Gaep at Drawing Now Art Fair 2024: preview of the presentation

11 March 2024

Our first presentation at Drawing Now Art Fair, in the Process sector, brings together new and recent works by Răzvan Anton and Raluca Popa. Indicative of two artistic practices that are process-centred, instead of medium-centred, the selected works reflect the temporality embedded in slow or labour-intensive methodologies, as well as two different approaches to personal collections of images or written materials.

After working for several years with public archives such as the Minerva Press Photo Archive, Răzvan Anton started in 2022 to look at photographs and footage from his family’s collection – images shot mostly by his father during the 1970s and 1980s. The works featured here indicate this shift. The artist still uses a heliographic technique in order to, somewhat paradoxically, excavate a hidden meaning from the surface of the old images, but this time the images are from his family’s collection. He starts by scribbling paper sheets with a blue ball pen, then places a transparent screen with the archival/found image on them and, finally, exposes them to sunlight for weeks or months on the windows of his studio. In Anton’s practice, time has patience.

Răzvan Anton, Fading Study (Forest, Negative-Positive), 2022
Răzvan Anton, Fading Study (Forest, Negative-Positive), 2022, blue ball pen on perforated paper, 126 x 180 cm © Răzvan Anton
Răzvan Anton, Fading Study (Hand-held Photograph), 2023
Răzvan Anton, Fading Study (Hand-held Photograph), 2023, blue ball pen on perforated paper, 10 negative and 10 positive prints, 120 x 105 cm © Răzvan Anton
Raluca Popa, Disegno Ricercato (I) XI, for the right hand, gradually faster, the left at rest, 2022
Raluca Popa, Disegno Ricercato (I) XI, for the right hand, gradually faster, the left at rest, 2022, cut-and-woven pencil drawings on paper, 42 x 59.4 cm (46.5 x 64 x 3.5 cm framed); photo: Alexandru Paul; © Raluca Popa

Started in 2022, Disegno Ricercato (I) is an ongoing series of drawings for which Raluca Popa associates a musical score – Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata no. 1 – and a photograph taken by Brancusi in his studio. The artist came across Musica Ricercata at a time when she became increasingly concerned with finding new ways of expanding the medium of drawing; “ricercare” (Italian: “to seek out”) is her main motivation behind this series. 

Another highlight of Popa’s practice is her use of personal archives as a steppingstone for investigations on learning processes and agency. Probably her most ambitious work on paper to date, Works (Scale 1:2) is a box set of pocket-sized books in which the artist reproduced 197 of her own school papers at half their original size, in laboriously pantographed handwriting. “The Romanian educational system of the 1990s generally rendered the effort required for test papers into a mix of memory game and manual work, which Popa now serenely and laboriously reenacts (hence, the simple title Works), translating the writing into signs that ultimately become ornament, or drawings.” (Mihaela Chiriac, curator)

Raluca Popa, Works Scale 1:2, 2022
Raluca Popa, Works (Scale 1:2), 2022, copies, graphite on paper, handwritten with pantograph and bound into a set of 13 books, slipcase; slipcase: 15.5 x 11 x 12.8 cm; books: variable dimensions; photo: Eric Tschernow; © Raluca Popa
Raluca Popa, Works (Scale 1:2), 2022, sample page spread from Music book; photo: Eric Tschernow; © Raluca Popa

Art fair details

Drawing Now Art Fair 2024

Gaep, Booth PR2

With the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute

Address

Carreau du Temple, Paris

Public Opening Hours

21–23 March: 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.

24 March: 11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.