In his stirring 1926 poem, J’ai tant reve de toi, (J’ai tant reve de toi que tu perds ta realite) Robert Desnos laments the impossibility of real love with the young woman he tries to capture in his dreams. Desnos remains in a state of longing, lost between reality and the idealised image he creates of her, the carnal and the immaterial. He takes refuge in his dreams, the space where he can hold on to her, and as he does, his lover recedes more and more away from reality. Therefore, hope for true connection is futile – the two lovers are but shadows to each other, existing only in the imagination, a third space, or heterotopia to quote Foucault, that mixes reality and fantasy, and allows them to make the impossible possible.

Much like in Desnos’s poem, the imagination of the characters in Stefan Constantinescu’s three films (of a future seven-film series), Troleibuzul 92, Family Dinner, and Six Big Fish, which in this case is activated through the use of technology, plays a central role to the conflicts and tensions that well up within the relationship of today’s heterosexual couple. And yet, Constantantinescu’s open-ended stories do not cling to the specific events depicted– they reveal larger societal realities, hypocricies, and deformations that force the viewer to question himself and his role as spectator, but also participant, in everyday human dramas. This calling into question of societal structures is an aspect that Jean-Luc Godard considered essential to making films politically today, by ”creating moments of openness and undecidability: moments that also question the structural principles of cinema and the filmer-filmed-viewer contract."

The exhibition, which in addition to the films also features a photo essay and journal, Northern Lights, revealing private moments, anxieties, and longing typical of the immigrant experience, as well as a pop-up book, The Golden Age, juxtaposing the artist's biography to the history of Romania, his native country, is built as a living room where one hosts friends and relatives, a third space between the public and the private, and yet a bit of both. Here we encounter the artist's most intimate disclosures, transforming us from mere spectator to participant and even more so, a partaker in the artist's life. We are forced to question our role as audience and explore new relationships with art and our environment, an essential element in today's political cinema and art.

Opening:

Thursday November 6th, 7-10pm

During the vernissage Stefan Constantinescu will cook and serve a meal for the guests.

Opening hours exhibition:

Thursday/Friday 4-7pm
Saturday/Sunday 2-5pm

The exhibtion is organized by Olga Stefan.