Four points of enclosure
Garden {area, shape, ornament, environment, settlement, space, encountering point, movement, organism, origins, organ, reproduction, creation, bloom, colour, beauty, fade, seed, empty space} Man. The garden is here a human representation of his vision of nature.
{...}: An on-going shift between man and nature, where a continuous flux of movement is (re) generating many possible climates and shapes for what a garden could be. Nothing exists without its contrast, and in this context, usually, man, has the chance to prove to himself that he can be a little God by shaping the nature, by making an arrangement out of it. On the other side, there is the natural environment as it is, which is an antagonistic rebellious organism which cannot be controlled as man would wish to. Sometimes, like a Venus without her arms, a garden gets to be its own witness for changing, while almost being molested. It can turn against these actions, by re-shaping, by swallowing man`s decisions under its monumentality.
Designed gardens for specific purposes take their own place and deviate from their main reasons of projection, becoming curtains which may hide world`s collision behind beauty.
Shaped on the contour of the conflict between the two interactions mentioned above, this show is an extension of an on-going project developed by Andrei Ciurdărescu. ...
By archiving everything that he finds related to his research, he undergoes this project from preserving plants to creating his own garden in the shared courtyard of the apartment he is living, almost making a lifestyle out of this subject. Curious on how the balance of creation is settled between stability and the ephemeral, he is creating contexts where he arranges little utopias, gathering elements which in the material world would be impossible to co-exist together.
Interested on how this forms of environment deviate from one of their purpose of being recreational quiet places, the artist is showing here the garden from an almost voyeuristic perspective, where marble gets to be presented as manufactured flesh, behind which an unseen side of the garden is hiding: luscious and unable to be touched, revealed here as a found footage of a hidden secret. There is almost a silent sensuality hidden behind this form of mutilating nature and decorations, and the exhibition explores this under four paths of presentation, generating a transition from a sort of a scientific approach of recomposing contexts of nature until reaching a more intrinsic, personal corner which deals with the theme.
Alexandra Mocan, artist, curator @ MATCA Art Space
Four points of enclosure / 2018
Project details
