces with concern for the social and ecological context and focuses on temporary urban interventions and art installations by reusing reclaimed resources and waste materials. The recovery and reintegration of elements resulting from various technological processes and disused structures gives him the opportunity to reinterpret and shape space so as to draw attention to social issues such as the lack of public space adapted to human needs and scale, or the waste of raw materials and the continuous production of waste.
MARIE BOVO
POINTE DES ENGRAVIERS, BANDOL, LUNE FROIDE CROISSANTE EN TAUREAU, NOVEMBRIE 2024
print on satin photo paper, 2024
Just before nightfall, in locations carefully chosen after having walked through them in the daytime, Marie Bovo installs her photographic chambers in the forest, at the place she feels the moonlight will shed its light. Between Nice and Marseille, on the shores of the Mediterranean, where light pollution will not negate the night, she lets images that potentially carry the dreams of the forests form slowly, very slowly, on the surface of the film plate. The photographer brings forward the figure of the artist as a faun: she doesn’t act as an external eye, but blends in with the forests, welcoming her.
MARIE BOVO
Marie Bovo (b. 1967) works with images, both video and photographic. Her photographs play with duality and antinomy. Deeply rooted, they sometimes raise geopolitical and social issues. Her work reveals a dual perspective on things, making a simple and unique situation express a universal dimension, where the past meets the present, where different cultures, especially those of the Mediterranean world connect to each other.
Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles; La Chambre, Strasbourg; Fondation Fernet-Branca, Saint-Louis; California Museum of Photography, Riverside; FRAC Paca and MAC Musée d’art contemporain, Marseille; Institut Français, Madrid; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris and Luís Serpa Projectos, Lisbon. The artist has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Maxxi, Rome; the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; the MAC Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille and the Busan Biennale, Korea. In 2016 Marie Bovo was nominated for the ICP Inifinity Awards in New York, for her exhibition “La danse de l’ours” at FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. In 2024 she received the Award of The Academy of Fine Arts of France. The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris devoted a solo exhibition to her in 2020 entitled “Nocturnes”, in 2023 she had a solo exhibition “L’Atelier volant” at the ART & ESSAI gallery in Rennes and in 2025 - “Les Forêts d’Hypnos” at Mennour gallery.
NICOLAE COMĂNESCU
THE GRAND GENERAL SCHEME OF ALL THINGS –SEQUEL
assemblage made from household furniture panels, textiles, acrylic, 2025
The work presented in the exhibition is part of the expansive and transformative concept The Grand General Scheme of All Things – sequel, which began with the 2020 exhibition at Invitro Gallery Cluj, curated by Dan Popescu.
The Grand Scheme encompasses, to date, a series of neo-expressionist drawings in acrylic and charcoal, based on abstract representations of protests and street clashes, as well as a collection of assemblages made from textile materials mounted on furniture structures.
The first series of assemblages premiered in 2023 at /SAC (Berthelot 5), curated by Alex Radu, in the exhibition entitled The Grand General Scheme of All Things. The Beginning. A recurring theme in Comănescu’s practice—recycling—has found a new mode of expression through the ingenious combination of furniture structures from the artist’s domestic/family inventory or that of close acquaintances, over which he mounts textile fragments and garments donated by friends.
“It is, as always, a layering of meanings, a hyperinflation of visual information through the folding and packaging of personal histories into what initially appears to be volumes of color,” artist Nicolae Comănescu (Comă) told Artevezi.
The clothes, removed from their original context, accumulate a metaphysical charge—an idea further developed into a large-scale performative installation, Looking at The Big Picture from The Inside (curated by Elena Est, 2023–ongoing), which highlights another central theme in Comănescu’s work: Escape.
The assemblage series later expanded into the exhibition A Foggy Morning Walk, which Comănescu organized at Studio 216 in Berlin, where he worked for several months during his residency at Bethanien.
NICOLAE COMĂNESCU
Born in 1968 in Pitești, Romania, Nicolae Comănescu graduated in 1998 from the Art Academy in Bucharest, the department of Painting. Together with Dumitru Gorzo, Alina Pențac, Angela Bontaş, Alina Buga, Florin Tudor, and Mona Vătămanu founded the avant-garde group Rostopasca (1997-2002). He currently lives and works in Bucharest. Nicolae Comănescu creates in series, among which the important are: Briemerg’s Algorithm (2000), Wrong Paintings (2004-2007), Paintings with dust (2007-2011), SAMBAdy must dye in this CITY (2014), I can see no revolution (2014), Ordeful, mezanplasul și harneala (2015), SCRAP METAL KABOOM ORCHESTRA (2022), and The Grand General Scheme of All Things (2020- ongoing).
IULIAN CRISTEA
NAVIGATING INWARD
resin, fiberglass, gelcoat, auto body filler, pigment., 2025
The work speaks of the transformation taking place when we let ourselves be carried away by the unseen forces of destiny, about the thin line between what we are and what be become upon choosing to dive into the unknown. Getting ahead is not just a physical journey, but an inner metamorphosis – and, sometimes, that thread of wind in our sails is all we have left between loss and rediscovery.
Within the context of “The Thin Thread Line” exhibition, sculpture becomes a living metaphor for that fine line between safety and risk, between stability and the courage of letting ourselves be changed by the road.
IULIAN CRISTEA
Iulian Cristea (b. 1991, Republic of Moldova) studied sculpture at the Academy of Music, Theatre, and Fine Arts in Chișinău, the National University of Arts in Bucharest, and the University of the Arts in Saarbrücken, Germany. He has been awarded in numerous national and international competitions, and his works have been exhibited in Bucharest, Luxembourg, Chișinău, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Craiova, and Bistrița.
CĂLIN DAN
TRIP
inkjet print, 2005
An episode in the “Emotional Architecture” series, Trip introduces Linnahall – the most famous building of modern Estonian architecture – as an archaeological accident, as a stranded space ship, and as a shrine for Soviet Union nostalgia. The voice of the architect, breaking facts about his ambiguous profession, the hallucinogenic wandering around the construction, the nightmarish exploration of its guts – all are pleading for architecture to be one of the drugs of this time, when drugs are part of lifestyle.
The photograph is part of a series realized during a one-night session spent by the author in the belly of the building.
CĂLIN DAN
Călin Dan (b. 1955) is a visual artist with a foundation in art history and theory, who rose to international prominence as part of the subREAL group and through his long-running projects, including Emotional Architecture (2002–present), Entourage and Other Events (2006–2010), and The Collective Author (2012–present).
In the wake of Romania’s political transformation after 1989, Dan took on key roles in the cultural sector, serving as a consultant for the Mondriaan and Pro Helvetia foundations. He also led Arta magazine and directed the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Bucharest. Currently, he is the director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest, where his efforts are focused on redefining the role of visual arts in the 21st century. Dan has crafted strategies to recover, contextualize, and promote the work of Romanian artists active in the 1970s and 1980s, with the broader goal of establishing MNAC as a cultural nexus for contemporary art from former communist countries.
