Sebastian Moldovan

Born in 1982 – Baia Mare, Romania. Lives and works in Bucharest, Romania

 

“The Paris”, intervention in public space, performance, video, 2005 / 2006
Venues: Museum of Geology

 

THE PARIS consists of a series of performance, photographs and video made in Bucharest, in the area that survived the 1960’s demolitions. While for 50 years the model had been Paris, nowadays, all that remained is a few neo-classical and eclectical houses, hidden behind large blocks of flats, endless layers of advertisements, belonging to a perverted society that has no clue about its expectations and needs.
The level of culture contained by an object, measured through its durability is questioned. In a society in which everything has to be consumed, the artistic object is distinguished by its state of functionality, usefulness and degradation, or to what extent can it satisfy certain personal needs. In this case, I’m talking about the need for nothingness – when every commercial and advertisement postulates about what is good and beautiful, when the limits of reality and spectacle are hard to identify – I felt the urge of stepping out of the auspices of a scopic regime dominated by simulacra.
Henri Lefebvre discovered three moments of the social space: the spatial practice (the material expression of the social relationships in a well determined environment), representations of space (conceptual abstractions that offer information about the configuration of the spatial practice – Cartesian geometry, linear perspective), and representational space (the space appropriated through an imagination exercise, a symbolical user of the objects around us). Using this typology and Guy Debord’s derivé (a derogation from the main road, in order to find other ways of moving around town), I walked the streets looking for THE PARIS. (Sebastian Moldovan)

Recent group exbhitions
2005 Almost Censored, Brukenthal Museum, Sibiu.
2005 The Work of Art is Never Alone, Prague Biennal.
2005-2006 Visual Eurobarometer, itinerant exhibition – Bucharest, Timisoara, Cluj.
2005 Consuming the City-Paris, The Symposium Collage Bucharest,
The University of Architecture “Ion Mincu”, Bucharest.
2004 Assez Loin, Espace Cosmopolis, Nantes.
2004 Shoe Polish, Ataş Gallery, Cluj-Napoca.