The Art Safari Fair Bucharest

A new step towards a network of art galleries.

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 17.05.2015, 13:22

IA year ago, a
big tent in George Enescu Square in Bucharest invited people to attend the
first edition of the Art Safari Fair. The first edition brought together over
70 art galleries, institutions and venues in a single space in downtown
Bucharest, specially designed for the event. This year, Art Safari will be
hosted by the Ciclop building, the first multi-storey car park in Bucharest,
set up in the first half of the 20^th
century. The second edition of Art Safari aims to create dynamic relations
between art galleries, art aficionados and collectors, as well as public
institutions. The Art Safari Fair 2015 held over May 13^th-17^th
will give an overall image of contemporary and modern art. Ioana Ciocan, an
independent curator and director of the Art Safari Fair gives us details about
the participants in the Fair:

We started out
the project optimistically; however we didn’t expect so many galleries to
confirm their participation. We also have an extremely important international
presence: Trapez from Hungary and Larm Galleri from Denmark. I’m glad to say
that a lot of galleries are attending the fair this year, including Plan B,
Lateral, Baril and so on. This year, we had to turn down the offer of certain
galleries. First and foremost, we wanted to showcase quality contemporary art
and not to sell stands to cover the exhibition space. Such quality exists and
we believe in it. The galleries we rejected did not comply with our curatorial
plan meant to lend unity to the space. The first storey features heritage art,
the second storey illustrates art from the 60s to 1995 and the upper floor
plays host to what we call ultracontemporary art from 2015 included. Although
it is an art fair, we believe that there must be a strong connection between
the quality of works and their price.

At the
moment, the Art Safari Fair is the first professional fair in Romania and its
organizers plan to turn it into a major fair in the region, as Silvia Rogozea,
the cultural manager of the Art Safari project tells us:

We
measure up with the Istanbul Fair, which is also open to the Middle East. In
Romania, we’d like to develop a landmark in Eastern Europe in 2016, trying to
include galleries from Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and thus develop in
the region. The contemporary art works on the third and fourth storeys are for
sale. Visitors can talk to gallery managers, art critics, curators and artists
at the stands; they can interact with them, get in touch with the exhibitors.

Since the
organizers of the fair were very strict about the curatorial plan this year, on
the Art Safari.ro website, there was a registration form which art galleries
had to fill in. The form included the CV of the artist whom the gallery wanted
to promote, a short history of the gallery and pictures of the works to be put
on view. Art critic Ruxandra Garofeanu was in charge of selecting the works
reflecting socialist realism:

These
works have a generous theme, which for the time being, is not illustrated in
our museums; they date back to 1950-2000 and belong to great artists like
Vintanu, Nicodim, Almasanu or Iacob, who are not exhibited anywhere, not even
in a contemporary art museum. You’ll get to know the Socialist Realism Epoch as
mirrored in the works of authentic artists. Works from a museum in Ramnicu
Sarat, the Museum in Galati, the Museum in Baia Mare, the Museum in Targu
Mures, the Museum in Pitesti are on display. I’ve found some works of an
extraordinary freshness by Henri Catargi, which I didn’t know where they were
exhibited in the country and which will for the first time be on show here.’

Attending the opening of the Art Safari
Fair, writer Horia Roman Patapievici called for a better use of the Ciclop
Parking building, a witness of past vicissitudes that has found another
destination now:

This
space in downtown Bucharest can be used in a creative manner blending the
beauty of the past with our attempts to live in a normal present. A normal
present means that an artist shouldn’t make a name for himself or herself only
abroad. Heritage works are on view here brought over by national heritage
museums since we aim to bridge the gap between the heritage art housed in
museums, subject to forced nationalization, destroyed by private collectors, by
the Romanian communist state, a situation that still exists, and contemporary
art, which is very much alive, very special, an art which the state has not
grabbed yet and which develops in full freedom. We don’t want to extend this
gap between heritage art and contemporary art; they are brought together in
this venue, in the Ciclop parking building.

The Art Safari Fair 2015 is open for five days and one
night, May 16^th, Museum Night.