LERA KELEMEN Selected Works 2019-2021

A self-published artist book comprising of works created by artist Lera Kelemen in her collaborations with different art institutions. This publication is a mile stone in the artist's career, using it as a way to reflect on the formative years of her installation-based practice.

Published in June 2022
Editorial Content LERA KELEMEN
Design CAMILLE LE FLEM
Print RAPIDITY, LONDON
Papers PEREGRINA MAJESTIC & MUNKEN LYNX SMOOTH, G.F. Smith
Typeface GRANTHA SANGAM MN
With the kind support of MARK LOCKERY
Printed copies available upon request

01

Green Skin / Affective Interstice

began in spring 2021 in the framework of I feel something, don’t know what, a curatorial coproduction between Diana Marincu (Art Encounters, Timișoara) and Magda Kardsz (Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw).

Green Skin / Affective Interstice began as a personal exercise to look at the solid surfaces of the built environment from a vulnerable and feminine standpoint. Textures were analysed as areas of mediation of the human, built and natural interactions on a microscopic level. The video work Texture is Identity was screened at Art Encounters Foundation, Zacheta Project Room, Borderline Art Space and Media Art Festival Arad.

PART ONE

Multimedia Installation — Single channel video, stereo sound, 3’03'' / Metal structure / Engraved plaster slabs / Ultra giclée print on Hahnemühle paper / Green luminescent tubes

PART TWO

Multimedia Installation — Single channel video, stereo sound, 3’03'' / Metal structure / Engraved plaster slabs / Ultra giclée print on Hahnemühle paper / Green luminescent tubes

The starting point of Lera Kelemen’s new project for this exhibition, was an attempt to describe the sense of loneliness brought on by the pandemic isolation. The artist created a multimedia installation - an interface of her individual experience, a specially constructed artificial space which compensates for the lack of freedom of movement and access to wild nature, as the boundaries of home/city became difficult to cross over the past year. The artificiality of this mediated contact may be suggested by the artist’s use of the two types of greenery: natural and the green screen, the most artificial of all the available technological backgrounds. — Magda Kardasz, curatorial statement

I breathe through this membrane of marble
Detail — Engraved plaster slab

02

Green Skin / Crevice

opened in September 2021 as a solo show at Borderline Art Space curated by Cristina Moraru and including the video work Texture is Identity developed for the preceding installation, Green Skin / Affective Interstice.

Multimedia Installation — Single channel video, stereo sound, 3’03'' / Metal structures / Digital print on textile / Gravel

Watch full video here.

The installation brings together a compendium of surfaces and structural elements mapped onto the gallery floor to create a network of pathways. A building can be divided into surface and plan. Le Corbusier claims that the surface is what envelopes the mass and that the task of the architect is to ‘vitalise the surfaces which clothe these masses’. In other words the surface is the epidermal layer, the fabric that conveys the identity of a building, and at the same time the facet through which the living, moving world interacts with constructions.

Within the installation, the extractions of plant tissue and sediment overlaid with concrete and marble, echo the textural diversity of outdoor spaces. The rectangular format of the textile pieces are almost like the boundaries of a room or a screen, both of which became areas of entrapment for individuals during the lockdowns imposed over the past two years.

03

Pop-up Device for Experimenting Margins

is a public space installation commissioned by TM2023 and Moving Fireplaces in December 2020.

The installation reproduces the architectural style of a typical house from the rural area of Banat, Romania, tracing its contour at a 1:1 scale. This abstraction of the shape highlights the house as an archaic document that is slowly disappearing against the backdrop of gentrification and urban development. Arguing that frontiers are abstract notions rather than physical boundaries, the structure creates the premises of a space where inside and outside become relative dimensions. This space invites the audience to reflect on the personal and collective processes that define the private and public spheres and on the way in which people relate to the space of ‘the other’.

The project takes into consideration different studies carried out by researchers from the Moving Fireplaces project which talk about migration, frontiers and socio-cultural behaviours determined by spatial structures and aims to produce an experience in which the differences between public space and domestic space are not apparent, where the two realms can be experienced simultaneously.

04

Memmonade

is an installation that was developed during a six-week residency at the Niki Hannover artist-run residency programme in collaboration with the Art Encounters Foundation, between August - September 2020.
Multimedia Installation — Wood structure / Digital print on textile / Laser engraving on wood / 2-channel sound

The project analyses ancient signs and techniques of data encoding, comparing them to modern computing processes. The installation draws inspiration from Giulio Camillo’s Theatre of Memory, a sketch  through which the philosopher attempts to visualise the materialisation of human memory via a physical space, and enlarges this structure at a 1:1 scale. This semi-circular structure has eight subdivisions corresponding to the different sections of the Memory Palace.

On each segment there are two flags: the white flags comprise of illustrations of old ciphers and sign alphabets used in early telecommunications systems. A short poem about memory is engraved in  the wood , which is later encoded in a matrix through one of the alphabets and decoded again as sound signals. Through this  process, the installation attempts to show how messages can be encoded through various systems without changing their original meaning.

Multimedia Installation — Quadraphonic sound / Single channel video / Metal structure / Plaster objects / Luminescent tubes / Spray painted MDF boards / Digital print

05 
Kinaesthetic Cabin

is an installation developed for the inauguration of Kunsthalle Bega, Timișoara between November 2018 and April 2019, part of the group show Seeing Time curated by Liviana Dan.

The cabin is made of four detachable pieces which, when assembled, determine the shape of a rectangle. Four speakers are incorporated in the shapes transforming the cabin into a resonant cavity. The audience is invited to read instructions in a small booklet and place themselves in the cabin or move the pieces around, exploring how the sonic image changes accordingly. Inside a closed shape, the body stumbles upon the limitations of the space, as well as of its own physicality. Movement is progressively inhibited as the space becomes populated with objects, either through their position, scale or materiality. These features turn into conventions that dictate, prevent or enable motion.

Kinaesthesia comes from Old Greek and means movement awareness, a process which increases the kinetic sensitivity of the body towards space. The cabin is designed to constrain and explore the relationship between shape and mobility through the perspective of the user, who faces limitations and interruptions inflicted by built environments.

Detail — Booklet

Edition of 10

06
The installation The Sensible Realm of Inhabitation

was developed within Middle Grounds and Dissonances, a duo research residency curated by Aici Acolo collective in Cluj-Napoca, summer 2021.

During the residency, the artists made a field trip to the Gorge of Tureni, a narrow pathway between mountains near Cluj-Napoca, Romania. When the mountain’s stone concretions fall off the steep edge, they stack up resembling piles of debris on construction sites. The installation uses imagery from this landscape to highlight how material travels from nature, to constructions, to spaces of intimacy.

Multimedia Installation — Sandblasted steel / Engraved plaster slabs / Digital print on textile / Chain

Lera Kelemen traces the boundaries between current spaces of intimacy in their epidermic origin, as the feeling of being touched by. As surfaces require closeness and proximity, they also act as a permeable membrane, something of an osmotic exchange, instead of the dichotomy built vs natural. In spaces of in-between and abstract forms, through mashed-up references of built environment’s debris and natural elements, a private feeling can emerge, right there, in public, while resonating with others. — Edith Lázár, curatorial argument