Wet Snow

curated by Charles Moore & Alex Radu

with an exhibition design by Justin Baroncea & Maria Ghement & Alexandra Muller

"Wet Snow"
/SAC Berthelot
02.10-30.11.2025

artists: Carlos Amorales, Simona Andrioletti, Andrius Arutiunian, Justin Baroncea & Cristian Matei, Yael Bartana, Anna Bedyńska, Gisela Colón, Nicolae Comănescu, Iulian Cristea, Suzana Dan, Dimitrie Luca Gora, Dumitru Gorzo, Rusudan Khizanishvili, Ayoung Kim, Miler Lagos, Charmaine Poh, Buket Savci, Bosco Sodi, Mircea Suciu, Philip Topolovac, Jorinde Voigt

Following the opening, the exhibition can be visited at /SAC Berthelot from Thursday to Saturday, 4PM-8PM.

The exhibition is organized by /SAC – The Space for Contemporary Art. We would like to thank the Italian Cultural Institute Bucharest for the support. Cultural project co-financed by Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The project does not necessarily represent the official position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN shall not be held liable for the project’s content or any use to which the project outcome might be put. These are the sole responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.

Apropos of the Wet Snow. Notes from Underground, Part 2

by Charles Moore

What follows descent? If the first part of Dostoevsky’s novella “Notes from Underground” lingers in the subterranean recesses of thought, the second, “Apropos of the Wet Snow,” forces us into collision with the surface. It is a world of humiliation and confrontation, where every gesture is sharpened by the sting of rejection and the damp heaviness of disillusion. Here, the underground does not remain hidden. It seeps upward, messy, unruly, and uncontainable.

This exhibition is not a quiet meditation, but a rupture. A visceral reckoning with the fragility of our illusions and the brutality of their collapse. The works are raw, unflinching, sometimes violent in their insistence. In them, with materials and subjects that toil with a sense of permanence, questions arise. In each flicker of neon and stroke of the paintbrush, we ask ourselves: are we witnessing an ending, the disintegration of the narratives we have clung to, or the tentative beginnings of something unformed? Like snow that both buries and dissolves, the images and forms insist on ambiguity, on the coexistence of ruin and possibility.

Dostoevsky’s narrator sought dignity in cruelty, solace in self-sabotage. That psychology echoes chillingly in the crises of today, with wars waged with impunity, perpetuations of systemic inequalities, fractured truths, and societies buckling under the weight of their contradictions. The wet snow becomes a mirror. Whether through paint, clay, video, or the plethora of other media presented here, they too reflect the absurd theater of our failures and the lingering hope that something might yet emerge from the slush.

Rather than offering answers, these works sharpen the questions. They probe at the wound where control gives way to chaos, where seeking connection is a pathway for alienation, where private despair collides with collective tragedy. They remind us that the underground is not only within us but all around us. We are aware of their pressing, urgent, and impossible-to-ignore presence. If the first part of Notes from Underground invited us to descend, this second part insists that we stand in the storm, face the thaw, and endure the weight of the wet snow.

Wet Snow. Notes from Underground, Part 2

(pre)text by Alex Radu

“Wet Snow” is the second part of the group exhibition “Notes from Underground” and the last part of the exhibition series “The Thin Thread Line” that marked the exhibition program at /SAC Malmaison and /SAC Berthelot in 2025, a subjective and collective exploration (connotatively unfolded-overlapped over an electoral and political calendar, both local and international) of our reactions in-front-and-in-the-middle of this increasingly tense period, when the way democracies and (common) values appear like in society is being de/re-constructed/defined. And of what we are still able to do, as actors on the stages-worlds of the arts (artists, curators, etc.) with our illusory/relative power to “change the world through art.”

“Wet Snow. Notes from Underground, Part 2” is, metaphorically, about the discomfort that completely overwhelms you, performatively, with your feet in wet snow, (it seems as if) you can't get out of it. It is a disturbing reverie of the discomforts of the Present. With its geopolitical realities (genocidal wars, with disproportionate forces, against which we protest, but which seem impossible to stop, new or reactivated red lines). With economic policies that deepen crises and tensions. With an accelerated omni-destruction of ecosystems. And (last but not least) with our personal wrong choices. All of these in counterpoint to the personal/individual and planetary sensation/desire/need for eternalized youth (biological or not), with all its vulnerabilities.

Currents once thought to be underground and dormant have erupted volcanically and have become permanent, heavy omni-presences, glazed in ceramics. Winters with immaculate studio/white cube/black box-like snowfalls, springs with blossoms and accelerations, summers with beaches, spectacular places and festivals, autumns beginning with contemplation – all gone, far away, mere images that are not present but assimilated, embodied. Now, with feelings of solitude and dysfunctionality in-front-and-in-the-middle of the institution-system, both online and offline, fleetingly imagining fragments of other possible worlds-homes, you are/walk through the wet, cold, piercing snow, more awake/present/aware-of-the-moment than ever, of your own performance (with your feet in this cold, wet snow) that tends to cancel out (different) narratives and become Image.

