Closed Doors. Open Envelopes Exhibition – Iosif Kiraly, National Museum of Contemporary Art

An exhibition that captures the artistic activity of Joseph Király in the last two decades of the communist regime and in the first decade of transition. The predominantly presented environment is photography as a way of recording the unfolding events, exhibited in various forms – from tlarge works, to laboratory documents of small dimensions, sometimes affected by time. The exhibition includes sketches, ideas, drawings, models arranged along with photographs, which support the artistic path.

The density of Iosif Király’s predigital body of work describes phenomena representative of the current cultural context: the accumulation of information / data / works, their storage, circulation and exposure. The archive was begun in communism, continued and exposed later during the transition to capitalism and offers the opportunity to think of its proper space with duality – as both a hierarchical and non-hierarchical collection.

Placed in the symbol of Communism – the former House of the People – the exhibition illustrates different  ways to display an archive, developed through a series of furniture objects that are related to various types of artworks – photographs with various formats, models, notebooks, prints , envelopes (mail-art network), slides and video projections are displayed at various heights and layouts.

The understanding of the exhibition is given by immaterial links of ideas, images, and individual observations that create a dialogue between small works (horizontally exposed) and large ones (exposed on the walls). The walk through the exhibition is free and open, offering varied ways of understanding the material, thus creating particular connections between distinct creation periods.

Phase: Completed : Exhibition design

Client: The National Museum of Contemporary Art

Location: Parliament Palace, MNAC, Bucharest

Artist: Iosif Király

Curator: Ruxandra Demetrescu

Coordinator: Alexandru Oberländer-Târnoveanu

Photos: Lavinia Pollak (p1, p12) Dani Gherca (p2,4,5,6,8,9,11) courtesy of MNAC