A premiere exhibition at Arsmonitor: Ioana Gorzo and Dumitru Gorzo exhibit for the first time together

As the public has become accustomed to, the newest art gallery in Bucharest opened in the Casa Presei Libere, Arsmonitor, announces a special exhibition event. The DOI GORZO exhibition, a premiere duo-show between Ioana Gorzo and Dumitru Gorzo, continues the Arsmonitor gallery’s curatorial program from the current year. The opening will take place on February 29, and the exhibition will be open to the public until April 12.

Ioana Gorzo and Dumitru Gorzo, whose personalities and works are distinct and radically opposite, propose an unexpected confrontation between apparently figurative and obviously expressionist painting. For the two, it is the first time they choose to exhibit together, the opportunity to organize this duo-show being offered to the curatorial team of the Arsmonitor gallery.

The two often collaborate and exhibit in common contexts, solo, including, among others, the Slagg gallery in New York, or in various spaces in Romania, such as at Carusel/Cărturești, in Bucharest, as well as in Reșita, Timișoara and Bistrița, or in group exhibitions, recalling the recent “Dan Popescu Exhibition”, indexing some of their important projects so far. This time, they chose to exhibit within the same exhibition, proposing an unexpected confrontation-dialogue.

“The drawing and painting of the two communicate and complement each other on a less-questioned territory when it comes to art, in this exhibition we refer radically to the problems of the image, with the meaning of representation and the phenomenon of the iconic. Despite appearances, the two’s art falls on the same side of anti-representation.

The exhibition DOI GORZO opens a discussion about drawing and painting in contrast to the tricks of the art history vision, closer to a problem of visual studies and the theme of the image, as a fundamental interest of visual culture in the present. This alternative perspective on art is often obscured by a retro-modernist understanding of painting as a superior technical form of craftsmanship.

In the case of this duo, in particular, techniques and subjectivity are secondary “supports” of the iconic, and the proposal of the exhibition is to reflect precisely on this aspect from two apparently opposite perspectives that form a common body in the realm of anti-representation.

On the one hand, for Ioana Gorzo, the image is a topic of study done with coldness and objectivity, the subject represented being canceled and replaced by the multiple degradations obtained through an approach that leads to erasure. On the other hand, for Dumitru Gorzo, the image is a hot topic, in which the free form and outline are canceled with materiality and mineral layers through an approach of addition. In one case, the image is the trace preserved through a series of eliminations, in the other, it is accident and surplus.” (Excerpt from the curatorial text).

Arsmonitor, the newest art gallery in Bucharest’s cultural landscape, is a start-up dedicated to art and transformation, but above all, to dialogue between artists, collectors and communities of art lovers. The co-founders of the gallery, Mia Munteanu (entrepreneur) and Silviu Pădurariu (curator), set out to create a cultural platform that would facilitate the encounter with art both for collectors and enthusiasts, as well as for neophytes. The inaugural exhibition “Abțibild. Unapplied Arts” brought together 10 artists representative of the last three decades of Romanian contemporary art and three distinct cultural spaces in Romania, united under a common passion for image, form and artistic expression.