Press Release Victor Man

Press release

Victor Man Attebasile

Curator Chiara Parisi Opening 14 february 2009 at 5 pm Open to the public from 15 february to 7 june 2009 The Centre international d’art et du paysage at Vassivière island is proud to present the first individual exhibition in France of Victor Man (born in 1974 in Cluj in Romania, where he lives and works). Attebasile will be inaugurated at 5 pm on 14 February and opened to the public from 15 February to 7 June 2009. Presented in collaboration with the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, Attebasile offers works of different years of the artist’s work: paintings, sculptures, wall drawings and new productions, accompanied by a book projected by the artist himself. As a preamble to the exhibit, Attebasile introduces us to Victor Man’s singular and atypical universe. The dark and irreducible melancholy that impregnates the body of his work has found in Vassivière island a naturally mimetic place where the artist is able to confront the force of spaces both natural and architectural (designed by Aldo Rossi). In terms of narrative construction, Victor Man’s work can be compared to incomplete phrases which fail to state anything conclusive, so they create a sort of disorientation. This strategy of work not being completely exposed is already evident in the actual title, whose significance the artist has no desire to reveal, and reaches its peak in the open area that begins in the sculpture garden and stretches over the spaces of the Art Center. Victor Man introduces into the sense–producing realm a series of elements associating pairs of representations that generate an infinite amount of possible interpretations. His work is often autobiographical, such as the small-dimensioned assemblages of pictorial work, wall drawings and sculptures that bring together various references to his birthplace. Parallel to this, the artist examines the historical changes in this new European geography by analyzing questions and objects that allude to local traditions turned obsolete. Victor Man is considered to be one of the great interpreters of human gestures, which with strong photographic precision and immense talent he grasps in the way he fixes the immediacy of the instant. In his poetic credo, the questions of political and national identity overlay a reflection on violence and man’s condition of solitude.

Memory – deconstruction “Painting for me is a daily routine that enables me to avoid falling into boredom and inactivity. I need to ‘do’ things every day.” The objects and images used by Victor Man hark back to a more or less recent past and focus precisely on the actions of passing time. Certain objects out of context suggest new stories. By voiding the images of their initial contents and extirpating their original meaning, Victor Man allows for possible new readings. Only a part of the original remains intact: stealing their soul is the last action that the artist performs before he reintroduces them in a new context. What is important in the images is the impression of déjà-vu that they inspire, the innuendo-filled story they imply as if they were ghosts of something that they used to be. In his paintings and in certain drawings, the artist demonstrates particular attention to the past and a will to reconstruct a personal memory. Attebasile on Vassivière island The exhibit starts in the forest on Vassivière island, where we find a young tree covered in fox skins. As time passes, on account of the rough and rigorous weather at Vassivière, these skins become soaked in rain and humidity, then they freeze and dry in the sun and the wind and eventually disintegrate. In the interior of the Art Center, the works presented remain dark in the chromatic gamut and imaginary universe of the subjects, with the emerging themes referring to a voyeuristic taste in the way that objects are revealed, linked to a world that lies beyond normal perception. These somber paintings contemplate objects and images through a black mirror, a device that distances act from representation. The feminine figures appear in different works tied to symbols of an erotic nature, joined to wolves and foxes that arouse a great variety of associations. Notions of the unconscious, of a parallel world where new codes and new existences can be installed, are constant allusions to an imaginary sphere that upsets figures and objects. Here we see the dichotomy between the images used and their disfigurations superimposed on other dichotomies like contrasts between clear and dark in the chromatic gamut of the paintings, and between surface and depth in the installations. Paintings and installations can be read metaphorically; these are works that make allusions to events that the artist perceives or furtively observes, just as the ensemble of the exhibit speaks of disquiet and malaise. The works found in the nave convey a troubling and disorienting feeling of malaise that is underlined by the artist’s intervention in blocking the view of the hall with a mysterious black curtain made of felt. This opaque cloth, hanging from one of the roof’s iron structures, lends movement to the architecture itself, and thanks to its inordinate size creates in space an ambiguous presence that we are unsure of: is it there to conceal or to reveal? Mihai Viteazul, (brave Mihai) is the wall drawing that introduces and accompanies the other works in this hall, a monumental work that functions as the physical and conceptual prolongation of all the other works in the exhibit. The character of Mihai Viteazul is taken from a comic strip created by the artist in 1984, at the age of ten, to tell the adventures of Romania’s national hero of the 17th century, the vassal prince whose action made him the fundamental element of territorial unification. This figure, born of Victor Man’s very young spirit, imposes itself as an enormous architectural and visual structure that invades the nave of the Art Center. In the middle of the nave Victor Man proposes a fragile architecture, a work comprised of an assemblage of odd elements: a fox skin, an old wooden school chair covered in a mosquito screen. Hanging from the feet of the chair and partly concealed under a transparent veil, the body of a fox strikes the visitors as the simple element of a complex narrative structure. The study room offers the visitors another zone of the artist’s ambiguous universe, with his drawing of a fight between bodies and animals, among them wolves. These hardly perceptible images seem rather to be apparitions. In the small theater, Victor Man experiments a narrative form borrowed from art history and "revisits" the myth of Oedipus and the Sphinx. Ingres in the early 19th century and later Bacon in the 80s both restored this myth; Victor Man gathers the references that make up the masterpieces of these two artists and produces a work with tragic overtones that attain extraordinary intensity, almost like a vision of the Apocalypse.

