AFFAIR Bucharest | heat

AFFAIR Bucharest heat 24.03. - 07.05.2023 Zuza Golińska, Agata Ingarden, Paweł Olszewski, Larisa Sitar We walk and hear debates of foreign policy, geopolitics and international affairs. We walk while inhaling and exhaling particles of dust that connect everything together. Affair Bucharest - heat transposes cultural policy at a more affective level. It has started with empathy and affinity for the two galleries' artists, for a shared sense of framing. Our cultural policy is a collaborative show between two galleries in two Central-Eastern European cities, Bucharest and Warsaw, that aim at emotional dialogue between some of their artistic practices. The policy follows a logic of excitement and easiness, employing methods of working based on careful intuition and fun. Heat and coldness, fluidity and thunder sever the artworks. With a human-looking attitude in a rather post-human dominating environment, containing electricity, emotions and paranoia, the works dissolve into an eerie realm. Into each of our hidden eerie realms. Not entirely visible at first glance, a sense of distinction between domesticated animals and wild creatures hovers around. Condos of cemented clouds embedded with oyster shells, and office blind stripes coagulate in Agata Ingarden’s floating sculptures. In Larisa Sitar’s work, undulating concrete arms spring from the gallery wall, echoing a seemingly absurd and corporeal dimension of a rigid materiality. Bending and zapping through the air like yawning empty cavities, Zuza Golińska’s sculpture stretches its metal limbs as if transparency and opacity harmoniously existed together. As if our stream of consciousness became a tangible shape for a split second. Drowned in a series of lucid dreams, translucent creatures and object fragments escape the alienating canvas surfaces of Paweł Olszewski’s paintings. The molecular exchange amongst the works is like a wave that plunges you in and out of unexpected moving narratives. Zuza Golińska (b. 1990 in Gdańsk, living and working in Warsaw, PL) is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the impact of architecture and public space on the human individual. Her art reflects on the way in which human physical and mental wellbeing is influenced by the psychology of space in the time of civilisational acceleration and late capitalism. Zuza is a graduate of the Studio of Spatial Activities in the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Selected exhibitions and awards: Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, Zachęta National Gallery, Delfina Foundation in London, National Gallery Prague, Dorothea von Stetten Art Award 2022, ArtePrize 2018 by Artevue and Delfina Foundation, nominee of StartPoint Prize 2015. (excerpt from text by Natalia Sielewicz) Agata Ingarden (b. 1994 in Krakow, PL, lives and works in Paris, FR) works with multiple media and her sculptural practice expands to combining installation, video, performance, sound, writing and collaboration. Her practice is driven by material research as well as investigations in post-humanities, sociology, science fiction and mythical narratives. Selected exhibitions: Love and Human Remains, group show, Berhold Pott, Cologne, DE (2023); Future Generation Art Prize 2021, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, UA; Art Encounters Biennale, Timisoara, RO (2021), Warm Welcome, Exo Exo Paris, FR (2020); Heartache, Soft Opening London, UK (2019). Paweł Olszewski’s (b. 1996 in Tarnow, PL, lives and works in Krakow, PL) artistic practice spans painting and installation art. The soft colours of his works configure a universe of simultaneous pastness and speculative futurity. Humanoid limbs and faces are decomposed and duplicated, as the unity of the subject is liquefied in horrific yet affectionate landscapes. Selected exhibitions: Split #2 (2022), Piktogram, Warsaw PL; Refugees Welcome (2022), Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, PL; In These Days of Tumult, Heat and Dazzle I Retreat in My Mind (2021), Stefan Gierowski Foundation, Warsaw, PL. Larisa Sitar (b. 1984 in Bucharest, RO, lives and works in Bucharest) is a visual artist whose practice explores the evolution of social and cultural values in relation to political movements, socio-economic contexts, technological advances, and our connections with the natural world. Her projects draw from and employ a wide variety of techniques, often blending technical and digital processes with well-known traditional and analogue forms. In 2010, she graduated from the Department of Photography and Moving image at the National University of Arts, Bucharest. Selected exhibitions: Robust Boast (2022), Suprainfinit, Bucharest, RO; Chronicles of the Future Superheroes (2021), Kunsthalle Bega, Timisoara, RO; Robust Boast (2019), WIELS, Bruxelles, BE. — This project is financed with the support of EEA Grants 2014 – 2021 within the RO-CULTURE Program. With the support of the Polish Institute, Bucharest