Răzvan Anton

Works

Fading Study (Marching Women)
2024
Fading Study (Marching Men)
2024
Fading Study (Tarnița Lake)
2022
Fading Study (Forest Path)
2022
Negative Study (Audience 2)
2020
Fading Study (Family), positive
2020
Fading Study (Family), negative
2020
Fading Study / Negative Drawing (Sculpture)
2020
Fading Study (Equestrian) #1
2019
Fading Study (Equestrian) #2
2019
Fading Study (Equestrian) #3
2020
Fading Study / Negative Drawing (Sculpture) #1
2020
Fading Study / Negative Drawing (Sculpture) #2
2020
Tracing Study (March)
2020
Reflective Study (Audience) / negative
2020
Reflective Study (Speech) / negative
2020
Reflective Study (March) / negative
2020
Reflective Study 4
2017
Reflective Study 3
2017
Reflective Study 2
2017
Reflective Study 1
2017
The Audience (TV)
2018
The Anthem
2018
The March
2017
Iconographic Study II
2017
The Heart Notebook
2014
20 Ways to Load Guns
2014
Hands Loading Pistol I
2013
Heart & Brain
2013
Covered Head I
2014
Covered Head II
2014
Paper Heart
2014
Pulse
2014
3 Ways to Load Guns
2013
Breathing Building (animation)
2012
Building
2011
Building with Cloud I
2012
Choreography of Violence I
2012
Choreography of Violence II
2012
Choreography of Violence III
2012
Choreography of Violence IV
2012
Breathing Building
2012
Building in the Night I
2011
Industrial Landscape IV
2008
Răzvan Anton

“I work with drawing and memory. Drawing is for me the most direct path towards a possible image. Memory is not the subject but the medium and drawing is a conscious choice of a medium beyond mediums, a language that has the advantage of keeping a safe distance from the norms of the art world. It is a continuous and open research that eludes conclusion. It is a process that leaves a trace. It is the trace of a thinking process and the image is its proof. The speed at which I think and observe is also the speed at which I draw. The mark, the path and the image belong to this visible process of constructing meaning. It is an imprecise and uncertain route meant to change, consolidate or contradict our views. It is a landscape of shifting geography where historical, political and personal elements hover relentlessly while searching for a state of balance.”

Downloads
CV-Razvan-Anton.pdf

CV

Born in 1980, lives and works in Cluj (RO)

STUDIES 

2003

BA Printmaking, University of Art and Design, Cluj (RO) 

2005  

MA Fine Arts, University of Art and Design, Cluj (RO)

2008

MA Drawing, Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts, London (UK)

SELECTED  EXHIBITIONS

2024

‘Mnemonics [back to the future]’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

15th Bienal de la Habana – ‘Shared Horizons’, Havana (CU)

‘Edges of the graph paper’, Zina Project Space, Cluj-Napoca (RO)

2023

‘The Signs for Somewhere and Elsewhere and Here and Now’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

‘Ghosts Whisper Loud and Clear’, Zina Gallery, Cluj-Napoca (RO)

2022

‘The Domino Effect 3’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

‘Istorii private’ (with Miklósi Dénes), Colateral ArtSpace, Cluj-Napoca (RO)

2021

‘The Domino Effect 2’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

‘Where the Spirit Meets the Bone’, Lateral ArtSpace & Rubik Space, Cluj-Napoca (RO)

‘Double Part Time’, MGML – Match Gallery, Ljubljana (SI)

2020

‘The Domino Effect’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

‘Studies of Gaze’ (solo show), Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

‘Time Capsules’, online exhibition, Gaep, gaepgallery.com

2019

‘Utopias’, Motorenhalle/riesa efau, Dresden (DE)

‘Too Young for Memories’, ElectroPutere Gallery, Craiova (RO)

‘Bridges’, Tranzit House, Cluj (RO)

‘The collective gaze: samples of something that concerns us all’, co-curator with Mihai Iepure-Gorski, Pilot, Fabrica de Pensule/Paintbrush Factory, Cluj (RO)

‘Contentious Objects/Ashamed Subjects’, Politecnico di Milano, Galleria del Progetto, Milan (IT)

2018

‘…but we brought it back…: Objects, Paths, Stories’, Casa de lângă sinagogă/The House by the Synagogue, Mediaș (RO)

See more

‘Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear’, Gaep (formerly EASTWARDS PROSPECTUS), Bucharest (RO)

2017

‘Les colosses aux mains d’argile’, EESI – École européenne supérieure de l’image, Poitiers (FR)

‘Life a User’s Manual’, Art Encounters, Timișoara (RO)

‘Message in a Bottle’, Walk and Talk Art Festival, Azores (PT)

‘Seeing Ourselves Sensing’, Gaep (formerly EASTWARDS PROSPECTUS), Bucharest (RO)

2016

‘The Factory of Facts and Other (Unspoken) Stories’, Domino, Cluj (RO)

’The Most Beautiful Books from Romania’, Plan B Gallery, Cluj (RO)

‘Esthetics of Learning’, The University of the Arts, Philadelphia (USA)

2015

‘Mnemonics’ (solo show), Gaep (formerly EASTWARDS PROSPECTUS), Bucharest (RO)

