Press release_EN

Comunicat de presă_RO

“Colours. A Deconstructed Painting” is Lia Perjovschi’s third solo show with Ivan Gallery, after “Timeline with Witnesses” in Bucharest in 2016, and the “2020 Key Words” organised by Ivan Gallery in Autumn 2020 at Spike Berlin. The current exhibition presents a site-specific installation designed by Lia Perjovschi in the distinctive style specific to her timelines, this time encompassing a linear sequence of artworks made by the artist in different years and in diverse media. The works especially created and selected by Lia Perjovschi for the exhibition trace the complex paths of her artistic career, crossing through early, as well as more recent chapters in her experimental endeavour with painting, photography, textile objects, and mixed media installations, embedded inside a larger spatial composition like the elements of a deconstructed painting.

The “Colours” invoked by the artist refer to the range of perception, the complexity of the human mind’s physiological and symbolical mechanisms, that subjectively create connections between the spectre of light and samples of colours of various degrees, shades and meanings. Like a painting that is conceived and perceived through colours, Lia Perjovschi’s exhibition builds through associations and juxtapositions of significant images and objects created by the artist: photographs, costumes, shadows of the self and the human body, as well as actual paintings. However, since the perception of the colour spectre is context-related as well, each historical and cultural time is labeled by its peculiar colour range and specific meanings:

“30 years in black/white and grey. The colours were rare, fragmentary – during Communism, the colours of darkness, powerlessness, immobility, sleep. Followed by 30 ‘colourful’ years in the crazy dynamics of neoliberalism, when the colours sometimes become loud, the black&white and grey now being sanctuaries of calm, pause and focus.

An exhibition of deconstructed paintings. Without balance. Subjects in context, scattered elements. An ‘explosion’ of colours and samples, that influence, manipulate, hypnotise.

Symbolically speaking, all colours are both positive and negative. When I was considering the subject of colours, it was before the war on Ukraine. I was thinking about something optimistic, that would bring a sense of hope, especially after the two years of the pandemic. Nevertheless, the war changes everything…”  (Lia Perjovschi)

Lia Perjovschi (b. 1961, Sibiu, Romania) is the founder and coordinator of CAA CAA (Contemporary Art Archive and Centre for Art Analysis) an organic work-in-progress project (under different names since 1985) and KM (Knowledge Museum), an interdisciplinary research project from 1999-today. Her activity can be summarised as a journey from her physical body to the universal body of knowledge and was shown in more than 700 exhibitions, lectures, workshops around the world, while her artistic practice comprises various media, from performance to assemblage, from drawing and text to site-specific installations of objects, facts, diagrams, mind maps and timelines. From her earliest days mounting performances and exhibitions in her apartment, in the university or throughout the city, to her recent plans for the Knowledge Museum, Lia Perjovschi has been concerned with producing opportunities for intellectual exchange. 

Among other venues, she has exhibited at Cukrarna Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia (2021-22); Tallinn Art Hall (2021); Muzeum Susch, Switzerland (2020); Kunsthaus Hamburg and Museum der Moderne Salzburg (both 2016); MUSAC, León, Spain (2015); Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina, USA, and Bienal de São Paulo (both 2014); MACBA, Barcelona, and Künstlerhaus Vienna (2011); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich, and Jamaica Center, New York (all 2010); Mumok, Vienna and the Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale, South Korea (2009); Sydney Biennale and Jumex Foundation, Mexico City, (2008); Tate Modern, London, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, and Centre Pompidou, Paris (all 2007); Royal College of Art, London (2006), etc. Lia Perjovschi lives and works in Sibiu and Bucharest, Romania. 

Concurrently with the exhibition, Ivan Gallery will present at Art Basel in Basel, Feature section, between June 14-19, a solo show with Lia Perjovschi’s early performances from 1988-1994.

The exhibition “Colours. A Deconstructed Painting” can be visited in Ivan Gallery’s space inside Atelierele Malmaison on Calea Plevnei 137C, B side, 1st floor, until the 9th of July 2022, Thur-Sat 3-7 pm, or by appointment outside the visiting hours.

Photo credits: Cătălin Georgescu