Lucian Taran - My Girls (1)

From Lucian Ţăran’s Girls to Vlad Basarab’s Censorship

No. 15 / November 2019

Mihai Plămădeală, art critic – article published in Observator Cultural magazine, no.617/23.03.2012

 

 

The title of the article is inspired by the names of two events in the ceramics area, held at about the same time in Bucharest and Seattle. The artists, who are both Romanian, have in common, apart from the material in which they express themselves, the appetite for the cultural shock, covered conceptually by what they achieve, each with distinct means. In order to dispel any misunderstanding regarding the possible pejorative nuance of the proposed phrase, it is about the exhibition “My Girls” and the performance “Censorship of Memory”, to which I’ll refer in detail below.

 

Lucian Ţăran - Girls
Lucian Ţăran – Girls

 

Between 9th and 26th of March, 2012, the visitors of Galateea Gallery can admire (or contest) the porcelain girls of the ceramic sculptor Lucian Ţăran.  After “Cats with Boobs” in 2005, the artist returns with another taboo subject, on the same theme of sexuality, this time not in a fantastic but in a decadent context. A series of ladies with exacerbated shapes and roundness, however within certain limits of biological verisimilitude, reign in the bright hall of the gallery from Calea Victoriei, Bucharest, stopping the passers-by, regardless of gender, age, culture or social class. Girl’s dimensions from 100% (upwards) substantially increase the effect. I talked with the manager of Galatea, Dorina Cioplea, who told us about the multitude of reactions to this exhibition. Cohorts of students stormed the exterior windows, seniors fluttered allusively convincing grimaces, gentlemen with stern faces praised art critically or various artists commented on what they saw, according to individual standards. Many images are already in virtual social networks. It can be said that in terms of impact, the project has achieved its goal.

 

Lucian Ţăran - Girls
Lucian Ţăran – Girls

The subject and the approach send in the subsidiary the fact that the artworks are excellently done. The visual sign is perfect, and the artist’s arsenal, according to the execution. Let me conclude, in the same playful spirit in which the girls fall, that they are made in the image and likeness of their creator. Popular wisdom says that we must be careful with what we want, because it might happen. I don’t know if Lucian Ţăran would cope with the girls, if they would come to life in a Pygmalion’s spirit, but certainly Ricky Fitts, the key character in the “American Beauty” movie, would say that sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, he feels like he can’t take it.

 

Lucian Ţăran - Girls
Lucian Ţăran – Girls

 

And because I made a reference to “American Beauty”, the Romanian artist Vlad Basarab, resident in the United States, will perform in Seattle between 28th and 30th of March, 2012, at NCECA (The National Council of Education in the Ceramics Arts), the performance entitled Memory Censorship. I inform the reader that this is, if not the most important art conference in the world, at least an event that has over 5,000 registered artists.

For this performance, Basarab will build a 3 by 6 meter wooden and linen space, where he will project a previously made video. In the film, the protagonist loads a ceramic oven with encyclopedias and treatises, after which he locks the door with refractory bricks. Then come pictures of the flames burning the books. When the bricks are removed, the filming insists on the ash. The performance consists of the artist breaking (simultaneously with the projection) some pages from the books, which he will paint with porcelain engobe and then he will string them on wires with clothespin, thus blocking the projected image. The artist made the first part of the performance, the one with the film, at West Virginia University, Morgantown, where he attends for his master’s degree.

 

Vlad Basarab - Censorship of Memory
Vlad Basarab – Censorship of Memory

 

In a telephone conversation, conducted from over 10,000 kilometers, Vlad Basarab revealed to me the premises of his project. “Growing up in a country with strong cultural and religious traditions, under the oppression of the communist regime, he said, I became acquainted with the ghosts of history, through my family and those with whom I lived. Their voices pushed me to the Censorship of Memory, a work in violent and commemorative tones. Performance and installation are the environments in which I express myself best.”

The burning of books embodies in his discourse the historical memory of censorship. Various political regimes destroyed and burned books, thus contributing to the loss of collective dignity, eroded by slogans and propaganda literature. However, the problem is valid for censorship from anywhere, including the United States. In the present artistic case, Vlad resorts to the cremation of encyclopedias about historical events and personalities. By burning, he suggests their physical erasure. The ash and the resulting kaolin residues will be part of the paste used to paint the pages symbolically torn by him.

 

Vlad Basarab - Censorship of Memory
Vlad Basarab – Censorship of Memory

 

The artist uses encyclopedias as a symbol of the loss of collective memory, because they are no longer useful today. Printed books, considered obsolete, tend to be replaced by electronic ones, for which often no one assumes any responsibility for the honesty or reality of those written. Considered valuable sources of information and present in any respectable library, the books invite the viewer to meditate on the importance of the past.

Painting pages is another form of deletion. This ritual takes repetitive forms, assimilable to meditation, poetry and music. The black costume he’s wearing for the performance accentuates the idea of a funeral ceremony.

People hide and erase painful, unwanted personal memories, traumas, or murders they have witnessed or committed. Giving up awkward information apparently helps to achieve inner peace. In fact, speaking of memory loss, we actually remember …
Between Bucharest and Seattle is a distance of two continents and an ocean. From a cultural point of view, this space can be canceled today, in this case through ceramics, or a phone connected to the Net. Girls and memories are everywhere in the world.

 

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