What IS a Bird? We Simply Don’t Know at Galeria Nicodim

Artists: Yonatan Vinitsky, Alek O., Razvan Boar, Antoine Donzeaud, Henry Chapman, Kenneth Alme, Virgile Ittah and Kai Yoda

Exhibition title: What IS a Bird? We Simply Don’t Know

Curated by: Domenico de Chirico

Venue: Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania

Date: June 25 – July 31, 2015

Photography: images courtesy of the artists and Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest

Galeria Nicodim Bucharest is thrilled to present a group exhibition curated by Domenico de Chirico. The paintings, sculptures, and wall works in this show chisel loose the shape and image of everyday scenes, stripping away their original associations and making visible the characters and materials that weave in and out of peripheral consciousness. An oil puddle rises into a lonely island. A childhood cartoon skips across the sketchy picture plane with uncanny unfamiliarity. Seatbacks are locked in their upright positions. A memory is cast in a foggy figure on the brink of evaporation.

The exhibition title is taken from the short-lived BBC absurdist mockumentary series Look Around You. Squeezing surrealism from subjects as mundane as water and math, the series’ title is also its main behest—a proposition handily taken up, taken apart, and rearranged to poetic ends, displaced yet present.

At least for now.

—Christina Catherine Martinez