SABOT, Cluj-Napoca
Camilia Filipov, Nicolás Lamas
Dichotomy
As two facets of the same coin, both Camilia Filipov and Nicolás Lamas use matter, form, and idea in unexpected ways. While Filipov treats history with naïve condescendence, Lamas, on the other hand, uses it to predict the future. As they both play against commonplace and prevailing aesthetics, their vocabularies easily intersect and complement.
Ready-made (Lamas) meets craft-made (Filipov) in a back-to-back dialogue meant to raise questions about the sake of small artistic gestures fuelled by big philosophical thoughts.
Camilia Filipov (b 1990, Taraclia, MD; lives and works in Cluj-Napoca, RO), has studied sculpture at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca (MA) and at Ecole Supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc Liège in Belgium (Erasmus Scholarship). Although she seems to master all traditional mediums (from drawing to painting and sculpture – and the other way around) she’s not our usual suspect. Instead of ‘making’, her practice is concerned with breaking (canons) and unmaking (history). Camouflage and sarcasm are as good as graphite and paint to handle the art matter, but better than graphite and paint to unhandled it. Look at Camilia’s work with suspicion: nothing is as it seems, nor is it otherwise.
Exhibitions (selected): ‘Once more into the grey’ (UNA Galleria, Piacenza, 2018), ‘Surface Actually’, solo show (SABOT, Cluj-Napoca, 2018), Image Painting. ‘Exit into reality’ (Quadro gallery, Cluj-Napoca, 2018), ‘SHOW-Off’ (Matca artspace, Cluj-Napoca, 2018), Things are temporary, but the evidence of their existence, 1st Worldwide Apartment and Studio Biennale (Matca artspace, Cluj-Napoca, 2016), Coming People (S.M.A.K., Gent, 2014).
Nicolás Lamas (b 1980 Lima, PE; lives and works in Brussels, BE). By carefully manipulating images, texts, sounds associated with the detection, interpretation, and transmission of information, Nicolás Lamas attempts to render those various inconsistencies generated by representation. He creates a world packed with possibilities, permanent interactions, ellipses, attractions and repulsions, inversions between horizontality and verticality, incompatibilities between vacuum and matter, distortions of logic. From one piece to another, Lamas develops a meticulous network which ultimately enables the ‘system’ to find its own balance within imbalance.
Exhibitions (selected): ‘Archaeology of darkness’ (Meessen De Clercq, Brussels, 2019), Liminality (SABOT, Cluj-Napoca, 2018), ‘Despise the solid burgher, but drink deep from his flagon’ / duo show with Matt Bryans (Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam, 2018), ‘Against the boundary of its own definition’ (Ladera Oeste, Guadalajara, 2018), ‘Becoming animal’ / duo show with Petra Feriancová (Tenderpixel, London, 2018), ‘The form of decay’ (P/////AKT, Amsterdam, 2017), Before disappearing (019 – Museum of Moving Practice, Ghent, 2017), ‘Every object is a temporal space’ (Espai 13, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 2016).