ROMANIAN VERSION

ABOUT THE WORKS AND ARTIST BIOS

CARLOS AMORALES

Battle 05

2022

oil on canvas

160 x 120 cm

The painting depict the fictiuos battle that sparks after the super-rich have left for outer space: the moment when the poor realize they have been abandoned on a burning planet, while the police forces that protect the elite remain oblivious to their masters’ betrayal and continue to repress the protests. We see masses of people confronting riot police shields and batons. We see arms, legs and heads agaians each other. Policemen charge on foot or mounted on horses. But policemen are proletarians too… Everyone, who is not an oligarch or part of their entourage, has been left behind to die.

BIO

Carlos Amorales (b.1970) lives and works in Mexico City. He studied in Amsterdam at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (1996–97) and Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (1992–95). He has participated in artistic residencies at the Atelier Calder in Saché (2012) and MAC/VAL, Vitry-surSeine in France (2011), and as part of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship program in Washington, D.C. (2010).

In his artistic research, Carlos Amorales is interested mainly in language and the impossibility/possibility of communicating through means that are unrecognizable or not codified: sounds, gestures, and symbols. Amorales experiments at the limits between image and sign with an array of platforms: animation, video, film, drawing, installation, performance, and sound. His practice is based on different forms of translation: instruments that become characters in his films, letters that become shapes, and narratives unfold as non-verbal actions. As the basis for many of his explorations, Amorales has used Liquid Archive: a project composed of shapes, lines and nodes instead of words that he started in 1998 and continued to nourish for over ten years. In addition to Liquid Archive, he has developed other alphabets and systems that he uses to translate texts that range from museum labels to short stories. The works of Amorales exist in an alternate world of their own making, parallel to ours; constantly evolving at the same rhythm that they are produced.

In addition to representing Mexico at the 57th Venice Biennale with the project Life in the Folds (2017), His work has been included in other biennials such as the 10th Shanghai Biennale, China (2013); 2nd and 8th Berlin Biennale (2001 and 2014); Sharjah Biennial 11, United Arab Emirates (2013); 10th and 12th Havana Biennial, Cuba (2009 and 2015); the 5th SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul in Seoul, Korea (2008); and he represented The Netherlands at the 50th Venice Biennale participating in the exhibition “We Are The World”.

SIMONA ANDRIOLETTI

A Litany for Survival

2025

26:57 min

4K / 16:9

stereo sound

Courtesy the artist and Ribot Gallery

In “A Litany for Survival”, Simona Andrioletti brings protest singing and feminism into dialogue with the monumental architecture of fascism. Five FLINTA* musicians reinterpret songs from the album “Canti delle donne in lotta” (Rome, 1975), performing in front of or within buildings that once symbolized totalitarian power in Rome, Berlin, and Munich. The contrast between the monumental nature of these spaces and the emotional power of the voices creates a striking tension: architecture, designed to impose itself visually and ideologically, is silenced by the sound and meaning of the songs. The performers – Lucrezia, Mavi Phoenix, Francamente, Fitza, and Gündalein – each reinterpret a track from the original album, blending singing, rap, and personal expressive styles. Their lyrics address feminist themes, patriarchy, and systemic injustice, powerfully demanding equality in places once used to celebrate authoritarian dominance. Through music, the artists symbolically reoccupy these spaces, subverting their original meaning. With this video work, Andrioletti highlights the political power of voice and collective singing as tools of emancipation and resistance. She makes this explicit at the end of the video: “Because by singing, we multiply voices.”

Text me when you get home

2024

100% Merino wool certified as mulesing-free and RWS by ICEA (Ethical and environmental Certification Institute), aluminium structure

variable dimensions

Courtesy the artist and Ribot Gallery

Text me when you get home is a series of merino wool blankets created by the artist in a wool mill in Southern Italy. Each blanket is jacquard-woven with phrases addressing themes of traumas, mental health, and gender-based violence. The series, composed of twelve pieces — three of which are exhibited in this show — spans a timeline from Greek mythology to the present day, referencing well-known instances of sexual violence in history, such as the myth of Apollo and Daphne. The most recent piece depicts the demonstrations in Bologna, where thousands of people have joined protests across Italy since 2015 against femicide, under the slogan Non una di meno ("Not One Less"). The grey piece pays tribute to Maria Schneider, depicting her curls, eyebrows, and nose during the infamous butter scene in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 film Last Tango in Paris. In this scene, Schneider is humiliated and abused by Marlon Brando, a moment that has become a symbol in the ongoing debate about consent in cinema and the representation of violence against women on the big screen. The visual language of the blankets recalls the aesthetic of fanzines and protest posters: like flyers or self-published materials, these objects are designed to communicate messages with urgency and immediacy. While the texts may be disturbing or uncomfortable, the softness of the wool offers the viewer a temporary sense of refuge.

