We are delighted to invite you on Thursday April 12, starting 7 pm, at the opening of Simona Runcan’s solo show “Silent Cohabitations”, the second one at Ivan Gallery after the 2016 “The Presence of Objects”.

“Silent Cohabitations” is the title of an extensive series of paintings that Simona Runcan created from 1988 until the end of her activity in 2007. They convey the artist’s explorations inside the shift of her practice towards the medium of painting that took place in the second part of her artistic career. They follow the line of the visual research on space and the relation between objects in the bi-dimensional representation which is to be found as well in her graphic experiments from previous years. Still lifes In their entirety, the paintings render frontal compositions of simple volumes, cones, cone trunks, cylinders, with organic outlines, folds and curves. Simona Runcan’s work process consisted in building these objects, wrapping them in textile materials, placing them in atmospheric installations and documenting them through photographs before painting them.

[read more=”Click here to Read More” less=”Read Less”]

A constant in Simona Runcan’s artistic practice, her interest in the “seen object” widened in the last stages of her activity. Her painterly endeavours, just apparently mimetic, have conceptual stakes. They question, in fact, the conditions and the limits of visuality as an instrument of knowledge. Far from being academic exercises in the study of form, the “Silent Cohabitations” thematise notions like “border”, “difference”, “category”,”distance” and “proximity”. A subtle dialogue is initiated at their surface, the unseen influences between the objects become visible, so that the silent space between them becomes the painting’s true subject:

“No anecdote, no event, nothing sensational, not even the smallest human presence, just the fascination of the trace left by it.
[…]
…To allow ourselves to be inhabited by what left our field, perhaps our visual field; around us, in the hole inside us, we learn the fullness of other dimensions of existence…
…The spaces left empty are the place of the most intense energy, emanations, auras, tensions, thoughts and the fascinations of the human presence…
[…]
The drawn objects serve as a backdrop for creating states of mind, from which the attempt at concentration, at falling inside, at finding the rhythm, the exhaustion through rhythm and the reaching of a conclusion which is a static stage before a new beginning.”
(Simona Runcan)

Simona Runcan (b. 1942 Bucharest – d. 2007 Bucharest) studied at the “Nicolae Grigorescu” Fine Arts Institute (today’s National University of Arts) in Bucharest, where she graduated in 1966 from the Graphics Department and where she lectured after 1989 inside the Fashion Design and Art Pedagogy Departments. Her graphic works, objects, paintings and installations explore in a processual, serial and cyclic manner various themes and working means, from the ‘60s-‘80s experimental, conceptualist graphics to the more tradition-oriented painterly approach embraced by her after 1990. They have been shown in national and international solo and group shows in Europe and South America, in Engraving Biennials in Paris, Prague or Oslo, among others. In 2016 the “Palatele Brâncovenești” Cultural Centre (Mogoșoaia, Romania), showcased an extensive retrospective exhibition with a joint monographic publication.

Special thanks to: Ioana Măgureanu, Patricia Bădulescu, Cristina Cojocaru.

The exhibition can be visited until May 19, Wednesday to Saturday 13-19, or by appointment outside the visiting hours.

photo credits: Ștefan Sava, Cătălin Georgescu
[/read]