His artistic practice has been featured in major international events such as the Venice, Istanbul, São Paulo, and Sydney Biennales, as well as multimedia and experimental festivals including Ars Electronica (Linz), the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival (Rotterdam), Media, Film, and Video Osnabrück, Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, OSTranenie, and ZKM Karlsruhe. His innovative contributions to experimental video earned him awards at the Split Film Festival (2000) and Videonale Bonn (2001).
Recent curatorial and research initiatives have resulted in exhibitions and publications dedicated to prominent artists such as Horia Bernea, Ion Bitzan, Alexandru Chira, Ion Grigorescu, Jiří Kovanda, Iulian Mereuță, Ciprian Mureșan, Deimantas Narkevičius, Mihai Olos, Șerban Savu, and Liviu Stoicoviciu.
SUZANA DAN
THIS IS THE END I
acrylic on canvas, 2019
This artwork depicts a landscape reduced to its visual essence — almost flattened shapes, without depth, similar to the traces left by memory on a forgotten surface. The image is not about the landscape itself, but about the precise moment when the landscape can become an image. Light — the only element that reveals time — gives meaning and value to a scene that, without it, would remain a mute, unfinished expanse. The piece speaks of the fragility of beauty — of the way in which, sometimes, for only a few minutes, a form becomes expressive, a contour comes to life, a space gains significance. This beauty is not guaranteed, not constant — it is fleeting, dependent on the angle of light, the exact hour, the eye that captures it. It is a light that does not describe, but evokes. It does not illuminate everything, but only a second of the day, a single moment in which beauty, almost imperceptible, claims its right to exist. It is the image of a chance encounter between matter and light — a brief pact between absence and appearance. And in that pact, the landscape receives a moment of grace. Then disappears.
THIS IS THE END II
acrylic on canvas, 2019
From within a dense, silent forest, two eyes emerge — directly overlaid onto the image, without source, without orbit, without a face. They are there, like a mistake or a revelation. They do not look at anything in particular; they are not searching, yet their presence changes everything. The forest is no longer just a forest — it becomes a conscious space, an organism that sees. This brutal — and at the same time poetic — superimposition of an anatomical element onto landscape is not a reference to surrealism, though the associations may be inevitable. There is no intent to echo past art movements, but rather to explore a new aesthetic territory born with digital perception and AI-generated imagery. The unseeing eyes are not a metaphor, but a visual "glitch" — an apparition born from a logic alien to human vision, where biological coherence has been abandoned. In this new order, eyes don’t need a head, or a purpose. They are there simply because they can be. The sense of unease stems precisely from this rupture between the familiar and the impossible. The forest — an eternal symbol of mystery and the subconscious — now becomes a battleground between human perception, which seeks meaning, function, narrative, and artificial perception, which embraces breaks, absences, and absurdities as natural parts of a different kind of visual truth. In this context, the artwork may also be read as a poetic form of apocalypse. Not a violent one, but a quiet, subtle end — a collapse of the traditional understanding of the image, a disintegration of the visual-affective order humans take for granted. It is a landscape that sees, but does not feel. An image that lives without a body. An ending that doesn’t explode, but quietly reconfigures, with its eyes wide open.
THIS IS THE END III
acrylic on canvas, 2019
In this piece, a female figure — vaguely outlined, her arms distorted by an almost violent stylization — appears to embrace a black dog. The gesture, naturally one of tenderness, is undermined by the unnaturalness of the form: the arms are elongated, and the body seems like more of a collection of failed visual intentions than a living shape. The dog, with its black fur like an ink stain, remains still, almost absent. Its gaze, drifting somewhere beyond the frame, deepens the unease of the scene. There is no real contact, only an attempt at touch, nullified by the brutal geometry of the arms. This work becomes a metaphor for the impossibility of affection in a world where representation itself has become alienated from meaning. It is a portrait of a gesture that can no longer be recognized, only felt — and that feeling is discomfort.
SUZANA DAN
Suzana Dan lives and works in Bucharest, a city that, as one artist aptly described in the 2000s, we all love and hate at the same time. Her creative activity spans multiple professional levels, from that of an artist to that of a cultural manager. Interested in collaborative processes and communities from various fields— some more, some less known to the general public—she works alongside artists active in different cultural areas. Passionate about the creative community and beyond, she explores and collaborates with various spaces, from artist-run initiatives to major museum institutions. This path led her, in 2007, to initiate NAG – The White Night of the Galleries, which is currently the longest-running event in Romania dedicated to contemporary culture. Since 2016, she has been directly involved in the development of Rezidența9, a center for contemporary culture, becoming its manager in 2018. Currently, she coordinates Rezidența9, curates exhibitions, imagines projects with and about people, cooks for friends, rarely paints, and carefully curates her social media accounts.
ELGER ESSER
MONT SAINT MICHEL BAIE ETOILÉE
c-print, 2023
MASCARET III
direktprint, 2022
Time seen through images is time lost from view. Elger Esser’s images lead us there and reveal it to us as the illusion that it is. Let us hypothesise that the happiness engendered by this revelation, which surprises us in Proust, is precisely that which we experience when faced with a representation – the theatre of lost time, in the space of a frame as strict as a stage, and without the distance created by a glass screen.
But we move closer and discover something else: superimposed on and contrasting with these hazy moments, the glint of copper beneath the images creates a pure present, carried by natural light whose variations produce an infinite succession of snapshots on the stage. As if they were replaying their birth at every moment. As if we were allowed to witness it. As if, from witnesses, we became actors.
ELGER ESSER
Elger Esser (b. 1967, Stuttgart, Germany) was raised in Rome and in 1986 moved to Düsseldorf. He then attended the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie, studying with Bernd and Hilla Becher. In 1996, a trip to Lyon yielded a turning point in Esser's aesthetic and practice. Working from a childhood fascination with cartes de visites, or postcards, he created the experience of travelling to "archaic locales in the middle of nowhere" both familiar and foreign. Esser's photographs present the unmanipulated, timeless, romantic landscapes of rural Europe. He photographs beaches, wetlands, riverbeds, and valleys. His views are comprised largely of air and water, light and reflection. The stillness of the landscapes and their muted dreamlike palette evokes the sublime, recalling works of landscape painters Caspar David Friedrich and William Turner. The large scale of Esser's prints coupled with the expansive distances and a muted palette create tension between the landscape seen and the landscape rendered by the artist.
DIMITRIE LUCA GORA
OFFLINE IN THE EAST
vinyl sticker on Venetian mirror, 2025
A pixelated dinosaur trapped inside an offline game keeps running through suspended space, lacking a landscape or an end. Instead of the observer’s reflection, the venetian mirror represents a reality reduced to black and white, repetitive obstacles and automated movement.
The work proposes a reflection on survival in the absence of connection, on the day-to-day loop of life and on the fragile „thread” still carrying on our continuity.
The mirror no longer depicts the image of the self, but that of a routine devoid of purpose – a road without destination.
DIMITRIE LUCA GORA
An artist born and raised in Bucharest, Dimitrie is a student and social activist who graduated in 2023 from the Photo-Video department with his bachelor's thesis, “Camera de Logopedie” (“The logopedics room”). He practices various art forms, including photography, video, installation, painting and sculpture, using creativity to support social and artistic causes. His installations are designed by combining everyday objects from his childhood with nostalgic and ironic elements.