BIO

Simona Andrioletti (Bergamo, 1990) lives and works in Munich and Milan.

Simona Andrioletti’s artistic practice is rooted in a research-based approach and unfolds through a critical and active exploration of social and institutional structures. Through immersive installations, the artist investigates complex dynamics related to socio-political activism, systemic violence, and psychological defense mechanisms. Her work reflects on the conditions of disadvantage experienced by minority groups, as well as on moments of solidarity that enable marginalized communities to support one another and build resilient networks. She is interested in issues related to gender-based violence from an intersectional perspective, taking into account the interplay of multiple identities and the structural biases that affect marginalized subjectivities in different ways, particularly within the FLINTA community. Language, writing, music, and immersive environments are central elements of her practice, which often adopts a militant tone and embraces forms of active participation. Simona Andrioletti’s work has been exhibited in Art Institutions and galleries such as Kunsthalle Mannheim; Kunstverein Munich, Federkiel Stiftung, Nir Altman Galerie, Villa Stuck in Munich; MACRO in Rome; Museo del Novecento in Florence; Réféctoire des Nonnes in Lyon and Careof in Milan.

ANDRIUS ARUTIUNIAN

Specious

2025

digital video, full HD, 1-channel sound, subwoofer

6:34 min

edition of 3 + 2 AP

Courtesy of the artist

BIO

Andrius Arutiunian (b.1991) is an Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer working with hybrid forms of listening, vernacular knowledge and contemporary cosmologies. His research often experiments with temporality, resonance, and alternate methods for world-ordering. Through playful investigation of hypnotic and enigmatic forms, Arutiunian’s installations, films, and performances challenge the concepts of musical and political attunement.

JUSTIN BARONCEA & CRISTIAN MATEI

Ghișeu

2025

pseudo-animation tablet (plugged in)

tego plywood 250 x 125 cm and 9 mm thickness

cut-out 12 x 12 cm

Contemporary Art Counter

Continuous, uncertain present

With the absent surprise on loop

A non-formal exercise about absence as a sign

A pseudo-cinematographic commentary on pause

Script and direction – collective author

Video copy staged by “customary law” starting from … immediately

BIO

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.

YAEL BARTANA

Homesick

2025

neon

96 x 180 cm

Courtesy of the artist

In Homesick, the letters are broken by the incomplete electric illumination, and words are separated into two lines, as in a poem. This means that the usual definition of ‘homesick’ – that of longing for one’s origins of belonging, that strong, yet painful desire to go back, to cancel that distance from one’s home – that definition gives way to a different meaning: that home is sick, home itself is in pain. Bartana, throughout her long artistic path, is known for observing her motherland – Israel – with a critical eye, turning her creative cameras and film productions against the strengthening ties of religious and military powers within Israeli political culture. That critical gaze is taken from afar, as the artist has been living and working in Europe for nearly thirty years. Now, Bartana thinks of Israel once again. Could it possibly be that she’s homesick because her homeland is so ill and broken? Originally, ‘nostalgia’ means the pain (álgos) of homecoming (nóstos), yet what emotion is clearer than wanting to be home when you’re sick?

BIO

Yael Bartana (b. 1970) is an observer of the contemporary and a pre-enactor. She employs art as a scalpel inside the mechanisms of power structures and navigates the fine and crackled line between the sociological and the imagination. In her films, installations, photographs, staged performances, and public monuments she investigates subjects like national identity, trauma, and displacement, often through ceremonies, memorials, public rituals, and collective gatherings.

ANNA BEDYŃSKA

WHITE POWER

2025

vinyl print on dibond

120 x 80 cm

Albinism is caused by recessive genes passed to the child by both parents. Everyone can possess the gene of albinism. It is 1 person in 20,000 who suffers from a type of albinism. Due to the lack of pigment, the body, hair and eyes are deprived of colour, and therefore albinos are very sensitive to sunlight. Their skin gets inflamed easily. Above all, albinism is associated with serious eye problems connected with nystagmus, photophobia and astigmatism. As result, they avoid contact with the light. They often are subjects of ostracism. They are stigmatised and excluded from society. That is the reason why they avoid contact with others. Why should we not go against the stereotypes of beauty and show the charm of those who would never think of themselves as the icons of beauty?

There are many types of beauty, not only the one, stereotypical canon of beauty. Faces of the people we look at in the magazines are often subjects of time-consuming hours of make-up, styling and computer perfection. There are plenty of professionals who work on the final effect of the beauty of people we see in the media. In the end, we do not know the original beauty of the photographed person. The photographed albinos prove the genuine beauty created by nature. They are “rare gems”.

