ALEXANDRU CHIRA Into the Land Lab

 ALEXANDRU CHIRA
Into the Land Lab 
Curated by Erwin Kessler

November 9 – December 18, 2019
Opening: November 9., 6 – 9 pm

The work of Alexandru Chira is a systematic and exhaustive mapping of a fictitious field of research. It is about a shamanic domain stretching up from the skies down to the earth, through spiritually conjuring rain. Like a command & control center for meteo-aesthetic, metaphysic phenomena, his works (paintings, drawings, objects) lie here, on the walls, lavishly exhibiting their makeshift buttons, screens, keyboards and toggles. It is a sophisticated but rigorous morpho-aesthetic instrumentary apparently dedicated to effectively influence meteorology and atmospheric physics. Beholders could touch, switch, and press the buttons with their eyes. Yet, mastering weather forecast and climatological phenomena is rather the metaphorical cover of a more deeper endeavor, designed to master minds, mentalities, and proliferating imaginary. Chira developed a psycho-pictorial lab of advanced, vague technologies of chimerical research. Maybe they do not change external climate condition, but they boost internal elation.

The poetically displaced scientism of Alexandru Chira’s painting is grounded on a mystical animism mesmerized by the natural forces turned into totems and symbols. Offspring of a peasant family, Chira worked in his art lab the same way peasants work the field: he sowed symbols in the paintings, sometimes grafted them to engender new semiotic ensembles and then harvested and gathered everything into painted containers of various shape and size. His symbolic art-farming is literally down-to-earth, extracted from the works, the tools and the seasons of the agricultural world, transfigured by turning them on their poetic side. Ploughing and sowing is art, work and creativity. Rain is revelation, happiness and fertility. Snake is sex, wisdom, and death. Safety pin is vulva, eye, and infant. Hill is breast, church and UFO too. His work is visual but also lexical, the symbols working like a poetic/mystical language, articulating sentences like The Winged Spindle – Study for a Stereopoem, The Suspended Village – Study for a Stereopoem, The Rose of the Senses, The Winged Lamp – Study for a Telepoem. These are not only the titles of some of the exhibited works, but the proper content of the works, seen as a self-conscious language of visual symbols functioning in a semantic manner.

Astral and earthly at the same time, the work of Alexandru Chira is disconcerting because mixing up inputs from apparently disconnected, in-communicating universes and cultural idioms. Besides the fundamental, field-work related paraphernalia, he brought into his lab elements taken from a rhapsodic reconstruction of geometry, from speculative astronomy, and even from a surface-focused understanding of chemistry. Frequently, his works have curious, diamond shapes like lozenges, resembling the scientific, conventional formulas of aromatic hydrocarbs (like vinyl or fenyl). His interest in biology is reflected in the many figure-like constructions, in which intricate symbols and abstract shapes combine to show transparent human faces, with mouths, eyes and noses. Investigating the ritual impact of twins and re-doubled works make also part from Chira’s own para-scientific protocols suggesting a world of enigmatic relationships and correspondences.

The Land Lab of Chira is provided with peculiar instruments of researching inner skies via his poetic, cosmo-geo-mystics. As the instruments are consummate paintings, their doubtful scientific findings are surpassed by their alluring, aesthetic charisma.

Erwin Kessler, curator

Article on Delmes & Zander at BLAU magazine

BLAU No.33, Winter 2018/ 19, S. 69

BLAU No. 33, Winter 2018/ 19, S. 70

BLAU No. 33, Winter 2018/ 19, S. 71

BLAU No. 33, Winter 2018/ 19, S. 72

"Sie wollen nicht gefallen" - Interview with Nicole Delmes and Susanne Zander on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Delmes & Zander

"Wer Sie in den neuen Räumen besucht, der spürt sie: die freien Geister, mit denen die Galerie Delmes & Zander den Kunstmarkt verändert hat (...)"

Thank you Gesine Borcherdt and BLAU magazine!

For more info click here:

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Alexandru Chira at MNAC Bucharest

Alexandru Chira, Winged Lamp (Study for Stereo-Poem), 1997, oil on canvas, 83 x 83 cm, © Delmes & Zander

SEEING HISTORY – 1947-2007. The MNAC Collection

November 15, 2018 – September 29, 2019

MNAC Bucharest

"For the first time in a 18-year long existence, the National Museum of Contemporary Art launches in its most generous space a long-term innovative project dedicated to the collection: the curatorial discourse presents Romanian contemporary art history (1947 - 2007) by giving equal weight to the documentary and artistic dimensions, to the production of culture and to the context determining it.