MARIA GHEMENT & ALEXANDRA MULLER
Our installation aims to put Bucharest’s own identity under the lens of the exhibition theme – The Thin Thread Line – by presenting the city’s contradictions as opportunities for dialogue and creation. Visitors are invited to explore our proposal for how the specificities of the urban fabric can be turned into construction material for an exhibition space or theme.
The point where the red thread of the exhibition intersects with that of Bucharest is a radiography of the consequences of building without regard for the particularities of the urban fabric around Calea Victoriei:
"Cathedral Plaza" is a 19-story (75 m) building, illegally constructed in 2006 just a few meters from the Roman Catholic St. Joseph Cathedral on Berthelot Street. Its position and height dominate the entire square, including the cathedral, a listed heritage building.
The church contested the building permit in court, and in 2013, a court ruling ordered the City Hall to demolish the building. The enforcement of this decision has been postponed for nearly 10 years.
MARIA GHEMENT
Architect. Working at different scales intersecting art, architecture, and design, with a focus on collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches spanning different subjects and programs such as jewelry design (self-initiated), art exhibition design (RAD Sculpture Park, ’25, Notes From Underground, ’25, Touch Nature, ’24, Bucharest, Romania, ’24, /SAC Gallery, Individual all-around, ‘23, Timișoara, Romania /SAC Gallery; L’Année dernière à Malmaison, Bucharest, Romania, ’22, /SAC Gallery), collaborative & performative installations (Isolation in a series of liminal states, Bucharest, ’21, /SAC Gallery, Volume of a sleep, Bucharest, Romania, ’23, /SAC Gallery), interior design (various).
First year PHD student at „Ion Mincu” University of Architecture, Bucharest studying Systems of translating the curatorial discourse into spatial discourse (focusing on the last 30 years in the field of contemporary art).
Thesis topics: language, logic, and the perception of architectural space; spatial expression in contemporary art exhibitions.
ALEXANDRA MULLER
Alexandra Müller (b. 1999) is a Bucharest-based architect and researcher working at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, art, and design. Her practice explores public space as a laboratory, interweaving green infrastructure, the reuse of residual spaces, and temporary interventions. Engaging with the relationships between technology, environment, and both human and non-human communities, she combines participatory methods with digital tools and visual media to shape speculative urban futures. Her work has been presented in exhibitions and festivals, including BETA, Archy Fest, Diploma Show, the OAR Architecture Annual, and the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2024, her diploma project received wide recognition and was nominated for various awards, including the RIBA Dissertation Medal. She frequently takes part in collaborative projects across architecture, design, and cultural programming, contributing to both independent and institutional initiatives. [Recent projects include RAD Sculpture Park (’25), From Craft to Music at RDW (’25), Notes from Underground (2025), Timbru de Smalț (’25), and Monumente cu Coada (’24).] Since 2024, she has been pursuing a PhD at UAUIM, researching urban resilience through the activation of deconstructed and latent urban spaces.
GREGOR HILDEBRANDT
AU-DESSUS DES BLÉS S.E.
magnetic audiotape coating, adhesive tape, acrylic on canvas, 2025
JE CHERCHE L’HORIZON
audio cassette tape, acrylic on canvas, 2025
Created specifically for the exhibition The Thin Thread Line, the works Au-dessus des blés S.E. and Je cherche l’horizon exemplify a personal technique developed by Gregor Hildebrandt—one that engages both material experimentation and visual duality.
Similar to monotype printing, the process begins by covering a canvas with white primer, followed by a layer of adhesive tape or glue. The artist then paints the sticky surface with a liquid fixative before applying the audio cassette tape, which he has previously recorded with music, texts, or poems of his choice which is embedded with personal and cultural memory. When these strips of tape are pulled away, the magnetic coating adheres selectively to the adhesive areas untouched by the fixative, revealing unexpected forms. Each strip of tape is then carefully re-applied to a secondary canvas, creating an inverted, sometimes additionally mirrored counterpart that contains the ‘positive’ of the original image. The entire creative process becomes a choreography of gesture, where movement and intention precede visibility. The final result reveals two sister, interconnected works, born from the same action, yet visually and materially divergent.
For this series, the tape used is overdubbed with Stephan Eicher’s song, Au-dessus des blés, which holds personal significance for the artist, inspiring the title of the artworks and infusing them with an “invisible” emotional dimension.
GREGOR HILDEBRANDT
Gregor Hildebrandt (b. 1974, Bad Homburg, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. His practice involves the use of audio recording media, such as magnetic tapes and vinyl records, which he records or processes, before incorporating them into canvases, photographic prints, or large-scale installations. For Hildebrandt, sound acts as an artistic medium, with its function as a storage space being essential: it enables him to add an “invisible” dimension to his images. The interplay with perception is a key aspect of his work, as the image unfolds and takes shape within the viewer’s mind, ultimately revealing itself.
His works are included in prominent public collections worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Berlinische Galerie in Berlin, Saarland Museum in Saarbrücken, Sammlung zeitgenössische Kunst des Bundes in Bonn, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Rubell Family Collection in Miami, Vanhaerents Art and Burger Collection in Zurich, CH/Hong Kong, HK, as well as the Budi Tek/Yuz Collection in Shanghai, China, along with numerous prestigious private collections.
ANA IONESCU
SOMETIMES, I AM TEMPTED I
SOMETIMES, I AM TEMPTED II
steel, stainless steel, 2025
The work is part of the same series as ‘‘For you I would’’, displayed in the RAD Sculpture Park. It explores how we navigate the material world, especially the man-made world. Interested in objects that find themselves in a transitory state between reality and a different out-worldly space, the artist aims to find beauty in chaos through rhythm and symmetry. The sculpture engages with the body and the senses, guided by the contrast between the roughness of the metal and the permeability of the skin- it is static, yet performative; harmless on its own, yet dangerous when interacted with.
ANA IONESCU
Ana Ionescu (b.1999, Bucharest) is a sculptor working and living in London, currently completing her master’s degree in sculpture at the Royal College of Art. She is primarily active in both London and Bucharest. Her practice is deeply rooted in the idea of materiality, its subtleties, but also the curious combinations resulting in the process. Exploring the physical properties and their resonance, she aims to uncover the poetic potential that lies. A recurring motif is the inherent duality of the material world and the attractiveness of two binary opposite elements coexisting. Shape, dimension and ergonomics bring bodily and sculptural matter together. Juxtaposing the previously mentioned and occasionally intertwining them with the abject or fragility, the physical form becomes the manifestation of visual desire.
ALICJA KWADE
GOLDVOLKS (KUWAIT)
gold chain framed, 2015
GoldVolks grew out of Alicja Kwade’s interest in the national gold reserves kept by most countries’ central banks. Until 1973, they served as backing for currencies (a system known as the gold standard). Now gold reserves are maintained to hedge against fluctuating US dollar exchange rates and provide for periods of crisis. Since gold is universally accepted as a means of payment, large gold holdings suggest a country’s high degree of independence.