If at the center of Bacon’s painting appeared an unstable figure, Victor Man materializes his through an object that belongs to daily life: a ham hanging from a ceiling from which two bulbs shine some light. The chaotic, floating nature of the work to which it refers is abandoned to give way to a condition of particularly hard forms in which violence is not only visual but also powerfully symbolic. Victor Man’s skill consists in creating, from an atmosphere that allows for questioning by means of different modalities, the sentiment of sacrality that can be produced thanks to the use of light and stage direction. By associating notions of desire and fragmentation – geographical and ideological – the artist creates new narrations where human sensuality is evoked with all the idyllic and infernal scenarios that go with it. Divorced from its context and emptied of its primary substance, each work is reformulated with a new vocabulary to create what the artist describes as “a terrain of turbulence where truth becomes a question of signs.” “I avoid giving a definitive status, I love the idea of penetrating things softly and keeping my distance. If things become too explicit, then I include another element to upset coherence.” Catalog A book designed by the artist accompanies the exhibition Attebasile, co-edited by Ciap and Ikon Gallery.

Victor Man Biographical notes Born in 1974 in Cluj in Romania, Victor Man won international renown when his work was presented in the Romanian pavilion at the last Venice Biennale. The event confirmed the strength of his work, which, in just a few years, has established him as one of the most interesting voices from Eastern Europe. One-man exhibitions (selection): 2009, Museum Boijmans, Rotterdam, Holland; 2008, Attebasile, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom; Black Hearts Always Bleed Red, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, United States; On relative loneliness, GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy; 2007, Without going into the extravagance that's in trees, Galleria Zero, Milano, Italy; Vestigal specialization on its way out, Johnen Galerie, Berlin, Germany; Victor Man, Galerie Johnen + Schöttle, Cologne, Germany; 2006, With the First Totters, Annet Gelink Galerie, Amsterdam, Holland; 2005, Farewell till next time, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, Holland; Plan B, Cluj, Romania. Group exhibits (selection): 2008, Wessen Geschichte/Whose (His)story, Kunstverein, Hamburg, Germany; Locked-in, Casino Luxembourg, Forum d'art contemporain, Luxembourg; Back to Black, Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover, Germany; Persona, Centre d'art du Parc Saint Léger, Pougues-les-Eaux, France; Kabul 3000: Love Among The Cabbages, Galleria Zero, Milano, Italy; Busan Biennale, Expenditure, Korea; Art Focus 5, Can Art Do More?, Jerusalem, Israel; Young Artists Biennial, Re-Construction, Bucarest, Romania; 2007, Venice Biennale 52, Rumanian house, Venice, Italy; Gesellschaftsbilder, Kunstverein, Hamburg, Germany; Duet, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, United States; Makers and Modelers, Gladstone Gallery, New York City, United States; More or less in the same place or another, Plan B, Cluj, Romania; Past, Present, Future Perfect: Selections from the Ovitz Family Collection, H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City, United States; Paper Baglady & Other Stories, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, United Kingdom; Prague Biennale 3, Czech Republic; Filaturen, Sies+Höke, Dusseldorf, Germany; 2006, The Sun on the Wall, Pavelhaus, Bad Radkersburg, Germany; Dark Dreams II, Johnen + Schöttle, Cologne, Germany; Icon, Chun King Project, Los Angeles, United States; partoftheprocess2, Galleria Zero, Milano, Italy; Cluj Connection, Haunch of Venison, Zurich, Switzerland; Farewell to Icon, Anna Helwing Gallery, Los Angeles, United States; AWOL, Biennial of Young Artists, Bucharest, Romania; Villa Holiday Warsawa, Warsaw, Poland; 2005, EXPANDED PAINTING, Biennale 2, Prague, Czech Republic; Fragile, Analix Forever, Geneva, Switzerland; 2004, Museum of Art, Cluj, Romania. Information Centre international d’art et du paysage Ile de Vassivière F - 87120 www.ciapiledevassiviere.com Press Contact: Frédéric Legros tel.: +33 (0)5 55 69 27 27 fax: +33 (0)5 55 69 29 31 [email protected]

