BUCHAREST.- MARe/Museum of Recent Art opened its doors to the public for the first time.

MARe gathers over 120 artworks displayed across 1200 square meters, on five levels designed by Youssef Tohme Architects and Associates (YTAA). This new museum showcases cutting-edge contemporary art, dating from 1965 up until today. MARe is the first private art museum to be opened in Romania in the past 80 years.

MARe’s permanent collection and Romania’s Great Union Centennial
The decision to launch MARe this year bears particular significance. In 2018 Romania celebrates 100 years since the unification of Transylvania, Banat, Bukovina, and Basarabia to the Romanian kingdom. With its focus on Romanian art produced from 1965 up until the present day, MARe proposes a unique vision of Romanian art from the period of the Communist dictatorship until the fall of the Communist regime in 1989. The MARe collection features over 500 artworks by more than 100 Romanian artists, and includes paintings, sculptures, installations, photography, conceptual and video art.

MARe explores a vast range of contemporary Romanian art, reconsidering themes of aestheticism and dystopia, progress and regression, construction and dissolution, dissent and piety, mannerism and blasphemy, tradition and innovation.

A platform for rethinking Romanian art and history
The creation of the MARe building is rooted in the history of the Communist party. Originally designed as a private villa in 1939 by architect Octav Doicescu, the building became associated with the Communist leadership, as a residence of the fearsome Foreign Affairs minister and hardline Stalinist Ana Pauker. The area consolidated its jet-set reputation after Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power, and built his primary residence two minutes away, on the same street (it has since been converted into a museum). When YTAA were briefed to design the architecture of the MARe building, they had to make sure that the heritage of the original building (including a huge underground bunker) were acknowledged whilst also giving the site its own identity and creating a public space that would enhance its relationship with the surrounding city.

The MARe building comprises five levels, spectacular terraces, and a garden. Sunlight enters the building from the roof and passes through an atrium crossing four floors to flood the ground floor with light whilst giving visitors an incredible view of the sky. The building appears to ‘float’ above its transparent, glass-only ground floor, an effect magnified by the monolith, windowless appearance of the bunker-like exterior, clad in dark brick and acting as a reminder of recent history.

The interior of the museum purposefully disrupts any pre-conceptions of what visitors would usually expect from a museum. Instead of a white cube design, the building comprises a labyrinth of corridors and small rooms to encourage intimacy between the viewer and the artworks.

The transition from socialist realism to controlled stylistic diversity
With its focus on Romanian art produced from 1965 up until today, MARe gives visitors a unique perspective of the risks, achievements and compromises that Romanian artists faced during the Communist dictatorship and after the fall of the Communist regime in 1989. In 1965, during the 9th Congress of the Romanian Communist Party, the official ideology relinquished the dogma of ‘socialist realism’ with the aim of encouraging ‘stylistic diversity’ in the arts, without exceeding the limits set by the regime. From that moment on, previously neglected artists such as the self-taught painter Ion Țuculescu turned into heroes and prophets of innovation. Younger Romanian artists rapidly echoed Western art practices, from abstraction and neo-constructivism to photorealism, and from performance art to land art and installations. Works by artists on show at MARe include: Andrei Cădere, Ion Grigorescu, Paul Neagu, Ștefan Bertalan, Roman Cotoșman, Pavel Ilie, Diet Sayler, Alexandru Chira, Horia Bernea, Florin Mitroi, Marian Zidaru, Ioana Bătrânu, Vioara Bara, Teodor Graur, Dan Perjovschi, Dumitru Gorzo, Victor Man, Ecaterina Vrana, Vlad Nancă, Gili Mocanu, Anca Mureșan, Ovidiu Feneș, Cristina David, Ion Bârlădeanu and many others.

‘MEN’ exhibition of works by Jeff Wall – (9 October 2018 - 28 January 2019)
For the inauguration of the museum, internationally renowned artist Jeff Wall was invited with a solo show entitled ‘MEN’. The selection comprises some of Wall’s most iconic works dating from the 1980s right up until the present day, grouped in a peculiar way. ”Despite the boastful capital letters, MEN is far from asserting manhood. Solitude, gloom, weakness, even folly and ridicule smother men facing males, females, cities or societies. Elusive narratives and biting nostalgia ask for empathy for their gestures. Like in genre scenes, the chairs in Monologue are allegorical: determinate, they portray their sitters better than their portraits do. Crisis? MEN shows no exit.” (curator Erwin Kessler, director of MARe). Jeff Wall is well-known for his large format photographs and has held numerous solo exhibitions across the globe from ‘Le Jeu de Paume’ Paris, the ‘ICA’ London, ‘The Museum of Contemporary Art’ Chicago and now, his first ever exhibition in Romania. The exhibition at MARe features works such as ‘The Thinker’ (1986), ‘Mask Maker’ and ‘Listener’ (both dating from 2015) there will also be displayed works such as ‘Searcher’ (2007) and ‘Pawnshop’ (2009). Kessler’s chronological approach showcases the artists’ transition from using light-boxes technology from the 1980s, to large and smaller format photography in the 2000s.

Whilst MARe is mainly dedicated to Romanian art, it will invite three internationally renowned, innovative contemporary artists to exhibit every year. Following the Jeff Wall show, Martin Creed and Thomas Ruff will exhibit at MARe in 2019.

‘Hell’s Heaven’ exhibition of work by Romanian artists – (8 October - 28 November 2018)
This temporary exhibition explores the debates around visual representations of spirituality and religious phenomenon in Romanian art during the last fifty years. Religious thoughts and beliefs were fiercely marginalized and controlled during the Communist dictatorship. However, there was an unexpected revival of religious beliefs during the last decade of the 20th century, after the fall of the Communist regime in 1989. In this exhibition, curator Cristian Vechiu analyses both the militant adherence to the neo-orthodox iconographic and liturgical universe, and the blasphemous criticism against the ecclesiastic institutions and religious practices of the time.