VICTOR MAN
2007
24 x 38 cm
Heating device, antlers
13 x 9 x 13 cm
Unique
Inv. Nr. 158
Born in 1974 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, where he lives and works.
After studying in Israel for a few years, Victor Man returned to his hometown and initiated the artist-run space Plan B in 2005, with other local artists who focused the artworld’s attention on this scene. Man’s work consists in gathering together childhood photographs or found images and objects, the meanings and surfacing memories of which collide at some point. He organises a dialogue between them, although their layout remains intentionally resistant to a single reading. What interests him are the residual archetypes contained within objects and images, even when taken away from their contexts, and thus his works implicitly deal with memory. Found pictures often serve as motifs of his daily practice of painting, which for him is “trying to bring [the images] back to life, by giving them a more physical sense, a body.”
The installation Vestigial Specialization On Its Way Out comprises a pair of deer antlers and a stove tile fitted in the next wall and warmed by a heating device hidden behind it. Carved on the glazed tile is a picturesque scene: a leaping stag in front of a stylized mountain landscape. Functioning as vague clues, these scattered objects give a domestic hint to the exhibition space by referring to hunting trophies and traditional craftsmanship. For the artist, they are more specifically linked to the demolition of an old traditional housing area in Cluj that was replaced by modern tower blocks in the eighties. The heat diffused by the tile gives a physical and literal presence to the image of the warmness of home.