I have something of a love-hate relationship with my native Bucharest. In that I love it, but it can get very tiring sometimes. As is true with most places, once you know them really well.
Anyway, maybe it's times when a place is looking dull and unappealing when you should seek out the appeal. Look at it in a new light.
Last year, a friend of mind (and great lover of this city) introduced me to this wonderful little art gallery right downtown. It's always running interesting exhibitions for free, and seeing as I hadn't seen the latest, I had my morning coffee and marshaled myself out the door.
This month's exhibition is called "Things Nobody Knows" and is described by the artist, Miruna Cojanu, as a gallery-novel about "the ones that know everything". Drawing on pop culture and real life inspiration, Cojanu weaves together five separate narrative arks that function a little like a musical symphony.
A dance, blending sensuality, shame, shyness, seduction... and other things with an "s" I suppose. It's a visual delight, and frankly, my favorite exhibition here so far.
With it being Sunday noon (and quite hot out), I had the good fortune of having the gallery to myself. Not so much as a security guard, so I could dance from painting to painting and beeline at will.
Chapter 3. She is always in love: with caresses and play. with the sweet-sour taste of love. with seaside sunrise. with coffee and love songs. with you.
Before I took the time to figure out the stories Cojanu had intended for the images, I'd made up my own. A great many of the tableaus are numbered "chapters", so I ran around the gallery (but all elegant like, in a nice dress and sandals) putting the chapters together in numerical order.
Chapter 7. Her Very Guilty Pleasures: betrayals with no regrets. corridas of love. honey on his fingertips. unbridled laughter while he cries. flirting with out-of-love bridegrooms.
I thought it was about the same girl. Because the first images are of really young faces and bear related descriptions. Young girls with all the promise of the world in their eyes - that sort of thing.
Then, you've got the little girl growing into a sultry teenager with a lust for life and a challenging gaze. Wanting love, but also at the same time run by her own insecurities. Knowing you love her, secretly, but teasing you anyway.
Then, you've got the young woman, torn by lost love. Playing with and breaking hearts. This series was, I think my favorite of the chapters, the full grown woman who is, in the author's own words, "a film, but also more than a film". I think the exhibition talked about how our fantasies and projections mingle with a person's actual personality. About appearance and what goes on beyond that.
Of course, once I started paying more attention to what the artist actually had to say, it turned out to be different women in different points of life, not one transiting through life. But I suppose that's the beauty of art, you can make anything you want out of it, and it will still be a valid interpretation.
"Crafting a 'tapestry of insights', I've painted untold stories - not with words, but with strokes of color - depicting mythical women, real yet imagined, both holy and mischievous, liberated yet concealed, their tales hidden within a single moment of stillness."
"I drew inspiration from the vivacious love for life that radiates from the women I cherish, who navigate existence without the fear of failure, orgasm, betrayal, tragedy, or exuberance. My latest series of works reflects this longing for the strength to embrace all that life unfolds, an ode to those who defy social norms and revel in the profound beauty of their own narratives."
... in the artist's own words :)
Some paintings don't have a little poem to accompany them, and for those, the artist draws on popular culture references. One image, the above one (I think), offers a list of movies touching themes of love, femininity, coming of age... such as The Virgin Suicides. Another lists a small "playlist" of poems to convey what the artist was thinking - people like Neruda, Plath, cummings, as well as some Romanian authors.
Though the gallery is quite small, I spent a good 45 minutes here, admiring, thinking, being inspired. I may return before the exhibition ends in July. And just like that, my mood changed. I found something wonderful to enjoy in this city which I thought was done surprising me.
