Eleusis 2021 European Capital of Culture – Candidate City in collaboration with Aeschylia Festival 2016 proudly presents the group exhibitionLatitudes | Humanscapes curated by Dr. Kostas Prapoglou featuring the work of seven artists, photographers and cinematographers under the theme of contemporary Romania. The exhibition opens to the public on September 1, 2016 at the L. Kanellopoulos Art Centre in Eleusis and will run through November 15, 2016.
Embracing as its central axis the post-industrial, post-Ceaușescu, post-communist and the present socioeconomic reality of the country, the exhibition Latitudes | Humanscapes will convey viewers to realms of the canny and the uncanny. The emergence of parallel stories and narratives across societal micro-environments in urban and rural habitats, considers the dynamics and the trajectories of an hyperrealistic contemporary human topography. Through the prism of esotericism and the soul’s prerequisite for survival, the visual lexicon of each artist surveys notions of human relationships, emotional equilibria, spiritual and physical separation, memory and oblivion, migration and uprooting. The love for the homeland as a common reference ground and set of experiences traverses across the light of the quotidian, the manifestations of native idiosyncrasy, life encapsulated within tradition and folklore and a concealed optimism that tomorrow will eventually be better for everyone.
The participating artists come from Romania as well as Italy and the United States. They have all lived and worked in Romania and participated in exhibitions featured in museums, cultural institutions and galleries around the world as well as in leading international art fairs and the Venice Biennale.
Participating artists: Michele Bressan (b.1980, Italy), Petrut Calinescu (b.1976, Romania), Ioana Cirlig (b.1987, Romania), Carlo Gianferro (b.1970, Italy), David Leventi (b.1978, USA), Andrei Nacu (b.1984, Romania), Davin Ellicson (b.1978, USA).
The exhibition Latitudes | Humanscapes is curated by Dr. Kostas Prapoglou, archaeologist-architect, contemporary art critic and curator based in London and Athens. His texts have been included in exhibition catalogues and publications in Greece and abroad while his reviews and articles feature in the Greek and international press.
To accompany the exhibition, an illustrated catalogue with a curatorial text and artist biographies has been published.
Michele Bressan (b.1980) was born in Trieste, Italy and since 1993 lives and works in Bucharest, Romania. His work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows including Inventing the Truth, part of Romania’s participation to the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), Life is Beautiful, Atelier Am Eck, Düsseldorf, Germany (2015), The Source Collage Open Call, Tate Britain, London, UK (2014), Les Rencontres Internationales, La Gaîté Lyrique and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2014), Museum für Photographie, Braunschweig, Germany (2013), Centre Wallon d’Art Contemporain, Flémalle, Belgium (2012), Vienna Fair The New Contemporary, Austria (2012), Les Rencontres d’Arles photo festival, France (2011), Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Saint-Étienne, France (2011), Gate11-international departures, Fondazione Fotografia Modena, Italy (2011), Venice Biennale, Padiglione Italia nel Mondo, Italy (2011), Mois de la Photo, Paris, France (2010), National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest, Romania (2009/2010), Performance Art Institute San Francisco, USA (2010), ESSL Museum Wien, Austria (2009) and Neuen Museum / Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Germany (2009). In 2010 Bressan received the Constantin Brâncuşi / Cité Internationale des Arts scholarship (Paris). In 2009 he received the ESSL Award and the same year he was nominated for the Henkel Award.
Petrut Calinescu (b.1976) is a photographer based in Bucharest, Romania and a member of The Panos Pictures Network. Calinescu mainly works for western media or non-governmental organisations. His latest project, Pride and Concrete started in 2010 with the support of the World Press Photo Foundation and Robert Bosch. After four years of documentation and various grants it came to an end, with a printed book, website and a travelling photo exhibition. It was shown as a solo exhibition in Bucharest, Cluj, Negresti, Berlin, London and many other places as part of group exhibitions. His ongoing Black Sea project started in 2010. Calinescu’s reportages have been published by the Sunday Times Magazine, Business Week, The New Statesman, 6 Mois, New York Times, Vice International, As Magazine, Esquire and Southern Metropolis Weekly.
