Șerban Savu

Complementing the presentation in the Romanian Pavilion in Giardini della Biennale, Șerban Savu’s project for the New Gallery of the Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research in Venice operates between the public sphere of monumental art and the artist’s studio as a space of production and reflection. The gallery will host the production of a large-scale mosaic work, reflecting the spirit of the small Venetian manufacturing workshops. The mosaic True Nature, based on Savu’s 2019 painting with the same name, is here to be magnified at a monumental scale. Upon completion, timed to coincide with the end of the Biennale, the mosaic will be offered for installation on a building façade in Chisinau, thus completing the arc of its conception, as Savu developed the idea of True Nature as an ironic antithesis to The Plowman of the Universe, a Soviet-era Socialist mosaic on the façade of the “Yuri Gagarin” Youth Center in the Moldovan capital.

In addition to the mosaic workshop, the New Gallery will also host a public program of talks, on topics ranging from the histories of mosaic to theories of work in contemporary anthropology, economy and philosophy, on ecology and the post-work society, coordinated by Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu, a prominent Chișinău-based cultural critic.

Commissioner: Ioana Ciocan

Curator: Ciprian Mureșan