Ninety-seven countries officially quantify their gold reserves; statistics are available from the World Gold Council. Kwade took the ninety-seven listed gold reserve holdings and divided them by each country’s official population. The goldsmith Georg Hornemann then cast these per capita amounts of fine gold into the simplest possible geometric shape, a cube; the objects are presented like pendants on gold chains. Kwade’s cubes, in other words, represent the gold hypothetically owned by each citizen - what each of us would receive if our countries’ reserves were distributed to the citizenry.
Hung in a glass case, the gold pendants illustrate a measure of the global distribution of wealth, allowing for a visual and tactile experience of an abstract numerical ranking
ALICJA KWADE
Alicja Kwade (b. 1979 in Katowice, Poland) lives and works in Berlin. Alicja Kwade is known internationally for sculpture, expansive public installation, film, photography and works on paper that challenge scientific and philosophical concepts by dismantling the boundaries of perception. Her distinctive artistic language involves reflection, repetition, and the deconstruction and reconstruction of everyday objects and natural materials in an effort to explore the essence of our reality and to examine social structures. Often veering towards the absurd and transforming commonly accepted assumptions into open-ended questions, her poetic and mesmerizing oeuvre disrupts familiar systems and searches for new explanations to comprehend our world.
Kwade has exhibited widely at institutions including Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk; Whitechapel Gallery, London; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin; Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo; and Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich. Over the past years, she has increasingly worked in the public realm, creating vast installations that respond to the architecture and the natural phenomena of various sites. In 2019, Kwade was commissioned to create a monumental installation for the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Two sculptures made of steel and enormous spherical rocks to evoke a solar system settled temporarily above Manhattan’s skyline. For her 2022 installation Au Cours Des Mondes on Place Vendôme in Paris the artist set a dialogue between natural stone globes affixed to endless concrete stairs and a set of natural stone spheres. Both works explore our place in the world, underlying mechanisms of power and our relationship to knowledge thereof. Other notable installations include a 2022 participation at Desert X AlUla and an acclaimed presentation at the 57th Venice Biennale Viva Arte Viva in 2017.
Her works are part of numerous public collections, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington; LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; Mudam - Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg; and mumok - Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna.
JULIAN LENNON
WADEE
archival photographic print, 2024
Early in Julian's first journey to Uruguay, he met a 36-year-old horse named 'Wadee’ - Who belonged to fellow artist, Painter & Sculptor, Eva Claessens. Julian captured photographs of Wadee each day he was there. He described the horse's spirit as “Majestic, Beautiful & Proud.”
JULIAN LENNON
Born in 1963 in Liverpool, England, Julian Lennon began his artistic trajectory at a young age with an inherent gift for playing musical instruments. Those abilities would soon broaden into the cinematic and visual arts. As an observer of life in all its forms, Julian developed his personal expression through such mediums as music, documentary filmmaking, philanthropy and fine art photography.
His arrival in the fine art photography space began in 2010 with his debut exhibit, “Timeless,” at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York City. Since then, he has exhibited works across the U.S. and in several countries worldwide including Belgium, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Japan, Monaco, Portugal, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. In 2020, he became the inaugural photographer featured in the prestigious Aston Martin Residences in Miami. In 2021, he partnered with Portia De Rossi’s General Public Art to bring a collection of his photography to Restoration Hardware. In 2023, he showcased notable pieces from his collection alongside acclaimed artist Eva Claessens in a joint exhibition, “From Nature with Love,” in Lisbon. In 2024, the two presented another joint exhibition, “She Said Yes,” at Moretti Fine Art in Monaco. His largest exhibition to date, “Whispers” took place at Le Stanze della Fotografia – an international center for research into the appreciation of photography and the culture of the image. The exhibition, curated by Lennon and Sandrina Bonetti Rubelli, showcased a rich body of work that traced Lennon’s diverse artistic journey, from his early days in music to his extensive portfolio in photography.
ANA ION LEONTE
BABAS
unfired terracotta clay , fiberglass, resin, 2025
The artist sculpted from clay three “beings” or “dolls,” inspired by the Scythian Kurgan anthropomorphic stone stelae (known as babas from Izyum, Eastern Ukraine), which she then enclosed within a sealed glass terrarium. Inside this airtight environment, the moisture in the clay produces condensation, giving the impression that the sculptures are sweating—alive and in flux. A heat source (lightbulb) ensures the condensation remains constant, amplifying the sense of a living, growing entity. The lightbulb drops down into the inside of the sculpture to also illuminate the smallest being from inside out. Each figure nests inside the next, mimicking the form of Ukrainian matryoshkas. The outermost doll resembles the familiar modern matryoshka, while having carved out many Russian criminal tattoos. These cutouts create negative spaces, revealing the inner figures and deconstructing the surface form to expose the layers within. The piece references the ancient babas’ animistic beliefs—that animals, trees, rivers, and mountains possess souls—and aims to evoke a sense of growth, discomfort, and spiritual presence within confinement.
ANA ION LEONTE
Ana Ion Leonte is a Romanian-American artist currently based in Tampa, Florida. Originally from Bucharest, Romania, Ana found her passion in sculptural ceramic arts at the Episcopal School of Jacksonville and furthered her formal art training at the Paris College of Art, Paris France, and the renowned Ceramic institution Alfred University College of Ceramics, Alfred NY where she earned a BFA degree in Art and Design. Ana continues her practice and research as an MFA candidate at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, dedicating her time to mixed media sculpture with a concentration in Ceramics. Some of her artworks have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, FL, Turner Gallery, Alfred, NY, Ritz Museum and Theatre, Jacksonville, FL, Artsafe, Bucharest, Romania, Mint Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia, and The International Drawing Biennial, Arad, Romania.
DRAGOȘ LUMPAN
DRUMUL CRUCII
PASSION
photograph on film, 1992
A group of 30 young Bessarabians walked from Chișinău to Bucharest, carrying a cross on their shoulders as a symbol of unity. The cross was installed in University Square in Bucharest on the Day of the Union of Bessarabia with Romania.
DRAGOȘ LUMPAN
The photograph I’m exhibiting here was taken in 1992. At the time, I was between two universities: I had dropped out of Geology and was preparing to apply to Theology. I was working as a photographer for various newspapers—I was a freelancer. Because there was an inflation of newspapers and magazines, and because I had other things to do (like going to the seaside), my collaborations with the press were usually limited to just a few months per paper. After Theology, I enrolled in Film Studies; so now—besides being a photographer—I can also say I’m a filmmaker. After National Geographic Romania shut down, I stopped working with magazines or newspapers, but I’ve remained (almost) a freelancer.
HORTENSIA MI KAFCHIN
GINSENG STRIP
oil on wooden plate, 2024
Ginseng Strip (2024) is an oil on wood portrait of the artist Yung Lean, which draws inspiration directly from his influential "Ginseng Strip 2002" music video. The work explores the intersection of contemporary music culture with visual art, and by extension, the unifying power of music itself.
The depiction of Yung Lean, specifically referencing a seminal work like "Ginseng Strip 2002," immediately positions this painting within a significant cultural landscape. Yung Lean is widely recognized for his pioneering role in "cloud rap," a subgenre sharing distinct stylistic and aesthetic qualities with phonk. While "Ginseng Strip 2002" may not be categorized strictly as phonk, its inherent lo-fi, hazy, and melancholic aesthetic deeply resonates with the early internet and underground origins characteristic of the phonk movement.
