I <3 manele

2007
stencil

cars

2005-2007
marker, chalk, dust graffiti and stencil

[As the Romanian economy is growing, signs of prosperity are appearing all over the place. In Bucharest that is translated to an enormous, ever growing number of cars occupying the streets and the entire public space in the city. In a town that was never designed to have so many cars, the quality of life is decreasing strangely enough because of its prosperity. To underline this situation I started to draw simple car shapes in as many places as possible. I though that the graffitied cars, something generally seen as a violent, vandalizing form of expression, would bring attention to the real problem of the city which is the car pollution.

The simple car shape is an inspiration from the basic Dacia car design which was also the subject of a previous work of mine. It also emphasizes the fact that I cannot draw as my previous training to art was maths and physics.

The dot to dot stencil graffiti is an encouragement for the people to start drawing the car shapes.

The graffiti car shapes are also the staring point of a more complex installation I did in January 2007 at Akademie Schloss Solitude. ]

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

2007
vinyl banner
1.3 x 27 m


[This is my work for TVR - Romanian State Television's 50th Anniversary when several artists were commissioned to do a work which would be kept on the television premises for a year. I am using Gil Scott Heron’s famous words as a comment on the authenticity of the Romanian Revolution of 1989, supposedly the first revolution ever to be transmitted live on television.]

National Redemption Cathedral billboard

2006
billboard
3 x 6 m

[Bucharest, August 2006. This construction site pannel mockup is a continuation of the Proposal for the National Redemption Cathedral project. The billboard was near Casa Poporului and the location of the future Cathedral.]

Monumentul Erorilor

Errors' Monument



2005
stencil graffiti

In God We Trust

2005
stencil graffiti

Proposal for the National Redemption Cathedral

2004
poster
50 x 70 cm

"When the news spread that the Romanian Orthodox intends to erect a monumental ‘Cathedral of National Redemption’, the artist proposed a morphing, a quick solution to both problems: the House itself can become a cathedral, by simply adding the generally recognizable signs of piety in the public sphere, dome and cross. No other adjustments would have been necessary to accommodate the new breed of megalomania, in the context of a perverse alliance between the ideology behind the House and the one evinced by the plans of the Orthodox Church, in a country trapped somewhere between the 19^th and 21^st century, still boasting its role in the Middle Ages as “defenders of faith” and where populist initiatives can display a remarkable opacity to the present and its imperative questions. Made last year, Vlad’s proposal brought together theoretically disparate realities; yet recent developments have confirmed what appeared at first to be no more than a quirk. Those disparate realities have come to articulate a closed, inescapable network, proving the artist’s derision prescient. After a few possible locations for the Cathedral were rejected, the site under consideration now is precisely the lawn in the back of the House, the only impediment being that the foundation of the Cathedral might affect the underground defense tunnels which spread from the House towards other locations vital for national security. This enfolding of military secret, conspiracy theory, late and falsified religiousness, megalomania and populism qualifies the House as a strange attractor for misplaced ambitions and unspoken political desires, as well as the perfect backdrop for acting out the post-communist syndrome. If the plan of church-plus-government is to enlist the support of that segment of population which needs this cathedral, and meanwhile safeguard the imperial isolation of the House, then the project of the Cathedral can work. If the plan is to cover the whole idea – and necessity – of urbanizing the House with a thick layer of ridicule, then the project is truly advisable. If the grandiosely confused plan is to build a sacred counterpart to the obscene violence of the House of the People, then the project is ill-advised. So is any thought that this might infuse life to an entire area ravaged by communist urbanism, or trigger the post-traumatic process."

Mihnea Mircan

Excerpt from “COMMUNITY WORK” – A Report . Originally published in catalogue of the exhibition PARADOXES. THE EMBODIED CITY, Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, 2005

Eminemscu show

2003
stencil graffiti

"The small stencil detournement that plays on the phonetic similarity between the names of Romania's national poet Eminescu and contemporary hip-hop star Eminem illustrates the current confusion in the country which is squeezed between the introversion of a societal collectivity typical to periods of crises and the showering of globally rotating signifiers of spectacle, in which the icons of the different ideological constellations bleed into each other."

Erden Kosova