Dan Perjovschi :
Flat world

"I would like to use just a couple of brushstrokes to understand a complex thing," says Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi, who lives with his wife and colleague Lia in Bucharest, where the two of them founded the 'Contemporary Art Archive' in 1987. The CAA has since become a legendary docking point for art having to do with the collection and archiving of knowledge. Dan Perjovschi is a draughtsman. He understands the world by drawing it. A couple of quickly slapped down lines and a few terse words blossom into ironic commentaries on society, politics and culture. It is irrelevant whether Perjovschi puts his impudent notes on paper like one should, or instead fills the walls of museums and galleries like a backward young boy, or—the most dangerous variant—uses newspapers as his medium. He achieved his international breakthrough with a work for the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, where he covered the floor of the Romanian pavilion with a specific kind of semiotics which some took to be intellectual graffiti, others understood to be political cartoons, and still others assumed to be children’s scribbling. For the Tulln Garden Show, Dan Perjovschi has realized one of his very rare permanent works, for he defines himself as a performance artist for whom the action—in other words doing the drawing itself—is the central element of any project. Perjovschi has used 200 ceramic tiles, decorated with his own critical comments on climate change, to build a sort of dance floor for the garden show. The performance element will in this case be provided by the visitors. They’ll be spinning and turning when they look at this artwork, bending over and standing back up: 'Dan’s Dancing Stars.'
(Brigitte Huck)