This painting aligns with the aesthetic resonance often found in phonk music – an appreciation for distorted, chopped and screwed samples, deep bass, and a grainy, nostalgic atmosphere. The contemplative mood captured in the portrait, reflective of Yung Lean's early work and elements within phonk aesthetics, serves as a visual counterpart to an auditory experience. The deliberate choice of oil on wood, a traditional medium, to render a contemporary, internet-culture based subject, creates an intriguing tension, combining a specific moment in time with a timeless quality.
Beyond its direct musical reference and its ambiguous self-portrait character, Ginseng Strip implicitly touches upon music's profound capacity to unite people. Music fosters shared experiences and identity, particularly within subcultures like cloud rap or phonk, creating communal bonds among listeners. It establishes emotional connections, transcending intellectual barriers to evoke nostalgia, joy, sadness, or defiance, thereby building empathy and understanding.
HORTENSIA MI KAFCHIN
The artistic practice of Hortensia Mi Kafchin (b. 1986) is marked by a distinctive synthesis of her Danubian origins and a global, postmodern perspective. Her eclectic and daring style, encompassing dreamlike imagery, technological motifs, futurological concepts, and spiritual themes, has significantly influenced younger generations in Romania and beyond. Her practice, characterized by a refined sense of color and a profound engagement with art historical precedents, reflects the complexities of a contemporary existence. While her personal journey, including her transition initiated in 2016, forms a secondary layer within her oeuvre, her artistic identity is primarily defined by a precise implementation of Old Masters’ techniques and aspiration to bring to life visions of the future.
RUXANDRA NIȚESCU
LABORATORY ANALYSIS
UV print on plexiglass, 2025
The “Laboratory Analysis” work (2025) is part of the „Phytopathological Touches in a Landscape of Care” project (2025).
“Laboratory Analysis” combines vegetal imagery with a fictive system of scientifical codification, inspired by medical diagnosis procedures. Using the idea of simulated radiographs, report-like observations and a clinical aesthetic, the work proposes an affective archiving of tree illnesses, treating plants as entities with memories, sensibilities and pain. The starting point is a forest with personal significance: the place of childhood and of the close relationship between the artist and her grandfather, before the latter fell ill and died. The tree analyzed in the images comes from this area and becomes the symbol of diminishing borders between the human and the vegetal body. By superposing the scientific visual with the narrative one, the works question the limits of objective observation and of empathy. Illness is represented not only as dysfunction, but as a possible space for communication – a “phytopathological touch” within an affective ecology.
RUXANDRA NIȚESCU
Ruxandra Nițescu received her bachelor’s degree in 2023 from the National University of Arts in Bucharest – the Photo-Video Department, and then, in 2025, finished her master’s in Photography and Dynamic Image, within the same institution. Her artistic practice is shaped as a form of affective archaeology, inside which fragments of experience, memory and sensibility are recovered and reconfigured into a dense, layered visual discourse. Interested in the manner in which vulnerability insinuates itself into bodies, space and language, the artist probes into themes of loneliness, abandonment, illness and trauma – not as mere subjects, but as living presences that shape the way in which we perceive the world. Within this research, media such as photography, sound, drawing and printmaking become instruments of multivocal visual writings, in which each material bears a distinct affective load.
She has participated in various group exhibitions, such as:
„Macul Lorii: Contaminated Entanglements”, Bucharest, Multimedia Visual Arts Center, 2022
„Intimacy”, Bucharest, National Museum of Contemporary Art, 2022 – 2023
„The World Blinked Back at Me”, Bucharest, Rezidența9, 2023
„Diploma”, Bucharest, Sector 1 Gallery, 2023
„Strange Times and Improbable Encounters”, Târgu Mureș, Bastionul Tăbăcarilor, 2023
„Oraș în Buclă”, Cluj, Matca Art Space 2024
„Sounds Like a Book: (S)pace”, Galeria Posibilă (Bucharest), Bb12 Art Space (Linz), einBuch. haus (Berlin)
MARCEL ODENBACH
AUßER RAND UND BAND
serigraphy on cardboard, 2022
For the five-part series, Marcel Odenbach selected three different cutting templates. The collages were further processed and incorporated under the title Außer Rand und Band, in which the artist deals with social processes of abuse of power. Two cutting templates deal with the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters in Washington in 2021. Another collage depicts a dark chapter in German colonial history in Africa, among other things. Odenbach generates a series of five serigraphies from these three cutting templates. The sequence is structured like a triptych. The centre is formed by a collage of postcards from his own collection from former colonies in Africa, while on the left and right, two cutting templates with images from media reports of the storming of the Capitol are repeated. The reproduced templates from the artist’s archive are enlarged and overlaid with two-colour areas – sometimes horizontal, sometimes vertical – so that different parts of the collages are highlighted. The artist takes the different colour combinations from Warhol’s Electric Chair series, which for him was an impressive example of a political statement in the early 1970s. Odenbach’s works are thus impressive statements on social catastrophes – right up to the present day.
ab wann gab es kein zurück mehr / Where was the point of no return
1. It almost became a film, all sorts of things could have happened, but then I decided against it. And now I’m starting again differently! I find myself asking: who have I been collecting all these images for over the years and who do I want to show them to? What do they actually mean to me? Don’t the images already lose their relevance at the very moment of their creation, and do they not then just become exchangeable? I wonder: do my images even need to be narrated, or is it more my life story that needs these images? Maybe a film somewhat akin to a journey, but open-ended, no arrival, no destination.
2. Looking through the camera protected me from the new, from the unknown, looking through the lens concealed the insecurity, the shame, that I often felt in unfamiliar places. I am known to pre-empt situations, I adapt, I know how to blend into the surroundings so that nobody asks me where I’m from; I’m reserved, polite, well-mannered, a little reserved, a little aloof. Perhaps that’s what helps me to survive?
3. I’ve been looking for an answer, for my home in life, for a long time, and if at all, I’ve found it elsewhere, when travelling. Time and again I left it behind because I was usually on the move again soon after; driven people tend not to sit still for long. Perhaps a bit like a hunted animal! When I was younger, I always knew where I was, I could remember every place, every situation. The experiences and emotions were right there. But I can’t remember anymore, I no longer recall the things that were once important to me, the places are starting to blur. Maybe my own images and answers have become alien to me?
MARCEL ODENBACH
Marcel Odenbach was born 1953 in Cologne. He lives and works in Cologne, Ghana and Italy. Marcel Odenbach’s institutional solo shows include Kurt Tucholsky Literaturmuseum, Rheinsberg 2023, MAIIAM- Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai 2022, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Kunstsammlung NRW K21, Dusseldorf, both 2021, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld 2020, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg 2020, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai 2019, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna 2017, Tel Aviv Museum of Art 2016, Museo de Arte de Lima 2015 and Kunstmuseum Bonn 2013 among others. Marcel Odenbach was awarded the 2021 Wolfgang Hahn Prize. His work is included in numerous public collections such as Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée National d‘Art Moderne, Paris, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam and Kunstsammlung NRW, Dusseldorf among others.
