DAN PERJOVSCHI
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DAN PERJOVSCHI
Dan Perjovschi gained international acclaim in 1999 with his spatially expansive work rEST which was staged in the Rumanian pavilion at the 48th Biennial in Venice. Perjovschi bedecked the floor of the pavilion with drawings, scribbling and political graffiti which thematicised life in the post-Communist era and the role of East European art in the cultural exchange with the West. Perjovschi´s drawings and caricatures raise awkward issues concerning post-Socialist identity, whilst, at the same time, rejecting in ambivalent fashion the West’s interpretation of East European art as historically obsolete. Sketched using Edding markers, Perjovschi´s figures in the Rumanian pavilion literally vanished beneath the feet of visitors to the exhibition a clear allusion to the disappearance of East European identity and “old” art against the backdrop of the historic upheavals following in the wake of the collapse of the Wall. Perjovschi perceives the role of the artist in the post-Socialist era primarily in political terms; he is on the staff of the Bucharest-based weekly opposition newspaper “22”, and since 1991 has served as the journal’s political illustrator and art director. As a commuter between East and West (where since 1992 he has held a number of visiting professorships and scholarships and shown his works in many highly acclaimed exhibitions), Perjovschi is regarded as a keen expert and observer of trends in migration policies which form the subject matter of his political graffiti. Recently he caused something of a sensation with his project White Chalk Dark Issues, which was staged as part of the project scheduled for the year 2003, “Die Offene Stadt: Anwendungsmodelle” at the disused coking plant the Kokerei Zollverein, which houses the centre for Contemporary Art and Art Criticism in Essen, Germany. As artist-in-residence, Perjovschi was invited to decorate the entire storage bunkers of the former coking plant with his graffiti and drawings over a period of three months. Open to the public since 1997, the site was originally used until 1992 to stockpile coal for further processing into coke, and consequently, it is ideally suited to hosting an art project which in two respects thematicises historical periods of transition: the transition from the industrial plant to the cultural production site and the transition of Eastern Europe into a phase of political and cultural reorientation. Across an area measuring 700 sq.m. he has forged a historical panorama, which, at the same time, presents a snapshot of the current global political situation. For the exhibition project “In the Gorges of the Balkans” Perjovschi carried forward this approach into the public space of Kassel, adopting a critical stance by showing his works not in the exhibition rooms, but at selected “action sites“ in the urban spaces beyond the confines of the exhibition. In so doing he avoided being assigned a “Balkans identity“. Armed with chalk, Perjovschi will spend two weeks either side of the opening of the exhibition using Kassel´s public spaces as a canvas. His motifs are drawn from the global political situation, East-West issues and the role of artists within a system of interrelated political structures - which has grown in complexity since the fall of the Wall. Bridging the divide between action art, performance and art in public space, Perjovschi´s contribution serves as a model for visual action in urban space and for the new role of the artist which, in Perjovschi´s view, lies in both critically questioning the venue and the artistic self-conception of the exhibition, and ensuring that any intervention achieves maximum effect with minimum input of resources. Marius Babias English: John Rayner
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