Ștefan Sava
b. 1982, Slobozia, Romania
Lives and works in Bucharest
Ștefan Sava’s projects combine photography, video, performance and object and are based on a long process of theoretical reflection and research. He is particularly interested in the subject of recent history and in the way in which it can be visually reactivated through an analytical approach. His more recent works explore how modernity and hypermodernity likewise become cultural contexts appropriated and contested from rather visceral perspectives, marked by falls in anonymity and by the constant exploration of the internal limits and mechanisms of the human body.
Ștefan Sava holds a MA from the Photo-Video Department, The National University of Arts Bucharest and also a PhD from the same university, following a research about the Holocaust in Romania. Among the exhibitions he took part in: 2019 “The Photographic Archive and History in Transformation” (solo show, Salonul de proiecte, Bucharest); 2018 “Gates and Ploys. Casting a Shadow” (with Ion Grigorescu, Ivan Gallery, Bucharest); 2016 “The Falling of the Arches”, Riga Photography Biennial (solo show, Alma Gallery, Riga, LV), 2015 “Appearance & Essence”, Art Encounters Biennial (group show, Timișoara, RO), “Mapping Bucharest: Art, Memory, and Revolution 1916-2016”, Vienna Biennale (group show, MAK, Vienna, AT), “Inventing the Truth”, Venice Biennale (group show, The New Gallery of Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanities Research in Venice, IT). Ștefan Sava is a founding member of Salonul de proiecte in Bucharest, a research and production-based curatorial project, currently researching the Mihai Oroveanu Image Collection inside the project “Photographic Image Between Past and Future”.
Studies
2010-2017 – National University of Arts, Bucharest (PhD)
2008-2010 – National University of Arts, Bucharest, Photography and Video Department (MFA)
2008 – Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts (class of Nancy Davenport), with the project Nothing Is Revealed (Hallein, Austria)
Solo exhibitions
2019 – Arhiva fotografică și istoria în transformare / The Photographic Archive and History in Transformation (Salonul de proiecte, Bucharest, a curatorial selection of images from the photographic archive of Mihai Oroveanu, part of Salonul de proiecte’s extensive program The Photographic Archive: Transformation of History / Memory and Research)
2018 – Porți și vicleșuguri. Aruncarea Umbrei / Gates and Ploys. Casting a Shadow (with Ion Grigorescu, Ivan Gallery, Bucharest)
2016 – The Falling of the Arches (Alma Gallery, Riga, inside Riga Photography Biennial); The Falling of the Arches (screening, Ivan Gallery, Bucharest)
2015 – Ruins of a Day (Ivan Gallery, Bucharest)
2013 – Facts about Which There Can Be Questions (Ivan Gallery, Bucharest)
2012 – The Inside-Out of the Wall (Ivan Gallery, Bucharest)
2010 – Atoms and Void (Galeria Posibilă, Bucharest)
Selected group exhibitions
2021 – În Bucureștiul iubit / In Beloved Bucharest (Ivan Gallery, Bucharest); Despre peisaj / On Landscape (ICR Lisabona, Portugal)
2019 – Art fairs: The Armory Show New York (Ivan Gallery)
2018 – Art fairs: LISTE Basel (Ivan Gallery)
2016 – Few Were Happy with Their Condition (Gallery 400, Chicago); Ongoing h/Histories (Studio Gallery, Budapest)
2015 – Europe/South-East. Recorded Memories (Benaki Museum, Athens); Mapping Bucharest: Art, Memory, and Revolution 1916-2016 (Vienna Biennale, MAK Vienna); Inventing the Truth, (Venice Biennale, The New Gallery of Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanities Research in Venice); Few Were Happy with their Condition (Kunsthalle Winterthur); ArtEncounters Biennial 1st edition (Timișoara, Romania); Laughter and Forgetting (part of Bucharest Art Week, Bucharest); Viennacontemporary Art Fair (“Reflections” section, Ivan Gallery)
2014 – WHAT ABOUT Y[OUR] MEMORY (The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest)
2013 – Europe/South-East. Recorded Memories (Braunschweig Museum of Photography, Braunschweig University and Goethe Institut, Braunschweig); Common Nostalgia (Pavilion Unicredit, Bucharest; Art fairs: Arco Madrid (opening section, Ivan Gallery); Viennafair (Ivan Gallery)
2012 – Plug to Nature (National Library, Bucharest); From the Backstage (Salonul de proiecte, Bucharest)
2011 – Here and Then (Centre for Contemporary Culture Club Electro Putere, Craiova, Romania); Fresh 2011 (Kovacs Gabor Art Foundation, Kogart House, Budapest)
2010 – Cities Methodologies Bucharest, with the project “InnerCITY”, in collaboration with Mihnea Simiras (Casa Scarlat-Ghica, Bucharest); End of Academia (Anexa MNAC, Bucharest)
Other
2013 – Missing Originals (artist talk, Pavilion Unicredit, Bucharest);
2012 – Video screening (Gallery Pfeister, Gudihem)
Awards
2013 – Winner of the Romanian Henkel Award, finalist of the Henkel Art Award, Vienna
Publications
Diana Ursan (coord.), Ștefan Sava. Artist book/Carte de artist, published by Ivan Gallery, Bucharest, 2016