Press Release in English: Bye-Bye Confidence_Press Release_EN

Press Release in Romanian:  Bye-Bye Confidence_Comunicat_RO

Ivan Gallery is pleased to invite you on Thursday, June 20, starting at 7 pm, to the opening of the group
exhibition Bye-Bye Confidence, with works by Iulia Toma, Ross Taylor, Mădălina Zaharia, Simona Runcan, Gavril Pop.

The assembled things come apart, unravel, reunite and get reassigned, or, as the protagonists of Mădălina Zaharia‘s film would put it, in the form of a manifesto-incantation: “Confidence, we were never really friends and by the look of things, we most probably never will be”. The film Bye-Bye Confidence (2023), directed by Mădălina Zaharia (b.1985), has a double role: on the one hand, it gives the title to the exhibition, and on the other hand, it facilitates the creation of a framework for bringing together, in a summer exhibition, five artists with different practices, but quite a lot of affinities and common stakes. These artistic perspectives are shaped around current socio-political themes, proposing alternative ways of knowing the world. The visual essay proposed by Mădălina Zaharia, which we can see as “about and anti-self-confidence”, is constructed through a dynamic string of informal between 5 friends, held in an inner London space. The unlearning process occurs by creating a new language, created by the rhythm determined by alternating the frames with the six characters (the dog appears as a non-human protagonist). The colour and sound codes correspond to the characters — six shades, six sound codes and the fog that floods in with stifling heat, torpid determine the process of resemantization.

This process is also found in another form in the work of interdisciplinary artist Iulia Toma (b.1974), by enacting a cartographic exercise. Part of the “Subjective Pedologies” textile collage series (2019), the
works aim to transform the textile environment into a field of analysis of speculative fabulations, combining traditional forms of landscape representation with modern techniques of spatial interpretation. The study starts from a subjective investigation of the Tranzit Garden, an affective exploration of the stages of a garden, from terra incognita to utopian space. We find ourselves searching for a garden-shelter with fertile soils that ward off ecological disasters and catastrophic prospects.

Through careful acts, Gavril Pop (b. 1998) uncovers hidden nuances and explores the transformative
potential of process and gestural repetition. In this new series, he focuses on more concrete forms of
imagery associated with violence. The accumulations and variations of his objects, from infinite
configurations of geometric shapes to permutation constellations, prompt him to probe forms of latent
violence. At the same time, the visual tropes associated with conflict produce a new organization of the
world, more friendly to uncertainty and semantic gaps.

Simona Runcan‘s (1942 – 2007) works are part of the series “The Principles of Equilibrium” (1975 – 1981) and “Silent Cohabitations” (1988 – 1999) and lead us to a visual research of the relationship between object and two-dimensional space. The encounter between draped arrangements, conical objects, and three-dimensional installations that precede or succeed the two-dimensional ones makes the intuition of empty space find expression. The relationship with the landscape is non-descriptive, and the catalytic energies of new meanings spread diffusely. The deformation of megalithic patterns and structures can be seen as a way of understanding and responding with a new language to external social forms.

Works such as “Only Eating Potatoes” (2015) or “Our Dead Plant” (2010-2020) by the London artist Ross Taylor (b. 1982) inspire us from the very title, a fictional universe populated by characters created by overlapping landscapes and bright colours, proposing the meeting of heterogeneous spaces, constantly alluding to each other. This obsession with spatiality gives rise to forms that can hardly be assimilated into a particular kingdom or species. The leaps between everyday and mythical imaginings, psychological interior and exterior, and prehistoric and hypermodern make room for benign creatures strung together like inserts in a travelogue.

Ultimately, the overwhelming confidence, as a polluting stimulus leading to “world conquest” or “ecological disasters”, is banished into the world as far away as possible, dissipated through artistic filters until it reaches total dissolution.

The exhibition can be visited in Ivan Gallery’s space inside Atelierele Malmaison on Calea Plevnei 137C, B side, 1st floor, until the August 2 2024, Wed-Sat 3-7 pm, or by appointment outside the visiting hours.