The first edition of Open Practice Society aimed to develop a collaborative infrastructure and active support for very young artists (16-20 years old), support the Malmaison Studios community and facilitate public access to the artistic initiatives of this community, respectively of the emerging cultural sector.
The project, structured around the idea of collaboration and transparent dialogue, i.e. getting out of the dusty and hierarchical paradigms of information and experience exchanges between artists, started with an open call with the theme Free to challenge! and a session of public presentations (sharing practices) of the 5 mentors.
The work sessions with the 11 selected young participants lasted about a month and took place in the spaces of the 3 mentor artists, within the Malmaison Studios, with the participants divided into 3 teams, depending on the mediums and work concepts proposed by each of them in the open call stage. In parallel, the participants had meetings and discussion sessions, online and offline, with the gallerist and curator involved in the project team.
This approach aimed to develop the practical skills of each participant in an environment that emulates how they will work as artists after completing their studies, collaborating with the mentors step by step, from the crystallization of the proposed idea initially, continuing with establishing the necessary for each work, exploring alternative approaches and tests, to the production of the final works and the curatorial appropriation.
The project was completed with the pop-up exhibition Feedback Loop, on November 5-7, 2021, under the curatorial direction of Cristina Stoenescu and structured as an exhibition circuit in the spaces VAGon, Room E12, respectively the studios of Floriama Candea and Larisa Crunțeanu, within the Malmaison Studios, open to the public as part of the community’s first Open Doors event. A second exhibition took place at the invitation of Arcub, on the occasion of Urban Culture Days, when a part of the works of the young participants of the Open Practice Society 2021 were toured in the cultural space of Arcub, in the Gabroveni Inn, between 15-30 January 2022.
FEEDBACK LOOP
Group show
November 5-7, 2021
The exhibition brings together beginnings, attempts, processes starting from the artistic ideas of high school students and University students who accepted the challenge of exhibiting in the spaces on the 2nd floor of Malmaison Studios: Ada Maria Ciontu, Andra Mihaela Neda, Diana Oană, Ioana Pătrașcu, Iulia Duduică, Luca Andrei Popa, Mara Oglakci, Natalia Marin, Nikos Licudis & Beatrice Duman and Bianca Ivan.
Artist studios and experimental spaces are transformed within the weekend of November 5-7 into an exploration ground of contemporary art. Feedback Loop is a looped signal, in which the result of a process partially or completely becomes part of a subsequent development effort, anticipating and verifying in time results, continuities and discontinuities of ideas, theories of what is created.
The dialogue between participants and artists, the materialisation of their own ideas through an exhibition project in a space that is still developing as a creative community, are important participatory elements on the Bucharest artistic scene. The exhibition reveals a process in the making, with varying degrees of affect and involvement.
The exhibition addresses questions regarding online identity, the translation of media reality into everyday life, why can’t we live like in a movie? Mara Oglacki and Iulia Duduică reflect on the consumption of images in social media and the formation of a virtual persona that seeks validation, but at the same time is constantly defensive against the influx of information and the redefinition of private space. Their speech is discreetly complemented by Bianca Ivan’s video-poem and the photography installation Lucruri din casă by Ioana Pătrașcu, which reveals without explicitly translating fragments and meanings of the personal universe. In painting, Andra Mihaela Neda practices rendering tensions and interpersonal communication blockages. Ada Maria Ciontu and Diana Oană develop large-scale installations in contrasting ways, translating from previously made observations into drawing and painting, textures and volumes of sculptures with found, melted, transformed objects. Nikos Licudis & Beatrice Duman are a dramatic duo, staging a surreal installation-performance, safely violent. Luca Andrei Popa in turn explores the limits of rigid structures and those freely transforming, within a living installation.
Visitors are invited to discover the artistic experiment and potential of the exhibited works, in a continuous loop of ideas, reactions and future dialogue with emerging artists.
text and curatorial direction: Cristina Stoenescu
Open Practice Society 2021 was developed with the support of Qolony NGO and Malmaison Studios, and was co-financed by the Bucharest City Hall through Arcub, within the Bucharest – Open City program.
