Constantin Flondor

The Triade Foundation, Jecza Gallery and the Institute of the Present presents the monograph Constantin Flondor. When Eye Touches Cloud on Friday, 3rd of June at 7 pm. The book includes works produced between 1946 and 2020, and is edited under aegis of the editorial programme P+4 Publications of the Institute of the Present.

The volume will be released in the presence of the artist, accompanied by art historian Katarzyna Cytlak and curator Rainer Fuchs, two of the authors of the essays commissioned for the publication, as well as its editor, art historian Alina Șerban and the publication’s graphic designer, Andrei Turenici.

When Eye Touches Cloud is the first monograph dedicated to the manifold oeuvre of Romanian artist Constantin Flondor (born 1936, in Czernowitz, based in Timișoara since 1948), the leading protagonist of the art groups 111, Sigma and Prolog. This richly illustrated publication takes a closer look on the influential body of work he had produced in painting, kinetic & Op art, land art, action, experimental film & photography. It surveys the various steps of his practice: from the lyricism of the first pictorial constructs to the optical and kinetic art of the Group 111, from the study of form and land art characteristic of the Sigma Group, defined as the effort to connect within a single equation visual research and experiment, to the Prolog Group’s spirit of communion and conviviality.

The book offers a comprehensive overview of the principles that shape Constantin Flondor’s art, of reflecting and theorising starting from the inventory of terms, themes, and concepts that have guided him as an artist over seventy years of uninterrupted work and of restoring them to the international context of art through the contributions of invited authors, Dieter Roelstraete & Abigail Winograd, Rainer Fuchs, and Katarzyna Cytlak. The book structures visual materials in four separate chapters: 1946–1965 Early Works; 1965–1969 The Metaphysics of the Image. The Intervention of the Geometric. Group 111; 1969–1981 Research and Experiment. The Sigma Group. Via Phenomenology of Form to the Meanings of Perception; 1981–2020 The Return to Painting. The Prolog Group. From Sky to Garden, Modes of Contemplating the Unknown. In addition, the chapters are supplemented with archival materials: a selection of critical texts and of the artist’s writings (1969–2008), and a chronology compiled by the editor together with Sanda and Constantin Flondor, as well a wide-ranging interview with Constantin Flondor, which first appeared as part of the Parkour series published by the Institute of the Present.

The event takes place in the framework of the exhibition Constantin Flondor. Remember hosted by the Jecza Gallery, part of the Triade Foundation. The exhibition includes recent works alongside with a series of historical pieces dating from the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Flondor returns once again to a series of works dating from the 1960s and 1970s, which he places either comparatively with the recent ones or reconstructs them in the form of new works, giving them a new grid of interpretation. The time-lapse that Remember outlines offers the viewer the chance to follow the evolution of themes characteristic to his art (from the research of light/shadow relationships to the subjective perceptions born out of the game of concave-convex shapes moulded in flour; from the vivid, baroque rhythms, of the natural structures to the geometry of the snowflake), but also the extremely subtle, but important, transitions from photography to painting.

 

The volume was edited with the support of Kontakt Collection Vienna, Diehl Gallery Berlin, Eleon Association and the artist Constantin Flondor.

Acknowledgements: Sanda & Constantin Flondor, Andreea Palade-Flondor, Kathrin Rhomberg, Volker Diehl, Horațiu Iovănaș, Sorina Jecza, Fundatia Triade, Galeria Jecza, Lissandra Hăulică, George Lecca, Livius Ciocârlie, Andrei Pleșu, Doru Tulcan, Iosif Kiraly, Julia Jachs, Diana Bularca, Oana Simionescu, museums & collectors.

Published by: P+4 Publications
Book concept, editor: Alina Șerban
Editorial assistant: Ștefania Ferchedău
Authors: Katarzyna Cytlak, Constantin Flondor, Rainer Fuchs, Dieter Roelstraete & Abigail Winograd, Alina Șerban
Language: English/ Romanian
Pages: 512
2021
Graphic Design: Daniel & Andrew Design Studio (Andrei Turenici)
ISBN: 978-973-0-34823-1

P+4 Publications is a small publishing programme established in Bucharest. Dedicated to Romanian contemporary photography, art and architecture, the programme explores the book medium as a point of encounter between theoretical research, graphic design experiment and artists’ ideas and subjects tackled by artists in their practice. The programme was supported by PEPLUSPATRU Association between developed 2013–2021 and since 2021 is coordinated by the Institute of the Present.

IP—The Institute of the Present is a research and an artist resource platform in the field of visual and performing culture conceived by Ștefania Ferchedău and Alina Șerban, established in Bucharest. Centred on artists and their personal accounts, on time-specific encounters and forms of (self) archiving, the Institute looks at various practices and situations from the recent past until today from a transnational and transcultural perspective.