PK Selects: (Un)earthings, a solo show of Traian Chereches

 

On the 6th of May, Atelier 35 In Bucharest opened the exhibition Un-earthings- the solo show of Traian Cherecheș. An immersive meta-structural exhibition featuring hybrid sculpture and strong abstract painting that generates an unfamiliar space and echoes the downside of mass-cultural technological processes created through cultural contexts. 

As per the artist's statement: The  organic structures of his work and especially his sculptures reflect the idea that the accumulated waste represents the current state of our polluted, consumptive world and this certainly rings true. The plasticity of Cherecheș sculptures along with the dark and high contrast paintings recall all  the dismal imaginary places narrated in dark science fiction narrations and through an allegorical way catch up with the zeitgeist . 

The exhibition Director Horatiu Lipot writes: ‘The works of Traian Chereches are part of a tradition opposed to that which was perpetuated from Renaissance to the beginnings of modern art, representing in visual arts a part that is no longer associated with the disciplines and values of progress but shows, on the contrary, what survives in humans from the irreducible archaic reminiscences, which the disciplines of progress could not undo. If we were to make an analogy with the attitude towards the two dominant approaches in the history of arts, one of “image creator” vs. "profaner of the image", without denying that Traian is an iconodule who occupies the first category. In an era of iconoclasts, he seeks a image with personifying and integrating value. Through the concepts chosen, which bear instances of an avatar: the volcano, the column, the mask which is not the human one, but the transhuman formed on the ruins of the Anthropocene - it speaks simultaneously of a past of the pre- and a future of the post- human constructions, the works being basically stable elements in a traditional philosophy based on the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. In ancient traditions this datum is experienced as a symbolic correspondence between the mundane(earth) and divine (heaven), the column for example, representing in the animist settlements the central geographical object, being considered the axis of communication between terrestrial and the celestial’

Traian Cherecheș is a visual artist living and working between Bucharest and Paris. Examining the limits between natural exploration and extraction, his investigation into the current age of extinction surfaces powerful, symbolic approaches to the body, volcano, and ritual. His work emerges from an interdisciplinary process using drawing, painting, sculpture, and sound to translate concerns about the multiple transformations in today’s world. In 2019 he participated in the 64th edition of Salon de Montrouge, Paris. His tracks and experimental soundscapes have been released on labels such as Archipel, Fabric Records London, and Cocoon Recordings. Together with Sacha Khalifé they formed the abstract electronic sound and music project titled Midnight. Recent exhibitions include “Gesturing towards solitude” and “Out of the Blue” at MARe (Museum of Recent Art), Bucharest. Currently, he is working on a collaboration for an experimental sound installation and exhibition with poet, philosopher, and translator Bogdan Ghiu, curator Maria Rus Bojan.