RAWW aka Romanian Artists Worldwide is an art agency located in Bucharest, Romania and its main goal is promoting fresh and aspiring talents, both locally and internationally. RAWW’s team, made of dynamic and highly creative young people, decided to participate in 2016 Berliner List. In the interview with RAWW Gallery, we talked about their exhibiting artists, Romanian art scene and their plans related to the upcoming art fair.
RAWW is based in Bucharest in Romania and its team is made of dynamic young people who aim at finding innovative creative solutions. How did you find out about our Berliner Liste art fair and what were your initial impressions?
RAWW: We knew for a while about it. In particular because one of the artist we represent, Rone, had several exhibitions in Berlin in the last couple of years, the last one was in fact together with RAWW in October 2015. In was precisely last year that we’ve decided to participate in this edition of Berliner Liste.
Since you’re about to participate in 2016 Berliner Liste this September, we would like to hear a bit more about your plans. How many artists from Romania will be coming to Berlin to represent RAWW-art?
R: We have four artists coming to Berliner Liste this year: Mona Bit, Cristian Crestincov, Sergiu Georgian Mazerschi and Rone. Cristian is a sculptor and the rest are painters. The exhibition we call it “Bohemian RAWW*psody” and it aims at offering a glimpse into what we consider the Romanian perception of the mystery of creation. This mystery will carry each viewer from Rone’s, Mazerschi’s, Crestincov’s or Mona’s most tenebrous abysses up to the brightest heights; and, as beauty lies in the viewer’s eyes, the “Bohemian RAWW*psody” experience can be discovered between the 2-12 September in Fantom Gallery in Berlin or starting with the 14th of September at Berliner Liste! It has a special vibration and this is what we found interesting in all of them. Even though the works come under the category of “affordable art”, the quality of the works answers to the highest demands. Moreover, we fell in love with their deep longing for the spiritual world, with their desire to escape the deep slumber of consumerism, of mediocrity or just shallowness, their strong desire to embrace everlastingness, to own it. We are therefore pleased and honored to represent and to promote them. RAWW* stands for Romanian Artists Worldwide.
Mona Bit is a “Berlin-state-of-mind”! In our opinion, she could be an Amelie Poulain of the uber-postmodern painting, but Mona prefers to be herself a poem of perpetual movement of colors and shapes. Subliminally, we find that all her works bear that mysterious, equally tactile and diaphanous tinge of a “Big-Time-Sensuality” that one falls in love for at first sight!
RONE is, in an inexhaustible artistic bipolarity, pendulating like a Foucault in a “flight over a cuckoo’s nest” between “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of Painting” from his subconscious! This is where he probably extracts his creative sap, the creating insanity to obtain that exorcising of the inner demons and that elevation of his own angels, which he, then, sublimates into the most intense artistic experience possible!
Sergiu Georgian Mazerschi we call “HOMO LUDENS PICTURALIS. He is playing like a frolicking child who is having, at the same time, existential thoughts, which he sublimates in the most ludic way possible. ! We fancy Sergiu as being like the trickster tomcat Behemoth from Bulgakov’s absolute masterpiece “The Master and Margarita”, making all kinds of colorful magic with his charmed primus, diabolic and divine at the same time, from which unexpectedly beautiful, indecently true and psychedelically prankish stories burst forth!
CRISTIAN CRESTINCOV we call Forever Young, Forever Bronze!
Like the play of shadows and lights, between eternity and transiency, between Good and Evil, CRESTINCOV’s art comprises in our view all these heartbreaking, aesthetic dichotomies expressing the ineffable and unchangeable coincidentia oppositorum both at the finite level of our existence and at the infinite one of eternity! This Brancusian paradigm that is longing perpetually for the Infinite is constantly sabotaged by the temptation of the daily life, by the falling into fleshly sin. Fortunately, he does not give up for any moment the hope of redemption through art.
RAWW-art offers a wide range of artworks – more traditional painting and sculpture, photography and graphics, but also alternative pieces. Is your participation at the Berliner Liste going to be focused on a single genre of visual arts or a mix of diverse media?
R: At Berliner Liste we will combine sculpture with paintings. We don’t necessarily concern ourselves about the styles, but more about the message (feeling) of each work.
Can you tell us more about Romanian art scene nowadays? Is it consistent with some major trends in Europe or the United States? What kind of artworks seem to be most popular in Romania these days.
R: I believe that all around the world, there is a big interest in societal art, in finding ways to change the world for better. In Romania, apart for all this, there is also the desire to reconnect to our own roots, to find our specificity into a world where borders (of any kind) are melting.
Finally, how about your hopes and expectations when it comes to our upcoming Berliner Liste? What is your main goal this year? Are you looking to make more connections with various international art institutions?
R: Definitely more connections, a lot of networking, probably even collaborations for future events. But our main goal is to prepare the stage for the intimacy of a responsive interaction between artists and the art lovers.