Ioana Cirlig (b.1987) is a documentary photographer based in Bucharest, Romania. She studied cinematography and after working for a few years as a photojournalist in Bucharest, she dedicated herself to independent, personal, long-term documentary work. She focuses on the relationship between man and his environment in Romanian society, especially in small towns and rural districts. Between 2012 and 2015 she worked on thePost-Industrial Stories project and the publication of the homonymous photo book. Alongside photographer Marin Raica, she surveyed the effects of deindustrialisation on small mono-industrial communities. Together they documented community life by living in Brad and Petrila, two mining towns in West Romania. Cirlig participated with the Romanian Pavilion’s exhibition Site Under Construction at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014). Her work was showcased in Photo London 2015 as one of the Lensculture Exposure Awards 2014 Winners. She also participated with FotoFilmic 2015 in shows held in New York, Seoul and Vancouver. The same year she presented Post-Industrial Stories in Spotlight: Romania, a group exhibition at Gemak Gallery (The Hague, The Netherlands).
Carlo Gianferro (b.1970) is an Italian photographer based in Rome. He worked for five years in Romania and the Republic of Moldova documenting the non-migratory wealthy Romani communities and published two books, Gypsy Architecture by Edition Axel Menges and Gypsy Interiors by Postcart Edizioni. Gianferro has received several international awards including the Established Artist award by the Documentary Project Fund (2015), Grand Prix Fotofestiwal (2009), First Prize Portraits Stories World Press Photo (2009), Raymond Weil Club International Photography Prize (2008), Marco Pesaresi Award for Contemporary Photography (2008) and Prix Exchange Boutographie (2008). His photos have been exhibited in cultural festivals such as Fotonoviembre (Tenerife, Spain), les Photaumnales de Picardie (France), Athens Photo Festival (Greece), Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival (Brazil) and Festival della Fotografia Etica (Lodi, Italy). Gallery shows include Tethys Gallery (Florence, Italy), 10b Photography Gallery (Rome, Italy) and Aperture Foundation (New York, USA). He has also been involved with projects in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He is currently working on Italian social issues exploring mental illness, exiled workers and other fragile communities. His images have been largely published by the Italian and international press. In 2014 he founded ROAM photography.
David Leventi (b.1978) grew up in Chappaqua, New York and Nantucket, Massachusetts. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn. In 2001, he received his BFA in Photography from Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri and recently had solo shows at Rick Wester Fine Art in NYC and Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans. His photographs have been widely published in, among others, TIME, Architectural Digest, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN The Magazine, FT Weekend Magazine, Travel + Leisure and Condé Nast Traveler. In 2007, Leventi was selected by Photo District News as one of their Top 30 Emerging Photographers. His photography is included in prestigious private and public collections such as The Sir Elton John collection and The Cleveland Museum of Art collection. In his most recent series OPERA, Leventi records the interiors of more than 40 opera houses spanning four centuries and four continents. In 2015, OPERA was published by Damiani Editore with a foreword by Plácido Domingo. He is represented by Rick Wester Fine Art in New York, Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, Bau-Xi Photo in Toronto, Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta and Galería Patricia Acal in Madrid.
Andrei Nacu (b.1984) is a documentary photographer based between London and Iași, Romania. In his creative practice he is using documentary photography, family albums and archive photos to create stories which analyse the junction between personal memory and social history. In 2013 he graduated with an MA in Documentary Photography from the University of Wales, Newport and previously studied Photography and Video at the George Enescu University of Arts in Iași. His projects featured in exhibitions including Events With No Cause, Centre of Contemporary Photography, Iași (2016), Renaissance, Getty Images Gallery, London, UK (2015), Uncertain States, Four Corners Gallery, London (2014), Guernsey Photography Festival, UK (2014), FreshFaced+WildEyed, The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2013), Edges, Ffotogallery, Cardiff, UK (2013), WestPhoto Photography Prize, Ambika P3 Gallery, London (2012). In 2015 he won the Renaissance Photography Prize, was nominated for the Magnum Graduate Photographers Award and shortlisted for the Bar Tur Photobook Award.
Davin Ellicson (b.1978) was born in the United States and today is based in Bucharest. His first major project was Țăran (Romanian for peasant) based on the year he lived with farmers in the village of Valeni in the Carpathian mountains and is the subject of his first monograph that will be published in 2016. Currently, Ellicson works on Paradox Romania project. His work has appeared in various publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Christian Science Monitor, Der Spiegel, L’Espresso, The Official Ferrari Magazine, ART, OneWorld, AFAR and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His photography has been exhibited worldwide including The Phodar Photography Biennial in Pleven, Bulgaria, The Takashimaya Store in Tokyo, Japan, and The East West Gallery in Vienna, Austria. His works are in numerous private collections. In 2012, hisȚăran work was featured at the Lumix Festival in Hannover, Germany. Awards and honours include grants from The Romanian Cultural Institute in Bucharest in 2012 and 2014, The 2009 Portfolio Award at the Phodar Photography Biennial and a Larson Fellowship.
