NAG: Noaptea Albă a Galeriilor/ White Night of the Art Galleries
Alexandra Constantinescu / Open Studio
Date: 15, 16, 17 October 2021
Studio adress: No.19, Gării Street, Cluj-Napoca
The studio, located close to the train station, is a 10-minutes walk from the city’s center. The space was conceived for solitary artistic practice and teaching ceramics classes and workshops. It is a place where the artist explores and expands her interest in art and design, a laboratory that supports unpredictable collides between ideas, materials, and techniques. Always in a state of flux, it showcases works at different stages of concept and production, highlighting key moments of contemplation, when the expected results can be reconsidered. Samples of by-products are kept to inform on additional routes that could lead to new thinking patterns and practical means to reach the completion of an idea.
Alexandra Constantinescu welcomes visitors to explore her practice. Continuously researching throughout an area that stems further from her main discipline, that of ceramics, Alexandra approaches art and design by employing additional mediums such as sculpture, installation, and computer-generated animation. Into her technical endeavors, she pours transitory perceptions, experiences, emotions, memories, images, words, objects, and materials collected from everyday life. The studio is an archive of processes, put on display to encourage spontaneous discussions on art-making and, in general, pursuits we all follow in the name of empathy.
Artistic collaboration
Date | 15 June – 14 July 2021
Venue | Mind Set Art Center: 7F, No.180, Sec. 1, Heping E. Rd., Da’an Dist., Taipei City 106, Taiwan
Together with Radu Constantinescu, we contributed to Ana Maria Micu’s experimental short animated video “Acqua Alta”. The collaborative work is to be exhibited in Micu’ solo show “Objects Must Be Comfortable”.
Micu’s animation concept is about a method to document progress during drawing sessions but spreads into illustrating acts of care, protective actions, and spontaneous fantastical narratives. Her initial idea was about a hand hovering over a wrinkled fabric, touching it, in an attempt to flatten, maybe caress, or examine it.
Our response was inspired by observing a neighbor’s garden, where indoor furniture was being repurposed for outdoor use. As protection against the elements, a table was covered with a piece of plastic, held in place with rocks, so the wind would not blow it away. We documented this real-life situation and introduced it as 2 fragments of 3D animation, among Micu’s scenes.
Excerpt from “Acqua Alta”
animation | 6m2s | no audio | 2021
Ana Maria Micu – concept, digital drawing, clay animation, and editing
Alexandra Constantinescu, Radu Constantinescu – concept, 3D animation