Much has been written about Brancusi’s influence upon the art of Paul Neagu (1938 - 2004), as well as the imprint of the creative sensibility of the latter upon Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley and Tony Cragg, some of the most well-known figures of the new generation of British sculptors in the 1980s, who were his students in London. In the exhibition space, however, their works have rarely met.

In an exploratory approach, this exhibition aims to offer a space of “open fusion” (the title of a series of works by Neagu from the late ‘70s), in which these interferences become possible, in which the creation of Neagu itself becomes the subject generator and the catalyst of new configurations and energies, the hyphen between sources which marked his investigations, practices he influenced, discourses he intersected with, both alive and posthumously.

Including over 50 works by the artist from various private collections in Romania, alongside Brancusi’s Kiss from the collection of the museum, as well as contributions by Tony Cragg, Marianne Eigenheer, Neville Gabie, Anish Kapoor, Vlad Nancă & Nona Inescu, and Nigel Rolfe, the exhibition will examine the  existing and emerging connections generated by these presences, with a focus on several concepts relevant for all the participating artists: the nomadic nature of modern sculpture; interplay of intensities and temporalities of matter and space; mobility, processuality, transience and limit; virtualities that actualize themselves both in active matter and in the mutual constitution of artistic subjectivities; the metamorphosis of matter into action and action into matter and text.

Nigel Rolfe, Vlad Nancă and Nona Inescu will perform live at the opening, and Neville Gabie in September. A catalogue will be published at the end of the exhibition.

WHERE?