What is a real, genuine beauty?! Beauty that not everyone is able to see? Albinos live in the shade and shadow. I wanted to pull them out of their shelters and put them on the stage and prove to them and others (or at least, let them try to believe) that the real beauty is not the matter of the staff that will create it, yet it is a matter of inner soul and truth. As a result of this project, people who were photographed by Bedynska, who met for the very first time during the exhibition, got united and are planning to form the first Foundation for albinos people in Poland! In some African beliefs, albino are considered to be the incarnation of spirits of the dead, there is a superstition that albino body parts have magical powers that can bring happiness to the holder of amulets or potions made with albino body parts. This was the reason for the persecution of the community, including the murders on the trail: Tanzania- Zambia-Congo-Cameroon-Nigeria.Maecenas malesuada. Praesent congue erat at massa.

BIO

She has a long period experience as a documentary photographer doing social projects as well as working as a lecturer of a Press Photography at the Warsaw University, photography workshop leader, curator, portfolio reviewer and photography jury member. Twice honoured with grants of the Ministry of Polish Culture. Laureate of World Press Photo. Anna's works pay special attention to social change in contemporary society. Her projects “Dad in Action” “Clothes for Death” and “Go Home, Kids” were used as national campaigns for humanising death and childbirth, “Spot the dot” for an educational campaign on skin cancer awareness. She regularly highlights taboo issues and sensitive subjects and gives particular consideration to the role of women in the modern world. She eagerly turns her camera toward those who have never been in the mainstream, who live in the outskirts of social or physiological life.

Member of Women Photograph and Polish Women Photographers, former Canon Ambassador. Based between Warsaw, Bucharest and Tokyo.

GISELA COLÓN

Estructura Totémica (Piedras Contra Balas, Vapor de Tierra y Cielo, Puerto Rico)

2022

Aurora particles, stardust, cosmic radiation, intergalactic matter, ionic waves, organic carbamate, earth matter, energy, gravity, and time.

130.8 x 18 x 20 cm

The Estructura Totémica series represents an autobiographical time-capsule, containing pigments and matter harvested from the geographical and liminal sites of Colón’s life, embodying her nuanced exploration of the intersections between landscape, materiality, and identity. By blending aspects of the luminous expanses of the Western United States with the geological richness of Puerto Rico, Colón’s work creates a symbiotic relationship between light, mineral, and body, subverting traditional notions of place and belonging.

Estructura Totémica (Piedras Contra Balas, Vapor de Tierra y Cielo, Puerto Rico), 2022, captures ethereal vapors from Puerto Rico’s moist air after rainfall, while simultaneously radiating transformative light from the desert expanses of Western United States. The pointed form evokes bullets and projectiles, yet Colón utilizes earth matter and cosmic energies to counteract the violence of human actions, transforming aggression into an elevated mountainous peak that embodies the power of evolution, renewal, and rebirth.

Merging ancient symbolism with futuristic aesthetics, resembling totems, obelisks, amulets, prehistoric archeological structures, and ancient architectures (Stonehenge, Native Taíno ceremonial stones, Giza Pyramids), the primal, semiotic shape of Colón’s monolithic sculptures engages the realm of the sacred, invoking a mystical world beyond Earth. Fusing global geographies with ancient mineral knowledge, Colón’s monolith works generate a meditation on memory, ancestry, and the deep connection between land and self.

BIO

Gisela Colón (b. 1966) is a Puerto Rican-American contemporary artist whose ecofeminist work addresses ecological and universal concerns. Drawing from her formative years in Puerto Rico, Colón pioneered a language of “organic minimalism,” creating abstract, luminescent sculptures that employ as source material the energy of the earth, ancestral biological memories, and concepts of time, gravity, and universal forces of nature. Colón’s process of layering 21st-century materials and matter harvested from the geographical and liminal sites of her life embodies her nuanced exploration of the intersections between landscape, materiality, and identity. By blending aspects of the luminous expanses of the Western United States with the geological richness of Puerto Rico, Colón’s work creates a symbiotic relationship between light, mineral, and body, subverting traditional notions of place and belonging. Most recently, Colón participated in the XV Havana Biennial, Horizontes Compartidos, at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Cuba (2024) in a thematic exhibition devoted to women artists of the Caribbean titled ”La Tradición se rompe pero cuesta” curated by Jorge Fernández Torres, museum director and José Manuel Noceda, original founder of the Centro Wilfredo Lam and the Bienal de la Habana. Forthcoming are two solo institutional exhibitions: Radiant Earth at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut (2025-2026), and Materia Prima Patria at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2026). Gisela Colón’s work resides in institutional collections such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; El Museo Del Barrio, New York, NY; Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena, San Juan, Puerto Rico; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, FL; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; Mint Museum, North Carolina; and the Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA, amongst others.

