"Between April 25 and June 13, 2024, the "Corp Comun" exhibition by artists Magdalena and Bogdan Pelmuș took place at ArsMonitor gallery. The exhibition featured a selection of recent works, representing a mature synthesis of the couple's 20-year artistic journey. We invite you to delve into an engaging and fluid discussion where the two artists explore their creative process, the diversity of media and themes they address, and the various forms of organization and collaboration they've experimented with over time. The conversation touches on art as self-care, the layers of time, the fragility of the human body, and the belief that "art must be real, sincere, make 'noise,' contradict, and die.
Diana Badea: Magdalena and Bogdan Pelmus, you have a history of over 20 years of artistic activity, during which you have worked both individually and collectively, exploring mediums, themes and practices of a remarkable diversity: from performance, installation and video, to drawing , painting, object. How would you describe and synthesize this creative flow with the differences, the twists and turns
and its overlaps?
MP: I would say that we have had a "colorful" path, not a "gray" one, which has both charged and discharged us at the same time. We gave ourselves the freedom to make art without constraints or conditioning, we worked in a diversity of techniques, we had many collaborations with interesting people, we co-created groups, we made an artist-run space and we were always interested in new, of surprise and especially of the journey, less of the finality of things. The course, that is, the process, is what builds you, and once a stage is closed, it's time to start something else. That's the thing about creative flow, you don't block it by looking for an end, you unblock it by making room for it to flow on into something new. This is also one of the reasons why both Bogdan and I work in series and in parallel on several works and in several techniques.
BP: The types of media used came somehow naturally. The projects are built according to the proposed objective of reaching the public. Sure, over time I've explored painting simply on canvas, but I feel like I can't express everything and experiment with multiple mediums. Many times, a project can be found from painting to drawing, video and object. I think an exhibition is an installation even if you only use one medium. I don't think there are any "turns" in my art even if the approaches are diverse; the structure, the core is the same: the search for one's self in relation to the world, the discovery of the unaltered, unconditioned, spontaneous "image" or the universal, collective message. Creative flow is born only when you ask yourself questions and don't allow yourself to be a slave to your own strengths."
