In the Eyes of My Brother

Show from May 7 – June 19, 2010

Press Release

The exhibition In the Eyes of My Brother is an exhibition focusing on
artists from the Balkans, primarily from The Cluj School.

Over the past two years, Cluj, located in northern
Transylvania in Romania has been strongly associated with modern
painting. The “Cluj School” has been compared to similar
productive periods in Leipzig and Dresden. Although many consider this
predicate not to be adequate of contemporary Romanian art,
it has provided Cluj with an attention as the incubation box for Romanian
contemporary art. One factor which has given the city great international
attention (in spite of the almost 350,000 inhabitants) was the January edition
of the internationally renowned art magazine Frieze Magazine, where The
Cluj School was described in a several pages long article.
http://www.frieze.com/comment/article/cluj/ The concept of the Cluj School
derives from the 2007 Prague Biennale, where a large part of the biennale, was
dedicated to the young painters from the University of Cluj. At the 2009 Prague Biennale there was also a great focus on young painters from Cluj. This time entitled “Staging the Grey”.

The gray and (especially) somber colors are
characteristic in the artists’ works. It seems obvious, but perhaps too simple and blunting to
link this color scheme with our own conceptions of the Balkans
dictatorships, where Chaucescu’s Romania is considered the worst.

The participating artists are:
Dragos Badita
Istvan Betuker
Oana Farcas
Christian Opris
Marko Tadic
Zlatan Vehabovic

All the artists were born in the 1980s, but despite their young age
they have already exhibited in several international contexts such as the
Prague biennale, Brukenthal Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest
and in gallery contexts in both Europe and USA.

Photos from the exhibition:

The exhibition is curated in collaboration between the Romanian gallery,
Ivan Gallery and LARMgalleri.