NICOLAE COMĂNESCU

THE GRAND GENERAL SCHEME OF ALL THINGS –SEQUEL

2025

assemblage made from household furniture panels, textiles, acrylic

113x107 cm

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.

BIO

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

Trafa-limbi

2015

marble, metal, plastic

57 x 18 x 8 cm

A paint roller suspended in mid-air, with tongues hanging from it; heavy tongues that have never spoken the truth. Each tongue, a voice broken under the pressure of context, a discourse shaped not by conviction, but by convenience. A silent motion of conformism, an adaptation without a backbone. The artwork cleverly satirizes the discursive flexibility of those who "repaint" their beliefs according to the direction of the global current. A quiet reflection on sincerity lost in the noise of contemporary opportunism.

Rollin’ with the Gods

2025

plaster, gelcoat, pigment, metal, plastic

62 x 32 x 12 cm

The work proposes an aesthetic reinterpretation of an ancient sculpture, transformed into a roller, a banal tool, but loaded with intentions and meanings. Bathed in the leaking paint, the sculpture becomes a symbol of the way populist ideologies “paint” the collective consciousness, mask radical discourses in attractive packaging and reactivate dangerous concepts under the guise of novelty.

The message is a critical one: behind seemingly reinvented forms often lie the same old, destructive mechanisms. The work reflects on how the past is repackaged to serve the interests of the present and becomes a visual commentary on the manipulation, aestheticization of ideology and the danger of conscious forgetting.

As part of the Wet Snow exhibition, the piece adds an incisive voice to the dialogue about democracy, censorship and the responsibility of the artist in an unstable political climate.

BIO

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.

SUZANA DAN

IRL and internet are horrible places and I’m here to make them worse.

2016/2024

acrylic on canvas

variable dimensions

The project delves into the intricate web of our digital personas, investigating the correlation between images shared on social media and the complexities of our intimate familial dynamics. Analyzing these projections, I look for perspectives on the nuances of the narratives whose distorted visions reflect the impossibility and dysfunctionality of family relationships in the digital age. By integrating resources from private life and archival images from mass media or social media feeds, the project focuses on erasing the boundaries between reality and our imagination. I have superimposed seemingly mundane personal histories, but loaded with genuine feelings, over the image of glamorous narratives, stripped of any trace of human emotion. By exploring the intersections between private life and the mediatized landscape of society, I provoke a small exercise in reflection on the constructed nature of contemporary reality. This project misused images from the social media feed and stories from my once private and peaceful, currently fucked and vomited all over the walls life.

Thanx Alice Cooper & fuck you dear life.

BIO

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.

DIMITRIE LUCA GORA

Green Flame

2025

ready-made installation, stove, resin

78 x 53 x 41 cm

A flame caught in a body that no longer breathes. Green, like an alien sign, like a frozen memory. A surface that does not consume itself, yet calls the gaze to linger. Between warmth and silence, between fire and stone, only the question remains: what burns when the burning has ceased?

BIO

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.

DUMITRU GORZO

Untitled

2023

Acrylic resin, pigment, sawdust on fiberglass mesh

118 x 190 cm

Untitled

2025

pigmented resin, sand on fiberglass mesh

92 x 134 cm

Gorzo maintains a satirical attitude towards societal issues, which is evident in his work, characterized by the versatility of mediums ranging from hand-carved wooden reliefs with a raw presence, sometimes referencing Romanian folklore, to bold paintings that retain a neo-pop conceptual sensibility.

BIO

Dumitru Gorzo (b. 1975, Ieud, Maramureș) is one of the most active and prolific contemporary visual artists from Romania. A graduate of the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Painting Department, Gorzo is the co-founder of the Rostopasca group and is known for his multidisciplinary practice that combines painting, sculpture, installation, and public space intervention. He has exhibited extensively both in Romania and internationally — in New York, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Basel, Brussels, and Dublin — in galleries, museums, and alternative spaces such as SLAG Gallery (New York), RX&SLAG (Paris), MARe, or MNAC.

AYOUNG KIM

Delivery Dancer’s Sphere

2022

single-channel video

25 min

written and directed by Ayoung Kim

produced by Heejung Oh

assistant director: Chae Yu

project managers: Junyoung Lee, Yoojin Jang

production team: Hyejeong Kim, Sarah Kang, SJ Lee

Courtesy of the artist

Ernst Mo (an anagram of ‘Monster’) is a female delivery rider who works for a platform called Delivery Dancer in the fictitious Seoul. In this fiction, Seoul is a labyrinth of endlessly regenerating routes, and the Dancers (workers of Delivery Dancer) pursue neverending delivery work under the control of a master algorithm called Dancemaster.

This work is not only about the gig economy and platform labour, which have become immensely popular in South Korea especially during the pandemic, but also about the topological labyrinth, the possible world(s), the hypervigilance, and the accelerationist urge for optimization of body, time and space. It contains hints of a queer relationship with a counterpart from another possible world.

