Unveiling the new exhibition season at the National Museum of Contemporary Art

The National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) opens its new exhibition season on Thursday, Nov 2. The new event combines many of the trends that MNAC aims to cover: the recovery of prominent figures from the recent history of visual arts in Romania, solo exhibitions, representatives of cultural minorities who contribute to the diversity of the art scene today, support for young artists, as well as a strong international presence through a group exhibition, as announced by the institution.

MNAC: “The Loss of Innocence” by Alma Redlinger

In the museum’s entrance hall, the public will see the retrospective exhibition “The Loss of Innocence” by Alma Redlinger. Alma Redlinger’s works are subject to a twofold reading—that of the demiurgic game, with the low materials that need to be ennobled; and that of the cultural secondary game, in which operates in reverse, the “divine” substance of creation, attacked by and subjected to minor commentary. The predominant aim is a single – Matissean – one of immediate joy, of an epicurean arrangement among forms. This unifying hedonism gives the ensemble its charm; it animates the creation underground, conferring a sense of permanent autobiographical emanation, while stimulating the empathic fraternisation of the viewer, who seems to have been envisaged in the economy of the image as a participatory factor, as an “actor”, as states the curator Călin Dan.

MNAC: “”Heritage” by Eugen Raportoru

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In the iconic Marble Hall on the ground floor, the installation “Heritage” by artist Eugen Raportoru, created in partnership with the Roma Education Fund Romania, will be presented. “By using the same cocktail of vernacular and official, of painting and installation, of standard solutions combined with improvisations, of noble materials with some decomposed ones, he constructs a memorial dedicated to the place where the Palace (of Ceauşescu or the Parliament) was abusively built after the neighborhood from which Bucharest emerged was turned into rubble,” adds Călin Dan, also the curator for this exhibition.

MNAC: “Leviathan” curated by Irina Radu

The two exhibitions in the museum’s collection connect the history of the museum’s formation and its complex heritage, while also reflecting Romanian visual production from recent decades and recent institutional construction strategies: “Leviathan,” the permanent exhibition of the art reserves, serves as an open stage and a program aimed at a retrospective look at the various mechanisms that governed the birth of the collection in its early phases; and “Puls 21” (a reference to the century we are in), a selection of the most recent artworks added to the museum’s collection through public acquisition sessions in 2020 and 2022, revealing a forward-looking attitude in the museum’s curatorial reflection.

This season, the museum’s art collection reserves remain accessible in the “Leviathan” exhibition. On the second floor of the collection’s depths, a unique multi-disciplinary project in Romania, conceived by Călin Dan, who is also the MNAC director, and curated by Irina Radu (head of Art Collections), is designed as an open labyrinth with enclaves for temporary activities (thematic exhibitions, educational workshops, conferences) and a surprising journey offered by artworks cleverly and creatively stored on shelves.

MNAC: “The Chronicles of Future Superheroes” curated by Anca Mihulet

On the third floor, curator Anca Mihuleţ presents “The Chronicles of Future Superheroes,” a group exhibition bringing together an international selection of 14 artists whose discourses are the results of hybrid practices at the intersection of visuality, architecture, choreography, engineering, performance, and writing: Hyunjin Bek (KR), Adriana Chiruta (RO), Baptiste Debombourg (FR), Oana Hodade & Alexandra Pâzgu (RO-AT), Heecheon Kim (KR), Fabio Lattanzi Antinori (IT-UK), Saem Lee (KR), Lawrence Lek (UK), Dalibor Martinis (HR), Adina Mocanu (RO-DE), Maria Pop Timaru (RO), Larisa Sitar (RO), Dimitar Solakov (BG), Stardust Architects (RO).

Initiated as a curatorial research project in 2018 and first presented at Kunsthalle Bega Timișoara (2021), the project functions as a device aiming to analyze the role of art in relation to a young audience seeking answers to questions about the passage of time and aging, the future of the planet, the relationship with the supernatural, or the balance between local and global, bringing into dialogue two distinct geographical and cultural tropes – southeastern Europe and Southeast Asia. The exhibition is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea, Korea Arts Management Service (KAMS), Fund for Korean Art Abroad (FKAA), the Italian Institute of Culture in Bucharest, and LG Electronics Romania.

MNAC: “First day” by Victoria Zidaru

On the fourth floor, it is held the exhibition by Victoria Zidaru, “First Day” (curated by Ruxandra Demetrescu), a site-specific installation made from textile and vegetal material that captures visual-haptic and olfactory dimensions and summarizes the artist’s concerns from recent years.