‘Where Have You Worked?’, Tranzit House, Cluj (RO)

RESIDENCIES

2018 

Artist in residence at MuseumsQuartier, Vienna (AT)

2016-2018 

Artist in residence at The House by the Synagogue, Mediaș (RO), TRACES project (Absence as Heritage)

ARTIST BOOK

2015

Twenty Ways to Load Guns, edited by Ciprian Mureșan and Corina Bucea

Press

Anton says he does not regard photography in an artistic sense, but rather in an anthropological one – he is interested in the place it occupies in our world, the place it occupied in the world 30or 40 years ago. And he hopes his role as an artist, which he aspires to be a socially active one, will also be related to this – to putting together images that form a landscape of the past.
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"Among the few exhibitions that managed to prevail against the difficult context of the pandemic, between October and November 2020, was Studies of Gaze, an excellent project by GAEP Gallery in Bucharest which brings together a series of heliographs and video works inspired by the Minerva photo archive (of the Cluj-based newspapers Făclia and Igazsag). Răzvan Anton, the project’s author, known for his involvement in the digitization and promotion of this archive, presents a research that goes beyond strictly visual practice, a meta- or pata- discourse (see Alfred Jarry’s pataphysics, which appears on the border between science and poetry, where art is able to access the truth and science becomes critical and self-ironic) interested in new kinds of functions, interpretations, and ways of seeing associated with contemporary art. What at first glance appears to be a game of revisiting a historical archive (an aesthetically impeccable one), a reconstruction of photographs through a process combining manual labor with technology, turns out to be a relevant research project, with many layers and interpretations, centred around repositioning drawing relative to etching and photography (think of the status of the latter two as reproduction technologies that only later asserted themselves as art forms) in the recent age of post- prefixes (postmodernism, posthumanism, postphotography, postcinema)."
Read Original
Unul dintre cei implicați în digitalizarea imaginilor din Arhiva de Fotografie de Presă Minerva, salvată de la dispariție, Răzvan Anton a început să lucreze ca artist cu aceste fotografii în 2015, fără să-și propună, de fapt, asta. “N-a fost un plan. Eram direct interesat de conținutul Arhivei, nu pentru că erau fotografii din perioada Ceaușescu, ci pentru că erau fotografii din Cluj, dintr-un trecut foarte recent. Am început să lucrez cu ele după ce m-am uitat multe luni la imagini. Primele au fost niște desene de observație, care nu aveau nicio relevanță și pe care le-am pus deoparte. Încercam să ajung la mediul fotografiei prin desen și selectam două teme, locul de muncă și reuniunile politice, pentru că acestea reveneau cel mai des în Arhivă. Desenam cu un marker pe tot felul de hârtii și lăsam markerul să treacă prin hârtie pentru ca desenul să devină o imagine imprimată. Creând aceste instantanee și lucrând cu ele o perioadă, m-am dus mai departe spre mediul fotografiei, spre clișeu, spre matriță, și așa am ajuns la o modalitate de developare lentă. Lucrările [mele] încep prin hașurarea unor foi de hârtie cu pix albastru. Apoi, imaginile din Arhivă sunt prelucrate și imprimate pe folii transparente și ulterior sunt aplicate peste aceste hârtii hașurate și sunt expuse la soare timp de două-trei săptămâni până la două luni.”
Read Original
“Practica mea artistică s-a schimbat lucrând cu Arhiva [de Fotografie de Presă Minerva]. Fac lucruri pe care nu le făceam acum patru ani, de exemplu. Modul de lucru s-a schimbat, la fel și modul de a privi imaginea. Am început să dezvolt procese de developare lentă a imaginilor, să lucrez mai mult cu clișeele, să le reimprim, să folosesc timpul pentru a le developa. (…) Pe lângă lucrările pe hârtie, în expoziție [Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear] sunt câteva materiale video create cu ajutorul unor oglinzi gravate, cu care încerc să captez soarele. Toate aceste lucrări sunt, de fapt, încercări de a capta și de a înregistra lumina soarelui și timpul.”
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“Salvată de la gunoi, o arhivă uriașă de fotografie din perioada comunistă devine subiectul unei investigații artistice despre timp și memorie. (…) Între Răzvan Anton și Dénes Miklósi a existat un consens de la început: nu i-a interesat cât de frumoase sau spectaculoase sunt pozele din Arhiva Minerva. Și nici nu a fost o reglare de conturi cu trecutul: «Ne-am uitat la ele cum se uită un cercetător la o descoperire», spune Anton. «Încercând să-i găsească toți parametrii. Să o folosească drept mărturie sau probă. Să citească imaginea, pe cât se poate, deconectată de contextul ideologic. Ca o mărturie antropologică, de fapt.”
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Exhibitions

Mnemonics [back to the future]
‘The Signs for Somewhere and Elsewhere and Here and Now’
The Domino Effect 3
The Domino Effect 2
The Domino Effect
Studies of Gaze
Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
‘Seeing Ourselves Sensing’
Mnemonics

Viewing Rooms

Time Lines: Răzvan Anton
Răzvan Anton: Time Capsules