Open from tuesday to friday 2pm – 6pm, week-end 11am – 1pm and 2pm – 6pm Admission: full rate: 3 euros / half rate: 1.5 euros for children over 12, students, unemployed / free of charge: children under 12, handicapped persons and their companions, Friends of the Centre international d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière, subscribers to the Artothèque association. Le Centre international d'art et du paysage is financed by the Ministry of Culture and Communications/Drac Limousin and the Regional Council of Limousin. The exhibition and the book Attebasile are organized thanks to the partnership of Naturalia beauté bio, Pro natura and of the Syndicat mixte régional et interdépartemental de Vassivière en Limousin (SYMIVA), co-producted with l'Ikon Gallery.

Victor Man Né en 1974 à Cluj, Roumanie, où il vit et travaille. Expositions monographiques 2009 Victor Man, Gladstone Gallery, New York, Etats-Unis Museum Boijmans, Rotterdam, Pays-Bas 2008 Attebasile, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Angleterre Black Hearts Always Bleed Red, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, Etats-Unis On relative loneliness, GAMeC, Bergame, Italie 2007 Without going into the extravagance that's in trees, Galleria Zero, Milan, Italie Vestigal specialization on its way out, Johnen Galerie, Berlin, Allemagne Victor Man, Galerie Johnen + Schöttle, Cologne, Allemagne 2006 With the First Totters, Annet Gelink Galerie, Amsterdam, Pays-Bas The place I’m coming from, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, Angleterre 2005 Farewell till next time, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, Pays-Bas Plan B, Cluj, Roumanie Expositions collectives 2008 Wessen Geschichte/Whose (His)story, Kunstverein, Hambourg, Allemagne Locked-in, Casino, Luxembourg Back to Black, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannovre, Allemagne Persona, Centre d'art du Parc Saint Léger, Pougues-les-Eaux, France Kabul 3000: Love Among The Cabbages, Galleria Zero, Milan, Italie Busan Biennale, Expenditure, Corée Art Focus 5, Can Art Do More?, Jérusalem, Israël Young Artists Biennial, Re-Construction, Bucarest, Roumanie ; 2007 52ème Biennale de Venise, Pavillon Roumain, Italie Gesellschaftsbilder, Kunstverein, Hambourg, Allemagne House Trip, Art Forum Berlin, Berlin, Allemagne Duet, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, Etats-Unis Makers and Modelers, Gladstone Gallery, New York, Etats-Unis More or less in the same place or another, Plan B, Cluj, Roumanie Past, Present, Future Perfect: Selections from the Ovitz Family Collection, H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City, Etats-Unis Paper Baglady & Other Stories, Timothy Taylor Gallery, Londres, Angleterre Prague Biennale 3, Prague, République Tchèque Filaturen, Sies+Höke, Dusseldorf, Allemagne 2006 The Sun on the Wall, Pavelhaus, Bad Radkersburg, Allemagne Dark Dreams II, Johnen + Schöttle, Cologne, Allemagne Icon, Chun King Project, Los Angeles, Etats-Unis partoftheprocess2, Galleria Zero, Milan, Italie Cluj Connection, Haunch of Venison, Zurich, Suisse Farewell to Icon, Anna Helwing Gallery, Los Angeles, Etats-Unis The Sun on the Wall, Pavel-House, Laafeld, Autriche AWOL, Biennial of Young Artists, Bucarest, Roumanie Villa Holiday Warsawa, Varsovie, Pologne 2005

