TAKE I, II, IV
2015
Part of the collaborative exhibition WE DID NOT HAVE THE GLASSES TO BE ABLE TO LOOK AT THE SUN with Norbert Costin
Context: The space where the work was realized is located within a group of buildings constructed in the 1970s around a central urban square. It had undergone diverse transformations in earlier times due to changing use and abandonment. In the course of a renovation constituting the preparation of the exhibition project, most of the supplementary and decorative elements in the space were removed in order to regain its initial height, formal structure and material character. Thereby, among other measures, a carpet covering the entire floor area was detached, revealing the original floor made of one by one meter slabs of artificial stone. Due to the lack of natural stone and the need for efficient house building, this technique of precast and perfectly polished, modular artificial stone slabs was predominantly used in local urban architecture during the respective, communist era. Burdened by history, many floors dating from this period are replaced or, at least, disliked.
Take I, II and IV are plaster casts of three defined spots of the floor, each of the same standard surface size of one by one meter. After casting, the resulting plaster blocks were flipped over and positioned exactly where they had been taken from, thus hiding the floor area that had shaped their surface now facing upwards.
Created in a performative interaction with the physical space and resulting in formally minimal, massive material bodies that took on the vocabulary of modular elements within the architectural context, the plaster casts documented the state of the floor at a specific moment and existed only for the duration of the exhibition.
Modelling plaster, support: steel | no. I and II: 10 x 100 x 100 cm, no. IV: 7 x 100 x 100 cm
Exhibition view: Black Framed Glass Cube Gallery, Targu Mures (Romania), 2015