Thus, Romania’s contemporary history and art history enter into dialogue through the systematic display of one of our country’s most eclectic museum collections. Inherited mostly from other institutions and reflecting, up until 1990, the purchase mechanisms of the former communist cultural propaganda structures, the MNAC collection is able to contribute to a nuanced outlook on Romanian artistic life, from a perspective guided not only by value criteria but also by an overview of the social, economic and political context that influenced its becoming. Seeing History (1947-2007) is designed as an open platform for presentation, analysis, and debate, following the principles of collective curating and bound to continuously change through the accumulation of knowledge. (...)"

Curatorial team: Cristina Cojocaru, Călin Dan, Sandra Demetrescu, Mălina Ionescu, Adriana Oprea, Magda Predescu, Irina Radu

For more Information visit  www.mnac.ro

Check out Art Agenda's review which features works by Alexandru Chira at FIAC 2018

Alexandru Chira, Untitled, 1994, Oil and pencil on canvas, 78.5 x 79 cm. Image courtesy of Delmes & Zander, Cologne

Alexandru Chira is mentioned in Lauren Mackler's Paris Roundup for Art Agenda.

"At FIAC, Ambera Wellmann’s lush, subject-bending paintings, embodying figures in motion with otherworldly physics, showcased by Mexico City’s Lulu on a marginal wall of the fair (interrupted by an emergency exit door, or perhaps a janitorial closet) was nonetheless a showstopper; Alexandru Chira’s dreamy UFO paintings at Delmes & Zander, Cologne, as well."

For more information click here:
art-agenda.com/paris-roundup-2

Thank you Anya Harrison for including Alexandru Chira in your review

Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, "Something for the Boys," 2018, film still.

Alexandru Chira's “Package Poem IV – Study” (1971-1991) picked as one of the top works at FIAC 2018 by Blouinartinfo

"An art professor by day, Alexandru Chira (1947-2011) created esoteric drawings, plans and paintings outside of “working hours” that are a blend of the eccentric, magical and mystical, with a deep interest in engineering and utopianism. Determined to save his home village in Transylvania from the catastrophic effects of long-term drought, Chira developed a monumental piece of land art, a transmitter to bring down rain and rainbows to the earth. Works such as “Package Poem IV — Study,” form part of his four-decade-long project and esoteric vocabulary that give rise to a belief system and mode of being all its own."

For more information click here:

blouinartinfo.com/fiac-paris-2018-our-picks-for-top-works

Getting Ready for fiac!

Prophet Royal Robertson, untitled (Almightly Dies Odin), 1980s, Courtesy D&Z

Visit us October 18 – 21 at Grand Palais, 
Salon d'Honneur - booth 1.J21

"The 45th edition of FIAC will be held in Paris from 18 to 21 October 2018 and will host 193 galleries in the nave and exhibition rooms of the Grand Palais.

The 2018 selection – including many of the most influential specialists worldwide in the fields of modern art, contemporary art and design – will present the finest examples of artistic creation since the turn of the twentieth century; modern masters through to the latest trends..."

fiac.com/en/what-the-fiac/

fiac.com/en/

Ania Szremski reviews our booth at Independent

View on our booth at Independent 2018

Check out the article on art agenda

"Chira is described in press materials as a conceptualist, and indeed came of age professionally at the apogee of that dry, cerebral movement, but he might be more accurately described as an engineer, a mystic, and a shaman. (...)"

For more information click here:

art-agenda.com/reviews/the-armory-show-and-independent-art-fair-2/

art-agenda.com

Check-out AVENUE magazine's review of our booth at Independent 2018

Glimpse on our booth at Independent 2018

Ben Diamond's declarations on the Independent 2018 

"This was my favorite thing I saw, and justified the entire day for me. The objective abstraction of the Romanian artist Alexandru Chira’s whispy drawings and paintings feel like something from the ‘10s or ‘20s. They brings to mind other things as well, like Da Vinci’s notebooks, the art produced by Schizophrenics popular at the turn of the 20th century, or, with their emphasis on strange UFO-like shapes, the contemporary new age movement."

