Răzvan Neagoe at Arsmonitor

Artist: Răzvan Neagoe

Exhibition title: Sinegrafia

Venue: Arsmonitor, Bucharest, Romania

Date: January 18 – February 23, 2024

Photography: IONUȚ DOBRE / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Arsmonitor, Bucharest

The current exhibition provides a panoramic overview of a series of themes, techniques, and representative subjects—due to their recurrence and the depth of exploration—for Răzvan Neagoe’s artistic journey over the past 20 years. Portraiture, still life, landscape, and urban space form the basis of this narrative self-scripting, considering that, in most cases, representation is confronted and nullified by the technical issues of the darkroom and camera.

The image is reclaimed as a witness that records photographic errors and alterations. Consequently, it is removed from the realm of the recognizable, and the image is brought into a meditative and experimental territory of analytical and self-reflective origin. In his approach, the rudiments of analog photography, augmented with various experimental curiosities, are the primary creative tools through which the image undergoes psychological, existential, and phenomenological questioning. In this sense, Răzvan Neagoe’s artistic endeavor can also be understood as a form of researching the problems of the “meta-image,” a term borrowed from W.J.T. Mitchell, meaning an “image of the image,” leading a self-aware inquiry into the existence of images, a specific condition of the “iconic turn.”

Trained as a painter, completing his studies under Teodor Moraru in 2002, and his master’s under Mihail Mănescu in 2003, his approaches in the photo lab seem to be residues of the image creator in the studio. Attracted to the idea of an image as a trace, the artist operates in an intermediate territory where the image loses its definition as a “window,” in the traditional sense given by Alberti to painting, and as a “mirror,” in the sense conferred by the camera’s function.

Metaphorically speaking, his approach can be described as a form of “pictocorrection” of photography or, conversely, as an overexposed development of painting. The technological and chemical tools of the lab photographer are complemented by the technical and sensitive tools of the studio painter, through expression and subjectivity.

The exhibition can be perceived as a personal synthesis essay dominated by the continuous questioning of the fundamental issues of photography, where the interest in the most diverse technical and technological formulas for capturing and developing extends beyond the territory of representation. The condition of the image undergoes the most radical encounters between traditional and contemporary practices and techniques, covering a complete range of image reproducibility.

Răzvan Neagoe, Sinegrafia, 2024, exhibition view, Arsmonitor, Bucharest

Răzvan Neagoe “Z32” 2023, 32 x 31/31 cm, gelatin silver print, Ilford Multigrade RC Cooltone Glossy Brillant and Ilford Ilfospeed RC Deluxe IS 1 Glossy Brillant

Răzvan Neagoe, “Landscape” 2024, 17x 20,3/25,4 cm, darkroom Kodak Supra Endura Surface F Photography Paper, and 12 x 9/14cm, darkroom Azomureș color paper

Răzvan Neagoe, “Untitled” 2024, 6 x 21/29,7 cm, Fuji Crystal Archive, 5 x 15/18 cm, Fuji Crystal Archive

Răzvan Neagoe, “Body scale, looking at the camera” 2023, triptych, 57/90 cm, gelatine silver print, Foma Fomabrom 112 N paper

Răzvan Neagoe, ”Landscape” 2022, 5 x 18/24 cm, gelatin silver print, Azomureș paper

Răzvan Neagoe, “Time” 2023, 200 x 7,4/10,5 cm, gelatin silver print, AGFA Gevaert Brovira paper

Răzvan Neagoe, “Untitled” 2024, slide projector ETUDE 1

Răzvan Neagoe, “Untitled” 2024, slide projector ETUDE 2

Răzvan Neagoe, “View from the studio” 2023, 216/250 cm, gelatin silver print, Foma Fomabrom 112 N paper

Răzvan Neagoe, “Time” 2023, 200 x 7,4/10,5 cm, gelatin silver print, AGFA Gevaert Brovira paper

Răzvan Neagoe, ”The Seaside” 2024, 180/180 cm, chromogenic print, Fuji Crystal Archive Paper