BIO

Ayoung Kim currently lives and works in Seoul. She synthesizes the outcome of far-reaching speculation, establishing connections between biopolitics and border control, the memory of stone and virtual memory, ancestral origins and imminent futures. These narratives take the forms of video, VR, sonic fiction, image, diagram and text, and are exposed as exhibitions, performances, theatrical projects and publications. Kim idiosyncratically synthesizes geopolitics, mythology, technology, and futuristic iconography, and retroactively collects the speculative time to infiltrate the present. Her interest in synthesis, hybridization, and the coexistence of heterogeneous time led to an interest in all kinds of intersections, transfers, transpositions, and interchanges of time, space, structure, and syntax.

RUSUDAN KHIZANISHVILI

Spirits of the Depths

2024

oil, canvas

100 x 80 cm

Courtesy of the artist

The artwork Spirits of the Depths is filled with a mystical and surreal sense of searching for interactions between worlds, contacting the Invisible and Unknown, focusing on Observation and Hearing. It is based on Khizanishvili's recent research of Carl Gustav Jung’s book Liber Novus.

BIO

Rusudan Khizanishvili (1979) lives and paints in Tbilisi, Georgia. Her work intersects with ecofeminism, mysticism, and the political manifestations inherent in visual art. Khizanishvili's exploration of feminine strength ties deeply to the interconnectedness of nature and humanity, revealing the spiritual and ecological harmony disrupted by patriarchal systems. The mystical elements in her art evoke ancient archetypes and transcendence, while her bold, layered imagery becomes a form of political resistance—challenging dominant narratives and envisioning alternative futures where identities and environments coalesce in fluid, transformative states.

MILER LAGOS

Kopek

2024

Intaglio print, iron flings on craft cotton paper

170 x 170 cm

The Reserve (La Reserva) is a series of intaglio prints created from chainsaw-cut centenary tree slices. This work reflects on the rupture of memory and the marks left by time and human intervention. The chainsaw wound disrupts the tree’s history’s continuity, leaving an immediacy imprint, an irreversible fracture in the organic growth narrative.

Each print captures the oxidation process, where rust becomes a symbol of ruin and transformation. This ongoing decay mirrors the instability of civilization, revealing how power leaves its traces over time. In some pieces, gold leaf is applied over the rust, creating an illusion of preservation and embellishment, yet the oxidation continues beneath, echoing the fragility of imposed order and the inevitable resurfacing of what is concealed.

2024

intaglio print, copper foil, iron flings on craft cotton paper

170 x 170 cm

BIO

Miler Lagos (b. 1973, Colombia) currently lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia. He explores the relationship between humanity and nature, addressing the tensions between memory, transformation, and permanence. His work examines how human intervention alters natural systems, questioning its role within a fragile balance. Through sculpture and installation, he combines industrialized materials with artisanal processes, creating a dialogue between the ephemeral and the enduring, the natural and the constructed. By manipulating these materials and reconstructing them into organic forms, his works reveal the traces of human intervention and the impossibility of returning to an original state. In an era where humanity's memory has shifted from the tangible to the immaterial, Lagos investigates the marks we leave behind—what remains and what fades away. His work resonates with the nostalgia of a time when history had weight and texture, while simultaneously confronting the contradictions of a humanity that advances without ensuring its permanence.

Lagos has participated in major biennials, including SITE Santa Fe Biennial (USA, 2014), Cuenca Biennial (Ecuador, 2016), OpenArt Biennial (Sweden, 2017), and Off Biennale "Something Else" (Egypt, 2018). His solo exhibitions have been presented at institutions such as Frost Art Museum (Miami), Museo de Arte del Banco de la República (Bogotá), and Philagrafika (Philadelphia), while his work has been featured in group shows at Saatchi Gallery (London), Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, and Lehman College (New York).

His work is held in significant public and private collections, including Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson, JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, Harvard Business School, Banco de la República de Colombia, and the Rubell Family Collection. He has been an artist-in-residence at Gasworks (London), Location One (New York), and AB Projects (Canada).

CHARMAINE POH

GOOD MORNING YOUNG BODY

2023

performance-lecture digital video, synthetic media

6:23 mins

Technical director: Jon Chan

Courtesy of the artist

The video uses as its basis found footage and material of the artist’s time as a preteen TV actor in the early 2000s in Singapore, a time of an unregulated internet and nascent image distribution. Through the use of a deep-fake trained on this found material, the video resurrects the series character, E-Ching, to address the politics of the gaze, the femme-presenting body, and agency. By compressing time and space, the eternal12-year-old E-Ching offers a revisionist narrative that holds a yearning for freedom.

GOOD MORNING YOUNG BODY has been exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum, the Seoul Museum ofArt - SeMA Bunker, Blindspot Gallery and Huis Marseille. It has been acquired by KADIST.

