Bucharest Biennale

The Bucharest Biennale (full name: Bucharest International Biennial for Contemporary Art) is a contemporary art festival held every two years in Bucharest, Romania. The first Biennale was held in 2005, with the following one held in May-June 2006. From 2006 onwards, the festival will be held every two years. The Biennale is organised by PAVILION, journal for politics and culture, and is sponsored by various private partners and cultural institutions. The Biennale was founded by Razvan Ion and Eugen Radescu.

2006

The 2006 festival was curated by the Hungarian critic and curator Zsolt Petranyi, and was held at numerous venues throughout Bucharest, including the National Museum of Geology, the National Museum of Literature (Romania), the National Centre for Dance, the Botanical Gardens, South Shop and the Herăstrău Skate Park. 18 artists, both Romanian and international, participated in the 2006 edition.

2008

The 2008 Biennale was held between 23 May and 21 June, and it was curated by Jan-Erik Lundström and Johan Sjöström from Sweden. Its theme was "Being Here: Mapping the Contemporary".

Bucharest

Bucharest (/ˈbjuːkərɛst/; Romanian: București, pronounced [bukuˈreʃtʲ]) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, at 44°25′57″N 26°06′14″E / 44.43250°N 26.10389°E / 44.43250; 26.10389Coordinates: 44°25′57″N 26°06′14″E / 44.43250°N 26.10389°E / 44.43250; 26.10389, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than 60 km (37.3 mi) north of the Danube River and the Bulgarian border.

Bucharest was first mentioned in documents in 1459. It became the capital of Romania in 1862 and is the centre of Romanian media, culture, and art. Its architecture is a mix of historical (neo-classical), interbellum (Bauhaus and art deco), communist-era and modern. In the period between the two World Wars, the city's elegant architecture and the sophistication of its elite earned Bucharest the nickname of "Little Paris" (Micul Paris). Although buildings and districts in the historic city centre were heavily damaged or destroyed by war, earthquakes, and above all Nicolae Ceaușescu's program of systematization, many survived. In recent years, the city has been experiencing an economic and cultural boom.

Contemporary art

Contemporary art is art produced at the present period in time. Contemporary art includes, and develops from, postmodern art, which is itself a successor to modern art. In vernacular English, "modern" and "contemporary" are synonyms, resulting in some conflation of the terms "modern art" and "contemporary art" by non-specialists.

Scope

Some define contemporary art as art produced within "our lifetime," recognizing that lifetimes and life spans vary. However, there is a recognition that this generic definition is subject to specialized limitations.

The classification of "contemporary art" as a special type of art, rather than a general adjectival phrase, goes back to the beginnings of Modernism in the English-speaking world. In London, the Contemporary Art Society was founded in 1910 by the critic Roger Fry and others, as a private society for buying works of art to place in public museums. A number of other institutions using the term were founded in the 1930s, such as in 1938 the Contemporary Art Society of Adelaide, Australia, and an increasing number after 1945. Many, like the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston changed their names from ones using "Modern art" in this period, as Modernism became defined as a historical art movement, and much "modern" art ceased to be "contemporary". The definition of what is contemporary is naturally always on the move, anchored in the present with a start date that moves forward, and the works the Contemporary Art Society bought in 1910 could no longer be described as contemporary.

Adrian Ghenie

Adrian Ghenie (born 13 August 1977, Baia Mare) is a contemporary Romanian painter.

Early life and education

The son of a dentist, he studied fine arts at the Arts and Crafts School in Baia Mare between 1991 and 1994. He is a graduate of the Art and Design University of Cluj-Napoca (2001).

Career

Ghenie lives and works in Cluj, Berlin, and London. In 2005, he co-founded Galeria Plan B in Cluj, together with Mihai Pop, a production and exhibition space for contemporary art. In 2008 Plan B opened a permanent exhibition space in Berlin.

His work has been widely exhibited in group and solo exhibitions, including at Tate Liverpool, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.

In June 2014 the oil on canvas painting "The Fake Rothko" was sold for £1,426,000 ($2,428,140).

In February 2016, the large oil on canvar painting "The Sunflowers of 1937" inspired by Vincent van Gogh's famous "Sunflowers" was sold in London for £3,177,000 at a Sotheby's auction, marking it the most expensive painting sold by the Romanian artist.

Răzvan Ion

Răzvan Ion is a theoretician, curator, cultural manager and political activist. He is the co-editor of PAVILION – journal for politics and culture, co-director of the BUCHAREST BIENNALE – Bucharest International Biennial for Contemporary Art (with Eugen Rădescu), and in 2008 was appointed director of PAVILION – the center for contemporary art and culture in Bucharest.

Career

He was an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley; Lisbon University; City University of New York; University of London; Sofia University; University of Kiev; etc. He has held conferences and lectures at different art institutions like Witte de With, Rotterdam;Kunsthalle Vienna;Art in General, New York; rum46, Aarhus;Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; la Casa Encendida, Madrid;New Langton, San Francisco; CCA, Tbilisi; Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj; University of Art, Cluj; etc. He writes for different publications and he recently curated ’From Contemplating to Constructing Situations’ and "Exploring the Return of Repression" at PAVILION, Bucharest and rum46, Aarhus. Presently, he is working on the book projects "Exploring the Return of Repression" and "Rhizomic Structures Of Art Institutions. Neo-Politics Of Culture". His future curatorial projects includes "The Affluence of the Working Class from Differentiation to Colectivism" which deals with the concept of fashion from the perspective of anarchism, activism and social-political movements. He is a professor at the University of Bucharest where he teaches Curatorial Studies and Critical Thinking.