Mnemonics

The strong visual identity of Răzvan Anton’s exhibited works resides in his determination to develop and apply a methodical and personal practice in treating the graphic medium. Rather than letting himself be influenced by a visual model for his practice, Răzvan seems to have a musical model. Though the visual motifs collected in his works reverberate the contemporary soundtrack, he structures their development into a baroque score. The results of this particular methodology exudes a very caring and non-contemporary approach in dealing with contemporary main issues of persistent impressions of isolation and bleak reality. 

The exhibition in itself shows the same special orchestration of multiple graphic media – ranging from charcoal drawings to animations – coming together into a visual concerto pervaded entirely by Răzvan’s real concern about the way memory absorbs and preserves reality.

Text by Călin Vasilescu, curator

C.V.: Your exhibition Mnemonics underlines a methodical process through which your practice achieves the necessary level of diversity and novelty. The more you follow through a set up protocol, the more challenging and essential mutations occur. How did you develop this method and your confidence in it?   

R.A.: Drawing is mapping. The result is a map. The method includes taking things seriously with a lot of irony. The serious topic of memory needs a good doze of lemon to neutralize its PH. From the charcoal drawings to colored markers I cross the field between pictorialism and iconicity. The same shapes and forms are drawn and drawn again till they reach a state of cleansing. The heart is the container of affection but it’s also a machine. 

C.V.: Where did this interest for Memory as the overwhelming theme of contemporaneity come from? 

R.A.: I’ve been interested in this topic since the building drawings. I believe the time away from Romania brought me closer to this issue. And I also believe that now, more than before the subject of recent history has been debated from a clearer and more objective perspective. Finally we can address the issue of memory, both from a critical and personal perspective. 

Răzvan Anton in dialogue with Călin Vasilescu, January 2015