BIO

Charmaine Poh (b. 1990) is an artist from Singapore working across media, moving image, and performance to peel apart, interrogate, and hold ideas of agency, repair, and the body across worlds. She aligns herself with strategies of visibility, opacity, deviance, and futurity.

She has exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum, the Seoul Museum of Art, Blindspot Gallery, REDCAT LA, Huis Marseille, and the 60th Venice Biennale - Foreigners Everywhere, among others. In 2019, she was one of Forbes Asia’s 30 under 30 in the arts. Her work has been collected by Vega Foundation, Sunpride Foundation, and KADIST. She was recently named Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year for 2025. Based between Berlin and Singapore, she is a co-founder of the magazine Jom and a member of Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research (AFSAR).

BUKET SAVCI

Secret

2025

oil on canvas

60 x 76 cm

Buket Savci’s recent paintings orchestrate multiple figures entangled with each other, painted in vivid colors with details and patterns. Figures in the work are lost in their internal journeys, away from daily struggles, forming a pile of bodies representing a spiral of hopes, dreams, memories, fears and expectations. Her practice is rooted in the emotional weight of personal and collective endurance, and the inner lives we carry. The work encourages conversations that challenge prejudice and discrimination, to find strength in our community, while highlighting the necessity of human touch and connection. In her process of bringing folks together to pose for possible paintings, she puts strangers meeting for the first time together in very intimate and close encounters. Her observation on the spontaneity of how they interact and touch each other forms the basis of the paintings. Creating a setting of both a social experiment and a therapeutic performance is the first step of her project, which also forms a bond between individuals towards collective healing. While they lie down vulnerable, each touch conveys an emotion, and reaches for unconditional love and trust. The new painting ‘Secret’ reflects her anxieties about everything being so out of control in the world, and her hope that maybe in another dimension the Good has the ultimate control. The figures, just like protective goddesses or witches watching over us, bringing their power/spell together to change things for the better, making everything all right.

BIO

Buket Savci is a Brooklyn-based, Istanbul-born Turkish-American artist. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute and MFA from the New York Academy of Art. Savci has shown her work in numerous group exhibitions and art fairs both nationally and internationally, and has presented solo exhibitions at Kravets Wehby Gallery (NY), Red Arrow Gallery (Nashville), 5-50 Gallery (NY), Spring/Break Art Show (NY), Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati), Olcay Art (Istanbul), and joint two person show at Kunstverein Ludwigsburg (Germany). She is awarded residencies at LMCC Arts Center Residency Program (New York), Wassaic Projects (NY), ChaNorth (NY), Vermont Studio Center (VT), and Pilotenkueche (Leipzig, Germany). She is a recipient of a Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Painting Fellowship, among many other awards. Her work has been published in The Figure book by Rizzoli, Istanbul Codex: Contemporary Artists from Turkey by Imago Mundi Foundation, Friend of the Artist, Hyperallergic, Artnet, Create Magazine, ArtSpeak.nyc and Whitehot Magazine. She is featured in FlowState / North Brooklyn Artists TV documentary streaming on All Arts TV and PBS.org.

BOSCO SODI

Untitled

2023,

Clay gazed in 17k gold,

49 cm

Untitled

2025

Mixed Media on canvas

26.50 x 17.50 cm

Untitled

2019

Clay

77 x 74 x 30 cm

Untitled (BS 2221)

2016

Ceramic glaze on volcanic rock

37 x 25 x 37 cm

The careful selection and use of precious pigments is one of the characteristics of Sodi’s art: some of them have a rich historical background. Among those, the pigment derived from cochineal is a fitting example. Before the invention of synthetic pigments, the colour obtained from cochineal was the international standard for red. The luxurious red fabrics that dot Titian’s canvases are, quite literally, appropriations from the Americas. Cochineal, which is still produced in Oaxaca (Mexico), has recently seen an increase in demand, thanks to the growing demand for natural pigments.

Sodi’s clay sculptures are created at the artist’s studio, Casa Wabi, in Oaxaca, Mexico. There, he extracts raw earth from the ground and combines it with water and sand to form clay. He uses this elemental material, embedded with ancestral significance, to create minimalist sculptures. Once cured, the clay sculptures are fired in a traditional brick kiln with wood, jacaranda seeds, and coconut shells, a process that imbues the sculptures with varied terracotta hues, streaks of green and black, and a multitude of fissures in the surface, giving each ball a unique identity.

With these sculptures, Sodi continues to build on his oeuvre in which mystery and contemplation play a central role. Just like his cubes, these spheres are made of mud and clay. They are the result of the artist’s research into traditional techniques of handcrafted manufacturing. As is often the case, Sodi strips his work of the notion of time - here reflected by the use of centuries-old (timeless) methods and pigments that were already used in ancient cultures. These pigments ensure that the work radiates a certain energy - an energy that develops further when the organic material dries up, hardens and bursts. The work reflects on the old relationship between humans and clay, a material which is charged with the energy of all four elements.

