GROUND CONTROL: Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan

About

Centrala Gallery presents a solo exhibition of Bucharest based artist-duo Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan. Comprising of several installations, Ground Control is a reaction to the heightening control of corporations and national governments over the world;

“activity of the institution always sustains to act in the name of citizens, but they rarely do. What would happen when we cease to retain critical distance of the citizen but instead assume a position of power, even if only symbolically as a form of poetic justice. ‘’

Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan expose strategies of power in social, economic, and political contexts. Their research-based art practice is a new form of realism which may be very effective in the post-truth era we live in. Using different kinds of artistic media, new technologies and science they implement new aesthetic in which an artwork is the visual evidence of crimes committed by institutions of power on individual. Benera and Estefan debunk the imposed order and open a space to discuss a change in the future. 

Curated by Dominik Kurylek, ‘’This art causes us to raise an eyebrow not only over the way the world is controlled but also over our ignorance on how our perception is determined’’. Ground Control exhibition refers to cartography which has been used for ages to describe, possess, and, above all, to control territories. The artists encourage us to recognise maps as constructions shaped by neo-colonialism, militarism and the nation state. They examine the nature of landscape and its representation beginning from its geological structure and ending with its image provided by satellites.

Exhibited works:

·       No shelter from the storm, 2015, Video, https://vimeo.com/138401502

·       The Equitable Principle, 2012-ongoing, Installation

·       Topographies of conflict, 2017-2018, Installation

·       The Last Land, 2018, Object

Curated by Dominik Kuryle and Assistant Curator Karina Cabanikova