Pif in Romania, a golden age hero

Curators: Jean-Pierre Dirick, Ştefan Constantinescu
Associated curators:
Xandra Popescu, studioBASAR
Artists:
Daniela Bălăneanu, Răzvan Botiş, Larisa Crunţeanu, Ion Grigorescu, Victor Man, Ciprian Mureşan, Dan Perjovschi, Mihai Stănescu, Gabriela Vanga, Veizoaarte
Exhibition design:
Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan, Radu Leşevschi (studioBASAR) şi Dan Bălăneanu
Production:
Atelier RD
Print:
Fabrica Flash
Support carboard:
Rondocarton
Location:
Sala Dalles, Bucureşti
Client:
Institut Francaise Roumanie
Organization:
Patrick Apel-Muller, Mihai Oroveanu, Stanislas Pierret, Didier Dutour, Clara Trăistariu
Period:
20 June - 22 July 2012

Bucharest Architecture Annual / 2013 - Interior Design Section - Nomination.

scan“The exhibition’s aim is to retrace the history and evolution of the publication, and especial to highlight the symbolic role over the personal imaginary in the communist Romania of the ‘70-’80. Pif Gadget was one of the few publications, if not the only one, that gone trough from the West and was legal shared trough out the countries of the eastern block. Ironically, the magazine that symbolized for the local people the western values was also a product of communism, this time of the french one. Despite it’s scarcity - only the children of the influent or related people in the ranks of the party can acces this luxury, the others could read it only second or third hand - the magazine Pif Gadget triggered real passions among it’s romanian readers, a real ‘Pifomanie’.”

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The layout integrates several techniques, from comic strips, text or archive pictures to video work, installation, drawings, caricatures and collage. The setup of the exhibition aims to integrate the two ingredients of the display, the french bd characters and the Romanian artists, included in a double structure where giant pages from an ideal Pif magazine are thread in line, only to be interrupted by interventions- commentary of the art works.

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The logic of the interventions over the original is assumed also from the affective history of a hole generation of second hand readers, that get the magazine whitout the gadget, found it written all over, in places even cut-out, with all the games figured out, the labyrint solved or the answers to the misteries pointed.

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The atmosphere of the layout tends to cut of from the present and frames a suspended time, a time of childhood in socialism, a world that was closing in like a cardboard castle where playing and enjoying simple things in life can stay side by side with crazy festivities and sweet boredom.

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The experience of the audience in the space is a walk like a turn over inside an ideal Pif magazine, where the smell of cardboard, of glue and fresh paint, together with red cloth spread over canvases, all conspires to reconstruct a magazine as a cultural phenomenon, a comic strip magazine cut out in places by art insertions or collages with anonymous interventions found in the magazine, a walk marked by active stops in the Pif Market, Playground Workshop or the Testimonies Area.

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http://www.institutfrancais-roumanie.com/institutfrancais-roumanie.com/cms/articleview/id/2249