Sodi’s relationship with these raw materials is based on wabi-sabi, the Japanese philosophy that greatly values imperfection and the impermanence of life, the respect for nature, and the authenticity of its materials. Sodi’s workshop, Casa Wabi — founded by the artist in 2013 and designed by Tadao Ando — was named after this aesthetic belief. At Casa Wabi in Puerto Escondido (Oaxaca, Mexico), Sodi collaborates with local craftsmen on these clay sculptures, which are fired by hand in traditional, rustic kilns. Several of these workers have a migration background. While Sodi’s clay works explore and challenge contemporary notions related to immigration, borders, and politics, what is present is the positive power of the artist’s will to create. Sodi employs timeless craftsmanship methods to shape and form the material of the earth, in pursuit of challenging the viewer to think about what, ultimately, will remain.

BIO

Bosco Sodi (b. 1970, Mexico City) is known for his richly textured, vividly colored large-scale paintings. Sodi has discovered an emotive power within the essential crudeness of the materials that he uses to execute his paintings. Focusing on material exploration, the creative gesture, and the spiritual connection between the artist and his work, Sodi seeks to transcend conceptual barriers. Sodi leaves many of his paintings untitled, with the intention of removing any predisposition or connection beyond the work’s immediate existence. The work itself becomes a memory and a relic symbolic of the artist’s conversation with the raw material that brought the painting into creation. Sodi’s influences range from l’art informel, looking to artists such as Antoni Tàpies and Jean Dubuffet, to master colorists such as Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and the bright hues of his native heritage.

MIRCEA SUCIU

BIO

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.

PHILIP TOPOLOVAC

Großelternparadoxon

2017

sculpture series

war relics from Berlin and restored household appliances

various sizes

Courtesy of the artist

As in numerous other projects, Philip Topolovac's sculpture series “Grandparents' Paradox” deals with remnants of the past, which he collects during his urban archaeological investigations on construction sites in Berlin. On display are two pairs of household objects associated with traditionally female (iron) and male (mechanical drill) activities. The destroyed objects dug out of the ground are each juxtaposed with a completely immaculate, identical counterpart. The respective pairs suffered different fates despite being the same age. The title refers to the “grandfather paradox,” a term from time travel theory: If a time traveler were to kill his own grandfather, could he even exist today to commit this act in the past?

Some people say the past is golden

2020

sculpture series

war relics from Berlin, gold-plated

various sizes

Courtesy of the artist

Fragments of machines, tools, and even a pistol belong to this group of finds from World War II that Philip Topolovac has unearthed in Berlin in recent years. The romanticization and glorification of a terrifying past, which is very common today, is the starting point for this work. Refined with gold leaf, the technical artifacts appear to have increased in value. As parts of machines and tools, they may have contributed to human suffering.

Für immer

2012

video installation loop

1:20 min

Courtesy of the artist

The video installation shows a model of the mystic ship "Titanic", which sank in 1912 and until today is one of the most famous wrecks in the world. In a continuous loop the model is shown for a while, before it suddenly explodes. The video can be seen as a badly researched catastrophy movie as well as a metaphor about the glorification of manmade loss. As it reappears after its annihilation, the ship seems to be caught in an everlasting cycle of destruction and rebirth. The myth of its dramatic loss is turned into a comedic farce.

BIO

Born in 1979, lives and works in Berlin. From 2001 to 2008 he studied at the Berlin University of the Arts and graduated in 2008 with the title of master student. Since then he has participated in numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad. Topolovac's sculptures and objects examine the texture of the world while questioning the investigative gaze. Whether the artist is molding landscapes in urban spaces with polyester, finding artifacts on construction sites, or planting technical growths in the corners of rooms, he is always concerned with constructs of reality and our relationship to it.

JORINDE VOIGT

Grosse Rhapsodie

2017/2018

ink, gold leaf, pastel, oil chalks and graphite on paper, framed

152 x 241 x 9,5 cm

Courtesy of the artist

Through drawing, Jorinde Voigt charts the invisible architectures of perception, emotion, and interrelation—translating complex inner states into spatial, rhythmic compositions. In Immersion VII (7) and Grosse Rhapsodie, 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 Immersion VII (7) to the introspective geometries of Grosse Rhapsodie, her works trace fragile yet resonant lines, between interior and exterior, self and other. In the context of Wet Snow, these drawings become both maps and metaphors: articulating the thread that connects and disorients, that holds together and reveals.

Immersion VII (7)

2018

ink, India ink, aluminium leaf, pastel, oil chalks and graphite on paper, framed

110 x 74 x 5 cm

Courtesy of the artist

BIO

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.