EXPANDED PAINTING, Biennale 2, Prague, République Tchèque Post Fragile, Analix Forever, Genève, Suisse Fragile, Analix Forever, Genève, Suisse 2004 Museum of Art, Cluj, Roumanie. Catalogues monographiques Victor Man, JRP Ringier The Place I'm Coming From, Timothy Taylor Gallery ; Annet Gelink Gallery ; Johnen + Schöttle Gallery Catalogues collectifs La Biennale di Venezia, Vol. II, Marsilio Kontova, Helena, « Interview with Victor Man », Prague Biennale 3 Nastac, Simona, Biennial of young artists, AWOL, Bucarest Schwabsky, Barry, « Why paint pictures? The Place I’m Coming From » Willa Warszava, Raster, Revolver, Berlin Kontova, Helena et Politi, Giancarlo, Prague Biennale 2 Memosphere. Rethinking Monuments, Revolver, Berlin Articles 2008 Addad, Natahlie, « Victor Man », Frieze, avril Van Den Boogerd, Dominic, « Out of the Cold: On Victor Man’s Work of Restraint », Art Papers, janvier/février 2007 « 52nd Venice Biennial; Rumanien », Kunstforum, Bd. 188, octobre/novembre Stocchi, Francesco, « Yin and Yang ; on the 52nd Venice Biennial », Spike, n°13 Asthoff, Jens, « Bild in raum/Bild im kopf », Gessellschaftsbilder. Zeitgenössische Malerei, Rabottini, Alessandro, « Plural Solitude », MAP, automne Eichler, Dominic, « Think for a minute », Frieze, n°109, Van Den Boogerd, Dominic, « Six uneasy pieces », Metropolis M, n°4 Mugnaini, Alberto, « Victor Man », Flash Art Italia, août/septembre Casavecchia, Barbara, « Prague Biennale 3 », Flash Art, juilllet/septembre Watson, Simon, « Victor Man », Whitewall Magazine, w n°6 Di Drusco, Fabia, « 52 Biennale di Venezia ; Victor Man », L’uomo Vogue Borcherdt, Gesine / Gartner, Barbara, « Die Biennale-Highlights », Monopol, n°6 Price, Matt, « Cluj Connection », Flash Art, mars/avril Hohmann, Silke, « Hello Bucharest », Monopol, n°1 2006 Nastac, Simona, Flash Art, novembre/décembre Williams, Gilda, « Victor Man », Artforum, septembre Politi, Giancarlo; Kontova, Helena, « Top 100 Artists », Flash Art, octobre Casati, Marta, « Part of the Process 2 », Flash Art, octobre Omagiu Magazine, n°4 Greben, Stein, Deirdre, ARTnews, juillet/août Romano, Gianni, « Interview with Victor Man », Contemporary, n°82 Cumming, Laura, « Critic’s Choice », The Observer, 14 mai Neal, Jane, « Coming in From the Cold », Art Review, mai Neal, Jane, « Victor Man at Plan B », Art in America, janvier 2005 « Bright Young Things », Art Review, vol IX, décembre Dan, Liviana, « Curators have dreams », Arhitext, n°8 Neal, Jane, « Post Fragile », Flash Art, octobre Costinas, Cosmin, 32 Romanian Painters

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