MARLON RED
ROADS BEHIND TIME
mixed media, 2017
Documentary work created over a period of three years, during the same season, in Mainstockheim (near Würzburg).
The project explores the theme of "Vergänglichkeit" – transience and transformation over time – through a series of photographs that capture the subtle changes of a single place. The images are printed on papers of varying density using inkjet and pigment print techniques, enriched with hand-drawn interventions using pencil, chalk, charcoal, and tape. These elements add a tactile and personal dimension to the series.
Thus, the images become a visual meditation on fragility and continuity, an affective archive of the slow and inevitable transformations of the world we inhabit.
MARLON RED
Marlon Red (b. 1982, Bistrița, Romania) is a visual artist known for her interdisciplinary approach that spans painting, sculpture, video, installation, and performance. Her work often explores the tension between form and transformation, engaging with themes of identity, embodiment, and perception. Marlon currently lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. Marlon Red graduated from the Corneliu Baba Art School in Bistrița in 2000 and went on to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she trained under Prof. Dr. h. c. Markus Lüpertz and Prof. Thomas Grünfeld. In 2008, she became a Meisterschüler of Lüpertz and later completed her diploma (Akademiebrief) under Grünfeld in 2014.
Her works are part of several prominent private and institutional collections, including the Reinhard Ernst Collection (Wiesbaden), the Lapidarium Museum (Novigrad, Croatia), and the Reinhold Würth Collection. Red has exhibited and performed internationally, with recent highlights including the upcoming “The Thin Thread Line” (SAC Berthelot, Bucharest, 2025), “Threshold” at PK Contemporary (Düsseldorf, 2025), and presentations at Affordable Art Fair Brussels (2025). Her ongoing performance series SOLID SIDES and INTO THE VOID / HUMAN (Lapidarium Museum, Croatia) reflect her evolving practice that merges body, space, and materiality.
Her solo and group shows include venues such as Kunstpalast Museum (Düsseldorf), Galerie r8m (Cologne), Galerie Obrist (Essen), Künstlerhaus Schloss Plüschow, and Aether Space (Sofia and The Hague). Her work has been supported by artist grants from the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Anita Kontrek Foundation (Zagreb). Marlon Red is also featured in several publications, including PAPER IS PATIENT (Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig, 2024) and MULTILAYER VISION 20/20. She was profiled in an in-depth interview and podcast on Atelierbesuche.com by Dr. Elke Backes, exploring her artistic process and her pursuit of “undiscovered form.”
HALEH REDJAIAN
OUT OF LINE
site-specific installation, 2021-2025
Haleh Redjaian uses thread to draw in space, constructing exquisite site-specific installations that often reference architecture and geometry. However, her interest in our responses to such articulations of space extends beyond the purely phenomenological to include affect. Redjaian creates a delicate, minimal installation with the careful and precise arrangement of threads forming curves, lines and an ever-evolving stature dedicated by the spectator’s perspective since the installation is shifting its form with movement and directly incorporating and reacting with the surrounding space.
The piece consists of three freestanding rectangular metal frames filled in with fields of vertically stretched threads. Recasting the wall as a see-through screen or permeable membrane rather than as a solid barrier, the installation gestures towards division, scrambling spatial distinctions between inside and outside or here and there. Playing with notions of transparency and opacity, of access and seclusion, it attempts to create an open shelter, an enclosure for daydreams that does not withdraw completely from the world.
NO FLAG (8)
hand woven carpet, monotype and threads, 2025
Redjaian’s works on handwoven textiles merge both her solitary and systematic practice with the laborious work of carpet weavers in Sirjan, Iran, a province known for its historic traditions in carpet weaving. These textile works, a precursor to the artist’s research on pattern singing, set theoretical instructions into practice. Redjaian’s system drawings begin with the experience and meditation of the controlled environment of the artist’s studio. She first creates the pattern for the weavers, marking the rhythm on paper. Interpreting the artist’s draft, the weavers work within their own set of guided measures, the acrylic lines softening in their calculated weave. Once the handwoven textile is returned to the artist, she applies the final stitches of lines and luminous lithograph imprints, the fixed experiment that is developed within the possibility of disorder is complete. In Redjaian’s woven works, a stitch may end differently to what she might have instructed to the weavers.This employs collaborative and chance-driven systems where the weavers work with their own natural dyes, selecting the colours and working within their own set of constraints.
No flag, a series of carpets from 2019, were given their title based on their peculiar likeness to a flag, which the artist was not intending on referencing, hence the playful title, nudging ceci n’est pas un drapeau.
HALEH REDJAIAN
Haleh Redjaian (born 1971, Frankfurt/M) lives and works in Berlin. She studied Art History at the Goethe University of Frankfurt and furthered her studies in drawing and printmaking followed by sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Antwerp and completed a postgraduate degree in Fine Art from the Higher Institute of Fine Art (HISK)in Belgium.
Redjaian has participated in several group and solo exhibitions including: Heimweh nach neuen Dingen, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Konkrete Frauen, Kunstmuseum Ahlen (2025), In Real Time, NYU AbuDhabi Art Gallery (2024), Haleh Redjaian im Dialog mit Sofie Dawo, Kunsthaus Dahlem (2024), Sehen im Kunstverein Aschaffenburg (2023), My dream never has walls, Duo-Exhibition Fernanda Fragateiro & Haleh Redjaian, Valerie Traan Gallery Antwerpen (2023), Raising Flags, Museum in progress Vienna (2023), The Tide is High, Kunsthaus Wiesbaden (2022), Klangteppich IV Festival, Telegrafie & Klangkunst, TAK, Berlin (2022), L‘année dernièr à Malmaison, SAC Bucharest, (2022), Textile, Haunt Berlin & drj art projects, Berlin (2022), Stasi frenetica, MAO, Turin 2020, White Leaves One and Two on Their Place, Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai (2020), Some Things Last A Long Time, Kajetan Berlin (2019), among others.
MIRCEA SUCIU
A BEAUTY SUPREME (2)
oil,acrylic,monoprint,linen, 2018
A Beauty Supreme questions representation, responsibility, and the role of art in a world fractured by conflict and contradiction. The notion of the sublime is redefined personally here—as a mixture of humanity and extreme violence, of deep contradictions that shape both history and society.
The title carries an ironic undertone: what does “supreme beauty” truly mean in a world where cruelty, racism, and destructive politics continue to shape human destinies? Humanity is marked by acts of brutality, and misguided political decisions have led to the erasure of entire cultures, forcing massive waves of migration. Despite the appearance of progress, we continue to witness the same atrocities repeating. In this context, the sublime becomes a field of tension—between the aesthetic and the ethical, between representation and reality. It steps away from the Romantic ideal and becomes a form of critical interrogation: can art influence deviant behavior?
The composition functions like a mood board—a flat surface built through layering and contrast. Traditional perspective is either absent or deliberately deconstructed by the juxtaposition of images with differing functions and origins. The central figure, taken from a painting attributed to the school of Ingres, is rendered through repeated monotype transfers, which give the face a ghostlike, almost erased quality, while the hands are saturated in a deep, bloody red. Above, two archival images—one of a migrant family, the other a historic woodcut depicting execution by burning for heresy—intersect with the abstract background painted in oil and acrylic.