For more information click here:

avenuemagazine.com/independent-art-show-what-to-see/
avenuemagazine.com/

Review of The Art Newspaper of our booth at Independent 2018

"Study XVII", Alexandru Chira, Courtesy of Delmes & Zander 

James H. Miller writes about our presentation of ALEXANDRU CHIRA

"Like many others at the fair, Saltz thrilled to Alexandru Chira, the subject of Cologne’s Delmes & Zander’s booth, the late Romanian artist’s first solo presentation in the US. Chira’s diagrammatic drawings and canvases are intricate and obsessive elaborations on his creation of a meteorological monument in his small village in Transylvania, which is still being constructed, that will generate rain and rainbows—the artist’s response to a drought that plagued his village for an entire year."

For more information click here:

theartnewspaper.com/news/independent-art-fair-goes-its-own-way-and-reaps-rewards
theartnewspaper.com

New York Times publishes Don't-Misses at Independent and NADA 2018

Glimpse on our booth at Indenpendent 2018

Delighted to be among Will Heinrich's "very-best" booths for New York Times

"Continue next door to Alexandru Chira (1947-2011) in his first solo show outside Romania. A professor of painting in Bucharest, Mr. Chira spent years building a colorful installation called “De-signs towards the sky for rain and rainbow” in his native village in Transylvania. A series of hazy but elaborate diagrams and drawings, some on a truncated hexagon shape that he thought would promote the land’s fertility, are dreamily enrapturing.”

For more information click here:

nytimes.com/2018/03/08/arts/design/art-fairs-independent-nada-new-york.html

Check out Benjamin Sutton's overview about all art fairs in NYC this week

The interior of the Armory Show art fair (photo by Benjamin Sutton/Hyperallergic)

Booth of works by Alexandru Chira mentioned

Benjamin Sutton's guide through NYC's art fairs of the week delivers a concise overview. We are happy to be part of it. 

For more information click here:

hyperallergic.com

hyperallergic.com/430460/concise-guide-to-armory-week-2018

Check out our booth at Independent NYC!

"Study XVII", Alexandru Chira, Courtesy of Delmes & Zander

March 9 - 11 at Spring Studios  

Friday, March 9, 12–7 pm
Saturday, March 10, 12–7 pm
Sunday, March 11, 12–6 pm

Have a look a at our fair homepage:
independenthq.com/galleries/delmes-zander

Delmes & Zander at Independent New York 2018

Alexandru Chira, Study XVII, undated, oil on canvas, 86 x 58.5 cm 

First Solo Show of Alexandru Chira 

Native of a small village in Transylvania, Alexandru Chira realized that the new idols of mechanized agriculture (tractors, threshers etc.) proved inefficient when faced with the tough limits of nature - his home village suffered of yearlong drought. Chira started to elaborate a sophisticated system of land-and-weather improving art equipment, a series of staggering, symbolic installations of painted metal, wire, and concrete. Their task was "to bring rain and rainbow", to convey prosperity, and prevent deluge. Later on, during the 1990s, already a university professor and acclaimed artist, Chira succeeded in accomplishing his lifelong dream: the ensemble in Tauseni, the biggest one-man-monument in Transylvania, which absorbed all his energy and financial resources as well as those of many people around him. 

Most of his prior (and later) works, either those on canvas or the drawings and objects are inspiring sketches or derivative works related to the monument. Maturing his art-agrarian fascination for decades, the monumaniac Chira deepened in the diverse branches of practical knowledge and spiritual speculation requested by such a bold plan. Architecture, design, astronomy, history, magic, UFO-logy, mysticism, shamanism, and theosophy conjoined in an effort to strengthen the material and immaterial assets of the project. Nothing is left to chance in his painted graphs. Their apparent visual geomancy is grounded on a peculiar conjunction of human will, sheer transcendence, and natural forces. The ars combinatoria of Alexandru Chira transmutes mystery into complex, planar or spherical trigonometry.

Both on canvas and on paper, the works look equally dreamy, sparse, and alchemical. Drenched in spectral aestheticism, they evoke echoes ranging from Picabia to Adolf Wölfli, and from Kandinsky to Joseph Cornell. His output is a systematic organization of irrational drives. Beneath the hermetic salvation gnosis delivered by his work, sex and power sublimate in totemic, mechanized allegories, like in the work of Konrad Klapheck. 

Delmes & Zander exclusively represent the work of Alexandru Chiras since the end of 2017. This will be the artist's first one-man-show outside of Romania. The gallery is proud to present the works for the very first time here at the Independent New York 2018.

For more information click here:

http://www.independenthq.com/