Ioana Aron

The expository discourse can be read in the key of distinction between sheltering and dwelling, with brief mentions of relationships: between partners, house/home, studio/artist, museum/works of art.

By bringing together components, both material and immaterial, from the personal collection of dwelling, Ioana Aron proposes a lively, plastic experience, suggestively entitled – A House, A Home – in which space should be viewed as a dynamic realm: shaped by imagination, memories, and experiences.

Conceptually situated in the vicinity of Ioana Aron's previous project, Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2023), the current exhibition follows the same tumultuous narrative thread, rooted in the emotional nature of representations. The central piece – the tripartite wooden structure, A Home (2023) – functions like an interior monument. In the characteristic manner of aggregating objects from immediate surroundings, perhaps with the desire to recreate the atmosphere of home (exchangeable with a studio), the artist reconstructs the spirit of space with in situ installations, paintings, objects, sketches, and personal notations. The presented works are scenes from personal life. The images – depicting moments spent alone, with a child, separately, with a partner, or in various other everyday contexts – are materialized on various supports (leather, textile, wood, canvas, paper, found objects), in various techniques (sewn, glued, assembled, painted).

There is a register of ideas where works such as Judy Chicago's Womanhouse (1972), Tracey Emin's My Bed (1998), or Louise Bourgeois' Cells series coexist. I observe that these ideas are somewhat reconsidered by Ioana Aron in self-referential, entropic scenarios, grounded in inner turmoil.

Returning to the atmosphere imbued by the creations placed here, now, they faithfully convey something about the artist's way of being. I now recall Kurt Schwitters, more precisely, the studio where he lived from 1923 to 1937 before following the path of exile. Merzbau was reconstructed and reconstructed in a museum setting in Hanover. The same happened with Brâncuși's studio in front of the Pompidou Center, under the supervision of Renzo Piano. Such instances are articulated by Claire Bishop in the relationship between the artist's house as a studio and the studio as a work of art in progress. The studio is the place where the work of art is born and develops the intimately personal habitat. The rooms in the studio, on the other hand (component parts of the work), can be separated from their original place and reproduced in other contexts, such as galleries, museums, or private collections. They acquire a separate existence and meaning outside their original context, interacting with those who step inside them and influencing their perception and interpretation in a different way. The installation Furniture from Our House portrays an ephemeral fragment of time spent with the life partner, accompanied by the image-wick, the icon-image, the image that transcends the temporal dimension through the play of light – subtly penetrating through the textile veils that conceal the windows.

The intention of this poetic scenography amplifies the emotional and spiritual connection with that fragment from the past: with dwelling, space, shelter, generating an aesthetic experience, primarily for the artist, then for the viewer, a simple passerby, admirer, just a visitor...