This pictorial surface becomes a site of dialogue between personal and collective history, between photographic imagery and painterly gesture. The monotypes, transferred onto an acrylic base, create a ghostly texture—a sign of memory that is both fragile and enduring. The history of violence, the work suggests, is eternal.
DIZZYNESS OF FREEDOM
oil,acrylic,monoprint,linen, 2016
With a title inspired by Søren Kierkegaard that offers multiple layers of interpretation, Dizzyness of Freedom is a meditation on anxiety, freedom, fundamentalism, authority, order, and control. These themes are reinforced through the interplay between blurriness and clarity, shaping the psychological and ideological dimensions of the image.
In Dizzyness of Freedom, Mircea Suciu brings together two complementary planes: one photographic, transferred onto canvas using the monotype technique over an acrylic base, and the other a figurative painting executed in oil and acrylic. The background is sourced from an archival image of an ultra-religious ceremony in 1950s America (snake-handling practice), partially erased and sanded to obscure the identity of the depicted figure, thus reinforcing a dense, textured surface layered with painted geometric fragments.
At the center of the piece lies a figurative composition based on a photograph staged in the artist’s studio. The contrast between this precisely controlled central image and the symbolic, obscured background generates a cinematic and surreal chiaroscuro atmosphere.
MIRCEA SUCIU
Mircea Suciu is recognized for his deeply evocative and complex works that explore themes of anxiety, violence, and oppression. Creating using both art-historical and pop-culture references, Suciu has crafted a distinctive visual language where figuration and abstraction converge. His technique is both innovative and meticulous, involving the transfer of photographic images onto canvas, which he then builds upon with layers of acrylic and oil paints. This approach, which he refers to as “monotype,” allows the artist to achieve a nuanced balance between composition, colour, and texture. Suciu’s art resists conventional ideas of a single, unified image, instead embracing a multilayered and often fragmented representation that mirrors the complexities of modern visual culture. Growing up under the pressures of a communist regime, he developed a fascination with the role of images as tools for both manipulation and liberation. His work reflects an ongoing investigation into the power dynamics embedded in visual representation and how imagery influences collective perception.
VIRGINIA TOMA
UNTITLED
acrylic on canvas, aluminum, 2024
UNTITLED
drawing on paper, 2025
UNTITLED
drawing on paper, 2022
In Virginia Toma’s works, a straight line is more than a mere graphic element – it represents an infinite number of points, an essential form defining both the distance and the link between two reference points. It is a construction tool that delineates planes, generates movement and creates spatial relationships. In certain instances, Virginia operates with equally-long line segments, used as base units for building structures and visual dynamics. These structures develop systematically and logically, in a balanced and rational manner, each work representing a different iteration of the same working principle: the multiplication of a simple element – the line. Each line exists integrated within a context; it becomes part of a larger system that contains and defines it. Essentially, lines are representations of an infinity of points – points that, abstractly, have no dimension, but which, through drawing, become reference points, mark intersections, or generate shapes. Thereby, the line becomes a means for investigating space, rhythm and visual order.
VIRGINIA TOMA
From a theoretical perspective, Virgina Toma (b.1983, Bucharest) is trying out abstract notions, mathematical rigors and their transposition into visual language. Her artistic practice involves developing thought processes reflected into computational structures, that precede the artistic process and determine the visual outcome. Virginia Toma graduated from the National University of Arts in Bucharest in 2007. Her work has been included in exhibitions such as: „24! Fragen an die Konkrete Gegenwart“, MiK Würzburg (2024) ; "Subjective Geometries", Sector 1 Gallery, Bucharest (2022) ; “Ceea ce contează pentru noi (astăzi)”, Jecza Gallery, Timişoara (2022); "Cabinet Case #2 - Virginia Toma: Pasaje-adevăr” - Cabinet 44, Bucharest (2022); "Arta și Orașul 1974 - 2021"- MARe/ Muzeul de Artă Recentă, Bucharest (2021); "Virginia" - Atelier Am Eck, Düsseldorf, Germania (2019); "Geometrii Post-Sistem în arta românească de acum"- MARe/Muzeul de Artă Recentă, Bucharest(2019).
DOMINIKA TRAPP
1. THEY ARE NOT QUIET, QUIET, LIKE THE LITTLE EMPTINESSES I CARRY
2..THERE IS A SNAKE IN SWANS
3.I AM THE CENTER OF AN ATROCITY
triptych, watercolour, ink, chalk, canvas, 2025
The triptych explores bodily visions of childbirth, emphasizing the double vulnerability of the female body. It contrasts the instinctive, self-regulating processes of labor with the mechanized, often impersonal protocols of obstetric care. While both forces can overpower the individual, the former may unfold as a deeply affirming experience, whereas the latter—through dehumanization—frequently becomes a site of trauma.
The titles of the paintings are quotations from Three Women, a poem by Sylvia Plath. The poem presents the experience of childbirth through the voices of three women—one who gives birth, one who miscarries, and one who gives her child away—exploring the complex emotional and social dimensions of motherhood, the female body, and loss.
DOMINIKA TRAPP
Dominika Trapp (1988, Budapest) graduated from the Painting Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2012. Her practice is characterized by a dual orientation: on the one hand, a sensitive painterly approach that embraces intuition and introspection; on the other, an outward-directed engagement that facilitates dialogue between communities in the service of collective self-knowledge. Through image, installation, and performance, Trapp’s work explores themes such as the relationship between tradition and contemporary culture, the fate of women in Hungarian peasant communities, the historical context of eating disorders, and intuitive painting as a somatic practice of artistic research.
More recently, she has participated in residency programs at Art in General in New York, the MQ Artist-in-Residence Programme in Vienna, and FUTURA in Prague. In 2020, her solo exhibitions were presented at Trafó Gallery in Budapest and Karlin Studios in Prague. She took part in the 14th Baltic Triennial in Vilnius in 2021, Manifesta 14 in Prishtina in 2022, EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial in Limerick in 2023, and The Matter of Art Biennial in Prague in 2024. That same year, she also served as one of the artistic advisors for the EKO9 Triennial of Art and Environment in Maribor. In 2023, she was awarded the Esterházy Art Award. She is currently a multimedia art fellow at the Doctoral School of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design.
MARCO VERHOOGT
FORME DE ROMÂN SUGERATE SUB TEXTIL SINTETIC 1
photograph on film, 2025
The photograph is part of the ELECTORAT project, which follows the period of the presidential elections. “The flag that covers the bodies of the people makes me think about how protests transform individual needs and stories into amorphous masses. Carnal needs disappear under the umbrella of ideology — quite literally under the national flag, an evocative object for almost anyone. It is merely a piece of colored textile, and yet much more than just that. Some of the bodies that move forward begin to suggest their shape, self-asserting through the fabric.”
MARCO VERHOOGT
He completed the Conceptual Documentary Photography course at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, where he developed a strong appreciation for photobooks and the alternative publishing scene. Although his work starts from documentation and observation, his perspective is often poetic, at times even speculative. He is drawn to abrasive stories where something harsh meets something fragile: environmental bureaucracy and the natural world, the delicacy and violence of men, history’s indifference to individual vulnerability, and society and culture expressed through the significance of personal objects.
