On Wednesday, September 23, 2009, at 16.00, the ninth exhibition from the Young Romanian Art series will be opened in the New Gallery of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Venice, Italy. The exhibition is entitled 'games and toys', and it brings together works by Alina Andrei, Simion Cernica, Cuzina and Veda Popovici.
In the year 2000 we will not be children anymore, so the song goes. Our parents will be almost old. Childhood will become a remote place one can almost discover untouched in a series of projector slides that belong to some other era. The teachers, the toys, the sporting events that we all left behind at some point are all still there.
The moment was recorded on film and now it is only partially accessible. The uniforms, the flags and the image of the leader reflect not so much the power of persuasion of the official story, as they reveal the candor of a real childhood, that only those who were born in Romania in the 80s, or before that, can really feel.
Maybe we will become the kind of grow-ups who play with photography in their spare time. Or, rather, we will play tricks on the dusty spirit of worn-out gestures produced by the photographic clubs. We will think again about being spontaneous and then, without remorse, we will laugh at other people’s work.
We might also become grown-ups by wearing glasses. And inside the lens, the nostalgic image will always take shape - half deceiving, covering and mutilating the present. And sometimes, perhaps out of boredom, the impression that everything was already done.
Young Romanian Art is Mircea Nicolae's residency project at the Romanian Cultural Institute in Venice, during which the artist functions as an organizer and a curator. This series of one-week exhibitions aims at promoting young Romanian art during the Venice Art Biennial 2009.