He founded the STOL collective, which creates frameworks where art and cultural tools can meet the other. Their focus is experimental—they aim to explore how artworks can be produced and experienced beyond the studio and gallery contexts.
He is also the founder of theLetterNetwork, a network of 80 European artists who reflect on the world we share through postal-based works.
JORINDE VOIGT
IMMERSION - RUSH OF INSIGHT VI
India ink, pastel, gold leaf, oil chalks and graphite on paper, framed, 2023
IMMERSIVE INTEGRAL IV
india ink, gold leaf, pastel, oil chalks and graphite on paper, artist's frame, 2018
Through drawing, Jorinde Voigt charts the invisible architectures of perception, emotion, and interrelation—translating complex inner states into spatial, rhythmic compositions.
In Rush of Insight and Immersive Integral IV, Voigt explores perception not as a fixed viewpoint, but as a dynamic field shaped by immersion, chance, and intersubjectivity.
From the scarlet-dyed paper and torus forms of Rush of Insight to the introspective geometries of Immersive Integral IV, her works trace fragile yet resonant lines, between interior and exterior, self and other.
In the context of The Thin Thread Line, these drawings become both maps and metaphors: articulating the thread that connects and disorients, that holds together and reveals.
JORINDE VOIGT
Jorinde Voigt (Germany, 1977) is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Berlin. From 2014 to 2019, she taught at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, and today she is Professor of Conceptual Drawing and Painting at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg.
In her work Voigt observes and explores the inner processes of perception in relation to various aspects and subjects such as affects and emotions, imagination, memory, sensory experience, natural and cultural phenomena, scientific data, interpersonal actions, and relationships. Since her early work, Jorinde Voigt has taken an analytical approach, understanding her subjects as dynamic situations whose state of being is in constant change. Within a conceptual approach Jorinde Voigt has been expanding her work beyond the medium of drawing in recent years, including and experimenting with painterly elements, collage, sculpture, design, and music.
NIVES WIDAUER
BORDERLINE
series of drawings, 2025
The Borderline series continues the artist’s ongoing exploration of the interplay between language, psychology, and visual tension. A deliberate play on the dual meanings of "border" and "line," the title evokes both physical and mental boundaries.
Borderline also references the psychological condition—yet here it is recontextualized, not as a diagnosis, but as a metaphor for the fragile balance we often walk between stability and inner chaos.
Using three carefully chosen colors on black paper, the artist reinforces this sense of constraint and focus, highlighting the emotional intensity behind seemingly simple words. The thin lines—visual and conceptual—speak to that subtle moment when something is still manageable but begins to edge into disorder. It is in this liminal space that the work finds its power: as both an experiment and a meditation on the delicate threshold between control and collapse.
IMPERIUM HUMANUM
watercolor on historical map, 2017
Imperium Humanum reimagines the ancient concept of Imperium Romanum by transforming it into a vision of global unity: Imperium Humanum.
In this imagined map, the two continents are depicted as gently touching — a kiss rather than a collision — suggesting reconciliation, interdependence, and shared humanity. The piece reflects on the long, often difficult relationship between Europe and Africa, yet shifts the narrative toward possibility: of healing, of equality, of balance.
NIVES WIDAUER
Nives Widauer (b.1965, Basel) is a Vienna-based artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans video, installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, and collage. Trained in audiovisual design at the Basel School of Design, she has developed a unique artistic language characterized by the fluid integration of diverse media and techniques. Her work draws together autobiographical traces, cultural and art historical references, collective memory, and language, forming a personal yet universally resonant visual mythology. In addition to her extensive international exhibition history, which includes institutions such as the Kunstmuseum Basel, Kunsthaus Zürich, the New-York Historical Society, the Austrian Cultural Forum, and the Belvedere Museum Vienna, she also designs live-video stage environments for opera, theater, and music. Her published works include Villa Nix (2019), SPECIAL CASES (2017), and DO I DREAM OR AM I ALIVE? (2011), among others.
THOMAS ZITZWITZ
UNTITLED I
oil on linen, 2025
The use of AI for this artwork description was an intentional curatorial choice, reflecting on the role of technology and artificial intelligence in shaping the future — a perspective aligned with the thematic context of Thin Thread Line and the uncertain directions we are heading toward.
In this electrifying canvas by Thomas Zitzwitz, a burst of vigorous brushstrokes and intense colors erupts, creating a swirling vortex of energy. Amidst the vertical slashes of electric yellow, deep blues, brooding blacks, and vivid purples, a singular, defiant orange point near the bottom center immediately seizes the eye. It acts as a pulsating heart, a vibrant nucleus that anchors the tumultuous composition. It becomes the focal point of the work which asserts its presence and draws the viewer deeper into the painting's chromatic cosmos. This isolated, yet powerful splash of orange introduces a moment of grounded warmth against the surrounding torrent of cooler and darker tones, hinting at a hidden warmth or a sudden burst of pure emotional intensity…
UNTITLED II
UNTITLED III
The use of AI for these artworks’ description was an intentional curatorial choice, reflecting on the role of technology and artificial intelligence in shaping the future — a perspective aligned with the thematic context of Thin Thread Line and the uncertain directions we are heading toward.
These two ethereal abstract paintings created by Thomas Zitzwitz immediately captivate with their balance of vibrant and muted tones. The compositions are defined by a striking sense of horizontal movement and spontaneous layering of color, creating a rich visual texture. What makes these acrylic paintings particularly compelling is the artist's distinctive squeegee technique. Zitzwitz harnesses the fluid nature of acrylics, pulling and pushing the paint across the canvas with a tool to create distinct horizontal striations, transparent veils, and spots of vibrant opacity. This method allows the interplay of chance and control, as colors merge and separate in unpredictable yet harmonious ways, revealing glimpses of underlying layers and giving the surface the impression of depth. It’s this very technique that elevates the works’ unique shimmering quality, infusing them with a palpable sense of atmospheric movement, almost like light filtering through water or a blurred landscape.
THOMAS ZITZWITZ
Thomas Zitzwitz is a contemporary German artist, born in 1964, known for his vibrant abstract paintings and innovative use of layered colour and form. His works often explore dynamic compositions and rich chromatic fields, reflecting a deep engagement with the language of abstraction. Influenced by film and literature, Zitzwitz’s practice is marked by a strong conceptual foundation. Since 1995, he has also developed a distinctive body of installation work incorporating scent—an unusual but integral element in his exploration of sensory experience and perception.
Zitzwitz studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, the Accademia Belle Arti in Perugia, and New York University as a Fulbright Scholar. His work has been recognized with several awards, including the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Scholarship. He has exhibited widely in galleries and institutions across Europe and North America, and his works are held in numerous public and private collections. He currently serves as Professor of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and maintains a studio in Cologne.
Recent curatorial projects include Tendre est la nuit at NEO in Nice, Die Vögel des Zufalls at Galerie Norbert Arns in Cologne, and Individual All Around in Timișoara, European Capital of Culture 2023. He also co-curated L'Année dernière à Malmaison at /SAC in Bucharest with Alex Radu.